Life: Trusting the Lord with my everything

Ok, so I feel like it is about time to break from my usual blogging routine and write something new and closer to home.  No worries, I will still be posting my regular update next week as usual.  But recently, what has been on my mind a lot is my relationship with my husband and relationships in general. 

Within the last couple of weeks, multiple guys in my unit have had their relationships end and multiple people are having marital stress.  This is the strain of the 1/3 mark.  We are at our first milestone for time but we still have 2/3 to go.  And that is a stressful time for families and friends.  It is a time of reflection on how hard the last three months again and causes angst when realizing we have six to go. 

But for Kevin and I we haven’t seemed to hit that wall, or any since I got here.  I think the difference is in faith and expectations.  In my last blog, you can see shadows of these thoughts in my writing.  But I want to spend more time on them then I did.  So, this blog will be solely focused on the spiritual journey of one traveling so far away from home, into a war zone, with complete peace regarding a life lost back home. 

So to tell this story, I will begin with my expectations.  My marriage is no longer what it was.  I cannot honestly say that it is better, and really… it is probably worse.  To go from living with someone and doing life with them daily to being restricted in communication will do that.  I do all of my work on classified networks and cannot share most of what I do.  I can give some generalities, but those are not conducive to day to day updates.  My husband and I live two very different lives.  He has joined two new organizations since I left and is taking two grad school classes.  His schedule is full of new activities and new people and I am not a part of that world.  I am surrounded by new people, doing a new job in a new place.  It is nearly impossible to describe to someone what life is like over here.  It is hard to explain that rocket attacks aren’t scary, they are just inconvenient when I am trying to sleep.  And if they happen while I am at work, they get completely ignored.  Saying we live two separate lives is an absolute statement of the obvious. 

But what seems to be different for us, is that we expected this.  Most people go into a deployment trying to maximize the amount of time they spend talking to their spouse so they don’t lose that connection with them.  Both parties try to hinder their growth so that they do not grow without the other person.  They fear that an inevitability of that growth is that they will grow apart.  But what they fail to realize is that, despite their best efforts, they will continue to grow and it won’t be deliberately towards each other.  My guess is that these people will struggle when we return because they haven’t accepted that growth occurred and they won’t until it is thrown in their laps.

But this is what I expected. I mourned the loss of my marriage for what it was before I even left.  The hardest part of leaving was knowing that everything would change and that I wouldn’t be able to control it.  Truth be told,  I doubt there was a day in those last couple of weeks where I didn’t cry and mourn over the loss of intimacy with my husband that I knew I was going to experience.  But that grew into an acceptance and a new expectation that was based on faith. 

A few months before I left, my small group at church did a study where we read through the new testament in 8 weeks.  As I read, I was constantly floored as time and again, I read Paul’s letters to people he had never met confirming his love for them and making statements like “I pray without ceasing for you”.  Now, I have never been a pray without ceasing kind of person.  Perhaps I have never found myself in a truly desperate situation.  Perhaps it is because I am still trying to control my own life.  Perhaps it is because I know that prayer is about changing my heart not God’s and I never really desired to change.  As I pray more fervently here, I can definitely confirm that prayer changes our hearts more than it does anything else. 

But back to where I was before.  Every time Paul expressed love, he described it with prayer.  The connection he formed between himself and those he didn’t know was somehow linked to prayer.  And this thought stuck in my mind like it was super glued there.  I finally realized, the best way to love people is to pray for them.  To spend time before the Lord over them would change my heart for them.   But how this applied to my marriage was a fight I had to have first.  I knew what God was trying to teach me.  That if I wanted to love my husband, I would need to deliberately lift him up in prayer and give him and our marriage over to the Lord.  The only thing that could connect us over the distance was going to have to happen at a higher level than we can handle.  But I didn’t want to let go.  I didn’t want to leave the situation to the Lord, I wanted to control it.  I wanted to keep my marriage exactly where it was and control it.  I was already making elaborate communication plans and I wasn’t going to miss a second in my husband’s life. 

