Deployment: Afghanistan number 4

Me with my combat patch on!

Alright everyone, so it's that time of week again.  Not too much happened this week except we finally did our patch ceremony, indicating we have all been deployed over a month now.  The combat patch is worn on the right arm to indicate that you were deployed before and with which unit.  So walking around daily it is very easy to tell who hasn't deployed before.  And, regardless of what unit you are in (changing what patch you have to wear on the left shoulder), you can always wear your combat patch on the right.  So that was a good experience.

Like usual, I will split this into my four categories.  Fair warning, I am leaving the spiritual one for last intentionally.  You can skip it if you wish or if you think it sounds preachy, but I want to share the way God is changing my heart.

Physical:  I completed all 9 beginner CrossFit classes! Now I can transition to the regular classes.  I have every intention of doing that.... just not yet.  There is a large group of people that have started coming to Crossfit too, so I will keep going to the beginner class to be with my battle buddies and will move to the regular classes with them.  I have also added running to my workout regimen.  I ran 5 miles on Thursday and 6 miles on Saturday.  Neither were very fast, but glad to know that I can still just go out and run distance, no problem.  I have every intention of continuing to run.  I am hoping to get to a point of running 2-3 times a week, CrossFit 2 times a week, and one gym/ ab workout a week,  I also need to add yoga back into my workouts and quit being lazy all of the time.

Mental: So, not much to update on this one yet.  I have completed another online lesson in my real estate classes, but I haven't taken the quiz, because I haven't completed all of the reading... which I should really get on.  I also haven't officially begun my lean six sigma class yet, so that's part of the reason I am hesitant to get too far along in my real estate classes.  I also am trying to learn more about trading stocks.  I think that may also be a hobby I take up out here.  I am all about self improvement and learning new things!

Emotional So I am still unsure of what it means to be a good wife while deployed, but I am working on it.  I have tried being more communicative with my husband when we talk.  But I have also decided to send him a quick text message before I go to bed at night saying I hope he has a good day.  It's hard to call people at night because when everyone is using the internet, it starts to go in and out which is really annoying and usually causes more stress than it alleviates.

Spiritual: I have officially made it one full week of reading my bible and praying EVERY night! I feel like this shouldn't be as much of an accomplishment for me as it is, but oh well.  This is where I am in my walk and hopefully I will continue to grow.  Comparing myself to others isn't going to help me at any rate.  But there has been something that God has started to teach me through prayer that I want to share.

Earlier this week, I felt a special pull at my heart to prayer for a fellow officer in my unit.  He is someone I would count as a friend and mentor.  He constantly challenges me to make better products than just what is required and I have learned a lot from him already.  But he is not married and he isn't a Christian.  He actually said he has no faith at all.  So when I felt God calling me to pray for him, I naturally said..... no.  Oh wait, that's probably not the natural response, right? I have been saved by grace through faith and I, knowing what I have been saved from, should want the same for others, right? Well, as I am learning about myself, I find myself generally apathetic towards the salvation of others.  I mean, God predestined us before we were born as to whether or not we would choose hHm, so what good would pray do? But then I thought about what pray is and I remembered that prayer isn't about me changing God's heart, it is about God changing mine.  And I also considered what God was recently teaching me in my marriage.  God can connect us to others through prayer and increase our love for them (similar to how Paul prayed "without ceasing" for churches he had never been to and even said he loved them). But I thought God wanted to only teach me that to love my husband best while in Afghanistan, I should pray for him.  But God wanting to teach me to love others.... not such a terrible idea....

...But God wanting me to express love for a particular individual, HECK NO!  Something about me saying I love him, or that guy or whatever made me almost ill.  I could hardly think it without a shudder.  I not only didn't want to feel that way, I didn't even want to want to feel that way.  I love my husband, my family, my girl friends, my fellow church members, my husbands friends., but when it comes to male type friends that aren't Christian, I have put them in a whole different category.  Unlovable.  And I had easily justified to myself why; I shouldn't love these men because it could easily be misconstrued as a romantic interest and I don't want ANY ONE to get the wrong idea.

But that isn't what Jesus said.  He didn't say that the second greatest commandment has caveats.  He just said to love your neighbor, the same way he would.  Just because the world says that the only love that can occur is a romantic one doesn't mean it's true.  Jesus has taught me a love far greater than any other love that exists in this world apart from Him.  And being one of the few devote believers in my unit, I realized that I have the potential for great influence.  If I fail to love him, or even avoid him because of what others might think (which was my initial thought when I first heard God's call to pray for him; turns out I am a lot like Jonah.  God tells me one thing and I tried to run in the exact opposite direction), then I have given him a warped view of Christ's love and potentially set him back.

