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Check Your Vision

Posted by Jocelyn Green on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 in Faith | Comments (5)

Troubled Heart? Check Your Vision.

By Jocelyn Green

“Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).

When Rob and I married, we chose the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” to be played while we lit our unity candle. I had always loved the lyrics, but I had no idea how perfect they would prove to be not just for a single moment during a wedding ceremony, but for the day-to-day military lifestyle I was entering into.

So much of how we think, feel and live depends upon our vision—what we choose to see in any given situation. In fact, I believe that the difference between being simply concerned or being consumed by worry rides on where we to focus our sight.

In her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver says, “Pastor and teacher Gary E. Gilley sums up the difference like this: ‘Worry is allowing problems and distress to come between us and the heart of God. It is the view that God has somehow lost control of the situation and we cannot trust Him. A legitimate concern presses us closer to the heart of God and causes us to lean and trust on Him all the more.’ Concern draws us to God. Worry pulls us from Him.”

Military wives (indeed, everyone on the planet!) will always have something to be concerned about. There are issues which simply cannot be ignored. But if we have done everything we can to help solve the problem and still find ourselves obsessing over it, we’ve crossed that line from concern to worry and find ourselves in dangerous territory.

The key to banishing worry from your heart is surprisingly simple. I look at it this way: your heart (and mine) has a limited capacity. The best way to get rid of the negative thoughts is to crowd them out with something else bigger and more beautiful: worship of the One who holds everything in His powerful and capable hands. In other words, stop focusing on the root of your worries and shift your gaze to the Lord. It won’t make the troubles disappear, but it sure will help you to stop staring at them all day long, so to speak!

King David was a master at this. Psalm 13 begins with “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” but by the time he gets to the end of the chapter, just five verses later, he changes his tune to: “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” Did you see that? He turned his worry into worship.

Habakkuk contains one of my all-time favorite passages of Scripture. Habakkuk has just been told some terrifying news of impending invasion and destruction from a foreign enemy. In chapter 3, verse 16, he says, “I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me.” But watch what happens in verses 17-19:

“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the bines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on high places.”

Habakkuk turned his worry into worship.

Navy wife Marshele Carter Waddell really brings this home for us in Faith Deployed. She writes:

“Habakkuk did three things that we can learn from: he told his honest doubts to God, he resolved to wait on God, and he chose to trust God even when he couldn’t see the future. I don’t know what your thoughs are today, but here are mine: Though my husband is returning to war and my heart quakes . . . Though I will be a single parent yet again . . . Though life continues to throw me curve balls . . . Yet I will trust the Lord God” (p. 190).

The next time your heart is troubled, check your vision. Focus on God and on His unchanging character. Trust in who He is, rather than what is going on around you.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

***

Jocelyn Green is the award-winning author of Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives and co-author of Battlefields & Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan. Visit her web site at www.faithdeployed.com.

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Finding Joy

Posted by Jocelyn Green on Friday, August 13th, 2010 in Faith | Comments (5)

I held the menu in front of my eyes and stared at it, unseeing. My husband of one month had gone to sea that morning for the first of many separations, and these women invited me to dine with them. Despite the kind gesture, I brooded anyway.

“Get the Caesar.” The captain’s wife interrupted my gloomy reverie.

“What?”

“You like garlic?” she asked. When I nodded, she continued, “Get the Caesar salad. They make it right here in front of you, it’s sensational, and no will care your breath smells like garlic for the rest of the night. I always get the Caesar when Jay is underway.”

I had to admit, she had a great point! I will always remember that moment as the time when I began to learn that living life as a military wife doesn’t mean waiting until your husband comes home to experience joy, but finding it wherever you can, and relishing it, just as I absolutely relished that Caesar salad that night.

In fact, during that inaugural deployment, I made a list of all the things I could do while Rob was gone that I wouldn’t do if he was home. For example, I skipped shaving my legs for a few extra days at a time. I didn’t worry about cooking the perfect meal. I watched all the chick flicks I wanted to, stayed up waaaaay too late scrapbooking, hosted sleepovers with other women and their daughters, etc. I’m sure you have your own list!

The point is not that we wait until our husbands leave to have a lot of fun. More importantly, we recognize that there is joy in life—all of it—not just the days when our husbands are physically by our sides. If we spent each deployment on the sidelines, waiting to enjoy life again until he came home, not only would that be an unfulfilling existence for us, but just imagine how much pressure that would put on our husbands to make us happy!