The further I planned, the more I realized it wasn’t going to work.  There is nothing I can do to keep my husband safe back home just like there is nothing he can do to keep me safe here.  And I would have to be on the phone with him all day and night to keep up with his life and he with mine.  It wasn’t going to work.  And God already knew it and had given me the answer.  I needed to give my husband and my marriage over to God and trust him to manage it.  I had to have enough faith that God knew better than me; which should be much easier to admit than it ever ends up being.

But part of my struggle with giving it to God was accepting that it wasn’t going to be what I wanted, or thought I wanted.  I knew that by giving my marriage over to God meant accepting whatever he had for it and trusting that it would be good and for my best.  And more than anything, it meant accepting God’s promises are true.

When Kevin and I first got married, I remember being told that if we both sought the Lord first in all of our circumstances that we would have the strongest marriage.  What I had really been doing was putting my marriage first.  I was more concerned with making sure I had a good marriage than I was concerned about my relationship with the Lord.  I wanted to make sure that Kevin and I were growing closer together and then generally more towards God instead of the other way around.

When I gave control over to the Lord, I acknowledged I would have to give that up and just run towards him.  This is really why I have set very specific goals for myself and for my improvement.  It is why I have been praying and reading my bible every day.  It is why I engaged in spiritual conversations frequently and go to church and bible study.  It’s why I am attempting to memorize verses and put the Lord first in my actions.  I am in a dead sprint to finish my race well and I have accepted this race doesn’t end in November with this deployment. 

I have placed my faith and trust in the Lord.  I have accepted that God has everything in control.  This has given me more freedom than I have ever known.  I am without anxiety or worry.  I can trust in God’s providence to get me through and back home to my husband.  I trust that God’s word is true and he only wants the finer things for me.  And I know that Kevin and I don’t have the marriage we did.  We have lost something amazing.  But as we both move more intentionally towards the Lord, we are growing together in a way that we cannot see.  When I get back home, Kevin and I will have a second honeymoon of sorts.  Our marriage will feel new to us again and we will continue from there.  Because we have both moved fervently towards the Lord, we will make leaps and bounds in our marriage when I return.  I understand that this is because I don’t have a contract of marriage with my husband.  I have a covenant between my husband, myself and the Lord, and the latter is what holds it together.  Our newfound reliance on the Lord will renew our marriage in a way that nothing else could.  And though I do not know what that will look like yet, I have faith and trust that it will be good.  My expectations have changed based on my faith in God’s promises. 

And though sometimes, I know that my concern over my marriage may look like apathy to some, nonchalance to others, and everything in between.  But what those people have missed is that my love for my God and my husband exceeds their understanding.  That love is deeper than anyone knows, but I hold it out for the Lord with an open hand.  There was a point in my life when I was concerned I would lose my faith if God ever took my husband from me.  Now I am pretty sure that I would be devastated for the loss, but I could still move towards God to supply my comfort and strength.  I am not sure I could handle it as well as Job, but I would make it through. 

Army: Afghanistan Number 9

Well, here we are.  Week 11 post 9.  It has been an interesting week here in Afghanistan.  As we move into the warmer months, the spring offensive is coming under way, which means more rocket attacks in general.  The alarms having been sounding more frequently here and has been interrupting my (and other's) much needed sleep.  That probably the biggest change between my last couple of weeks.  So I shall continue this post in my normal style.

How I feel most of my time in class! (Not really true though)

Mental: So I have moved into the data collecting phase of my lean six sigma project.  I am really going to two directions; how long does it take to move a container from the time of first request to first movement and what types of containers end up at the yard.  The second part is hard to explain, but basically, containers are packed in all sorts of ways before they are sent.  One option is that our teams pack it properly so it moves out of country faster.  The second is that the unit packs it as nicely  as they can, but still don't get it quite right. And the third is basically the unit just throws a ton of stuff in containers and sends it off to close a base quickly.  The second two involve time unpacking, repacking and resending stuff.  So I am looking at processing times for each.  I will be spending time pouring over spreadsheets this week as well as spending time seeing how the containers are processed.  It will be a large amount of work, but I am just glad to actually feel like I am actioning something now. 