As I talked through this with Kevin this week, I realized more and more that it is not about whether or not this guy comes to know the Lord, it's about God challenging me.  Challenging me to love the way I am called to love, with pure grace, pure mercy and pure forgiveness; and to step out in faith, that he will guard my reputation if I trust in him.

That being said, I now pray for this guy every night.  I pray that through our daily interactions that I might be able to share my faith with him in ways that stick with him and cause him to thirst for more.  That he would want to know more and more about the God I love and His Son who saved me.  I pray that eventually he will go to church and bible study with me and that he will come to know the Lord and that I will come to call him a brother in Christ.  I also pray daily that God would guard my heart against all external influences that could get in the way of doing as the Lord has called me.  Hopefully, I can give an update someday that all of this has come true!

Army: From Afghanistan, Update Number 3

Alright, I am going to try to keep this short since I need to go to bed.  But since I am due for another update, here it is.  I have been in Afghanistan almost a month now, and I am honestly enjoying it.  As much as I worried about not being able to (or maybe just not wanting to) find joy and peace away from my husband, I can honestly say that I have.  I love Kevin as much now as I ever have and I hope that we can continue to find ways to connect.

A lot of people have been asking how they can pray for me while I am here and I guess the biggest things to pray about are: that God would bless my marriage over the distance, and for safety as I should start traveling out on missions very soon.  But don't worry too much, my commander is only allowing me to go out on the ones that he deems as safe. But, by the end of the month, I should have already traveled at least once to a closing base.

So here are my updates in my four goals format:

Physical- I have continued doing Crossfit 3 nights a week and I really have been enjoying it.  This week will be my last week of beginners classes and once I am done, I intend to diversify my workouts with cross fit, gym time, running and yoga.  I am actually hoping to suppliment my Crossfit workouts this week with some yoga too.  The biggest challenge for me doing crossfit right now is my lack of flexibility, especially when it comes to my hamstrings and quadriceps.  And if I can work on stretching more and increasing my flexibility, it should make my form better, and the workouts more beneficial.

Spiritual-  I have had a solid week of prayer journaling! I feel bad that this is the accomplishment it is, but prayer is definitely something I have a hard time with.  I have also been going to church on Sunday, bible study on Tuesday and tomorrow I will even get to attend a prayer breakfast.  I feel really blessed by the chaplain services here and am grateful for them.  The down side is I am still not in good reading habits.   I wake up intending to read the bible, but once I go to conduct personal hygiene and get back to my room, I have forgotten or just gotten distracted.  This is definitely something I need to work on.  My husband is in the process of getting us a couple of books that we can read through parts of the bible together (my small group back home just did this where we read through the new testament in 8 weeks and I loved the format and was really encouraged to read it without chapters and verses).  So hopefully that will help.  I am also thinking I need to just read at night before praying.  I think the mornings would be more beneficial, but I would get the most benefit out of just reading the bible period, so I need to work on that.

For those of you who aren't on facebook/ didn't see, I had my roommate cut off my pony tail so I can donate my hair to locks of love.

Emotional- I feel like Kevin and I are connecting well and talking frequently, but I am not sure how good of a wife I have been this past week.  It is hard for me to come up with ways to be a better wife to my husband.  I pray for him daily but I want something more.  I want him to feel loved, appreciated, cherished and respected even when I am on the opposite side of the world, and I am honestly not sure how to do that.  I am open to suggestions if anyone has them.  Most people just think of sending gifts home, and though that is nice every now and again, my husband and I tend neither to love nor feel loved by giving gifts and spending money.  And given that Kevin's love languages are probably physical touch and quality time, I am not sure how to love him best from here.  I think I need to find new ways to make him feel loved based on what I can do, like words of affirmation and small gifts, instead of trying to be the same wife I would be back in the U.S.

After pic of me with my new hair cut.

Mental-  So, I have been listening a little bit to my real estate lectures (law and practice- blech!) but I haven't written it into my schedule very much.  I am still kind of waiting to find out if I will get to do a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt project, because I want to do that and it might be better for me in the long run.  And if I take up what is left of my free time doing that, then I am going to have a huge break in my real estate classes and I will probably want to start over from the beginning since I haven't gotten that far anyway.  That way, the material is also the freshest in my mind when I get home and want to take the exam.