Our husbands do bring us joy, and none of us would wish them away just so we could have a Girls Night Out. But our happiness is not up to them. It’s up to whom we put our trust in. If we’re going to have joy, we simply must put our trust in the One who never changes, never leaves us, and never disappoints: Jesus.

Psalm 28:7 says, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.”

In her book Cold Tangerines, Shauna Niequist says: “I have always, essentially, been waiting.” We military wives can relate to that, right? Two pages later, she says:

“I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another” (Cold Tangerines, p. 17).

I love that. I really do. For military wives, that Big Moment we wait for may be R&R, or a homecoming. But I am convinced that God wants us to experience joy in seemingly ordinary, but profound moments between those events, as well.

Navy wife Denise McColl illustrated this concept in her book Footsteps of the Faithful. She shares a story about how painful a particular good-bye was for one deployment when her family was stationed in Guam. But by that afternoon, she was making plans with her friend and neighbor to take their kids for a day trip to Cocos Island or a day at the water park.

Denise contributed to my book Faith Deployed, and it is dedicated to her because before the book was published, and mere months after her husband retired as a Navy submariner, Denise lost her battle to cancer. How tragic, I thought, that she died so soon after her husband came home to be with her for good! But consider how much more tragic it would have been if Denise had forfeited her joy during deployments or until her husband’s retirement. That would have been far, far worse. Instead, Denise experienced the joy of the Lord and found pleasure in everyday moments. Her life was not spent waiting. She was an active, joyful participant throughout her years.

This week, today, where can you find joy?

***

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The Gift of Solitude

Posted by Jocelyn Green on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 in Faith | Comments (1)

Be still and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10

It was a familiar ritual of mine: after dropping my husband off at his ship for a month-long patrol, I drove home with the radio on and steeled myself for the empty house awaiting me. Since we were in Alaska, it was usually still dark at this time of day and would be for several more hours, which only seemed to sharpen my sense of loneliness. Arriving home, I’d flip on all the lights and turn on the TV to fill the void of silence that always came when Rob was at sea.

I was newly married, with no children yet, and living off base. I kept myself as active as I could. If I was particularly lonely, I called another Coast Guard wife. While quiet solitude offered itself to me every day, it was the absolute last thing I wanted (remember this is before I had children)!

And yet, by casting solitude aside, I also shrugged off the opportunity to reflect, to fellowship with God and hear His voice, to just be still and know that He is God. Solitude means withdrawing from conversation, from the presence of others, from noise, from the constant barrage of stimulation. It is something that Jesus himself sought after while he was on this earth. The gospel of Luke says that “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16). If Jesus, who was perfect and divine, needed to seek out solitude to be renewed and restored, and to receive grace and direction from the Father, how much more do we as mere mortals need to do the same?

Jill McMillan, whose Marine husband was often deployed, thrives in the company of others. “And yet, the Lord told me, ‘You don’t need to be always in on the action. Go to the lonely places like Christ did.’ That’s when I really grow close to the Lord.”

One writer in Streams of Living Water says this: “Strength is in quietness. The lake must be calm if the heavens are to be reflected on its surface. Our Lord loved the people, but how often we read of His going away from them for a brief season…The one thing needed above all others today is that we shall go apart with our Lord, and sit at His feet in the sacred privacy of His blessed presence. Oh, for the lost art of meditation! Oh, for the culture of the secret place! Oh, for the tonic of waiting upon God!”

While I was trying so hard to withdraw from what I thought were the lonely places, I should have taken my cue from Jesus and let myself enter into those places of quiet to pray. To dwell in the fact that no matter what I was going through, God is still God, and miraculously, He wants to spend time with me.

Ask

Am I jam-packing my life so much that I have no time to pause before the Father?

What is keeping me from sharing moments of stillness with God?

Pray

Lord,
You see how hard I fight against loneliness. You know I am trying to stay engaged in my community so that I don’t have time to notice the pangs of emptiness that seek to assault me. But in my efforts to crowd out those aching feelings, let me not neglect my time alone with you. I need to be recharged by your Spirit. Comfort me with your presence today.

Amen.

_____

Jocelyn Green is the author of Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives (www.faithdeployed.com), from which this devotional was excerpted, and co-author of Battlefields & Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan.

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My Times are in Your Hands

Posted by Jocelyn Green on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 in Books | Comments (1)

The following article is an excerpt from a new book coauthored by Jocelyn Green of Faith Deployed. This is one of the books that will be a prize during the blog carnival in May, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, enjoy!