Emotional: So, I am still confunded by the idea of how to be a good wife and still be so far away from my husband.  It's not that I think I am a bad wife or anything like that.  But what I don't think people understand about me is the fact that even when I am stateside, I am constantly trying to improve myself.  And I am always looking at how I can be a better wife.  The frustrating part is not feeling like I can do much here.  I have been trying to just speak more openly with Kevin.  Specifically about how I spend my time here.  I talk to Kevin in the mornings and after sleeping, I can barely remember the previous day or distinguish it from any of the others before that.  Plus, since I have already lived through it once, I don't much feel like living through it again.  Whatever irritated me the day before doesn't matter after a good night's sleep and isn't worth bringing up.  This is on top of the fact that I work in a classified environment and most of my day is spent dealing with secret documents, so I can't even explain what I am working on.  But, I finally realized that I wasn't sharing some key life events with Kevin because I had already dismissed them.  I wasn't letting him know how both my professional and my work relationships were progressing.  Relationships that he thought were still damaged had been repaired and relationships he thought were good had been damaged.  The problem with me not sharing this is that it doesn't help him in his praying for me.  He would pray for things that had long since past and wasn't praying for things I currently need.  So, at night, I try to consider what happened during the day that I need to share with Kevin in the morning, regardless of how I wake up feeling about them.  I think of these updates as prayer requests and then I share them with my loving husband. 

Another piece of my emotional well being here in Afghanistan has been an unexpected friend I found in one of the other lieutenants here.  He is the only other married lieutenant in my unit, has five children back at home (the fifth being born last month) and is almost 9 years older than me.  But honestly, I think the thing that draws us together the most is Christianity.  He is one of the very few people here who uses the scripture as his foundation for action.  He gives biblical advice and I think we both challenge each other to do better and be more Christ-like.  I don't get much free time here, but what I have that isn't spent in my room sleeping is probably being spent with him.  I greatly appreciate his friendship and so does Kevin, as it gives me someone to talk to since it can rarely be him.  But, while co-gender friendships have been a regular part of my life for a long time (kind of expected in the army), there is a degree of caution that has to be exercised.  I would never want the appearance of impropriety in my actions and want to avoid rumors where they can be avoided.  It is a delicate balance and one that irritates me frequently.  Regardless, I share this only to share the prayer request that goes along with it: that our friendship would remain pure, drama free, would be above reproach and not subject to any rumors that pervert the truth. 

Physical: So, I would like to say that I have been working out recently... but I really haven't.  More important to my physical health recently is my desire to just get some sleep.  And since I have been getting off slightly earlier, I have been trying to take advantage the opportunity.  But, as I am currently reflecting on the workouts I have not been doing, I acknowledge that I need to make time for it so that I will do it.  Honestly, the largest part of any change you want to make, is changing your schedule to make it fit.

Financial: So last week I started investing.  I bought and sold my first stocks at a profit of about 16%.  I had bought into the company Yandex (YNDX: Russia's google) and sold it shortly after their earnings report came out.  I also bought Arlington Asset Investment (AI) at the advice of someone else, bought in late and likely won't make anything on it.  I will sell it it likely at no profit eventually.  I have also bought into Apollo Global Management (APO) and am currently up about 4%.  Their earnings report comes out next week and it is expected to have some good news.  Truth be told, my methods mostly involve watching earnings report dates compared to EPS and then looking at the last 1-3 years to see if I think it will likely rise and by how much. 

Spiritual: So apart from praying and reading regularly, I have realized this week it is about time to start another spiritual discipline: memorization.  Last week, I realized how much of an effect sarcasm can have.  Constantly joking about certain things in a negative light not only makes others think I am serious, but becomes more of a reality the more I ay it.  So if I start joking negatively about something and keep repeating it, I start to have a more negative attitude.  So I started reading more of what the bible says about being careful with our words.  And this led me to realize that memorizing these verses would not only help me remember, but might also changed my actions as I recalled the verses in more tense situations.  So my first memory verse was Proverbs 15:1 "A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger".  My second memory verse was Proverbs 21:23 "Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble" and today's verse is Proverbs 12:18 "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." On my wall at work is a list of verses and each day, I read them all, pick the one that speaks to me the most that day and then start memorizing it. As I memorize it, I go back over the verses I learned the previous day. So we will see how long this list ends up.