May 1 – 8, 2026
Fighting the Wrong Battles
Photos of Taylor Schrauger.. He knew where the battle was.
As my eleven year old son, Taylor, was in his final, 30 hour battle with cancer, his conscious awareness faded in and out. Morphine deadened the pain, but also clouded the mind. Nonetheless, he often broke through that cloud with stunning clarity.
At around the 15 hour point, as his body thrashed, unwilling to surrender, he suddenly cried out, “Am I dying? I don’t want to die!” He knew that he knew that he knew.
My reply? “I love you, honey. You are fine. You know what’s happening. The truth is that all you have to do is go to sleep. You can’t wake up until you go to sleep.”
A short time later, he said to me, “Dad, I see hell!”
After assuring him that the vision of hell was a lie, I turned to my wife and quietly yelled.
“Call everyone. Tell them to stop praying for Taylor to be healed! That isn’t what he needs! What he needs is spiritual protection as he makes his way Home.”
The false conviction that healing was Taylor’s greatest need left him unprotected from a far, far more important battle: the enemy’s lies, attempting to deceive and terrify in his final hours.
Sitting with him, holding him, that fight became our focus, our fury. I do not think that I will ever see or know such a warrior as he was. And he won.
In the end, with his final breath, he smiled, safely Home.
It is so easy to fight the wrong battles, to expend all our efforts on secondary things.
Sometimes this happens because of distraction. Other times, and often in combination with distraction, it happens because of deception.