My Times Are in Your Hands

By Kristen Hamilton, wife of Kevin Hamilton, U.S. Army, Iraq, 2003-2004

My heart was heavy. I desperately missed my husband and longed to be with him. I could only imagine just how lonely, scary, and disconcerting it would be to be sent halfway around the world to risk your life in really uncomfortable conditions with people that you had only known for a matter of months. I wanted so badly to fly to him and “take care” of all his needs. Kevin is a strong, independent man – certainly more than capable of taking care of himself. Still, I would lay awake and wonder: Who’s encouraging my husband when he feels down? Who’s ministering to his spirit when he needs a friend? Is anyone praying with him? In the end, I felt like no one could replace me in looking out for my husband.

Then I read a book called The Hand of God by Alistair Begg. What an incredible blessing! The book follows the life of Joseph, and in chapter four Begg drives home a key point that I felt was written directly for us: Joseph was a long way from home and everything familiar to him, yet he was still hemmed in “behind and before” by God.

It pierced my soul because I realized that I could so easily replace Joseph’s name with Kevin’s. Begg writes that God’s presence was the source of Joseph’s protection. What a relief! My burden was lifted when I understood that there was nothing that my presence could do that God’s presence wasn’t already doing. In fact, God’s presence was all that Kevin needed. His circumstances could have been a thousand times worse, and still God was with him and God was sufficient. I didn’t have to be burdened with anxiety or concern. My amazing God was taking care of my amazing husband in ways well beyond my capabilities. From quiet, possibly lonely nights in his cot in the barracks to riding in the military vehicles on patrol, to helicopter rides to Baghdad, he was surrounded and secured with the power of God. What was left to worry about?

“My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me” (Psalm 31:15).

Prayer: Lord, thank you for remaining in complete control of all my days, and those of my loved ones.

____________

This devotion is an excerpt from Battlefields & Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan (AMG Publishers 2009) by Jocelyn Green, Jane Hampton Cook and John Croushorn.

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One More Night With the Frogs

Posted by Jocelyn Green on Friday, January 29th, 2010 in Hope | Comments (2)

One More Night with the Frogs

By Jocelyn Green

I’m not a betting sort of person, but if I were, I would put down money (plenty of it) on the fact that military families go through more “new beginnings” than just about any other group of people. Of course, maybe we don’t see it that way every time there is a PCS, deployment, or homecoming from deployment. Maybe we just see it as change. And change is hard.

Right now I’m reading a new book by Leeana Tankersley called Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places (Zondervan). She wrote this memoir based on her first year of marriage to a Navy SEAL. They married in San Diego and eight days later forged a new beginning together in Saudi Arabia. Talk about change! I love how she describes it:

“Change is horribly uncomfortable. Like the wrong pair of jeans, change pinches and squeezes in the most inconvenient places. A lot of wriggling and writhing is involved. Maybe even some sucking in and prone posturing. Just when you think you’ve fit in, you realize you’re spilling over the top and sides in the worst way. Very, very little ease.” (Found Art, p. 19)

Strangely enough, even when the change will be good for us, it can still be hard. Remember the story about Moses calling down all sorts of awful plagues on Pharaoh in order to convince him to release the Jewish people from slavery? The second plague was frogs. Exodus 8 tells us that they came up out of the water and covered the land. Pharaoh pleaded with Moses to ask God to make them go away.

“Moses said to Pharaoh, ‘Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile.’ And he said, ‘Tomorrow.’” (Exodus 8:9,10)

Tomorrow? Really? If it were me, I’m pretty sure I would have said, “Right now!” Wouldn’t you?

The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly why Pharaoh wanted to keep the swarming, slimy frogs around that night. Did he think they were cute? The decision is shocking to me. But perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the frogs and how they relate to the changes we need to make in our own lives.

How many times have you thought about a bad habit you’d like to break or a new discipline you’d like to develop in yourself, but decided to put it off? I know I’ve done this more often than I’d care to admit. For some reason, even if we know our habits (frogs) are bad for us, it’s easier to keep them around than to make a change. Maybe, just maybe, those little frogs start to seem like pets after a while. Could it be that after we’ve had our habits for some time, we don’t mind them anymore?

The new beginnings that happen to us, we can’t do much about. The new beginnings which happen within us, however—those are completely up to us.

If there’s something you need to change in your own life, don’t wait until next January rolls around to make a New Year’s resolution. Don’t spend one more night with the frogs, like Pharaoh did. Ask God to help you (claim Philippians 4:13!). Make that change and watch as a new beginning –a very positive one—emerges for you.

Jocelyn Green is the author of Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives (along with 14 contributing writers) and co-author of Battlefields & Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan. Visit her Web site and blog at www.faithdeployed.com.