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The Supply Officer

Posted by Bettina Dowell on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 in Faith | Comments (2)

“He that appoints what the voyage shall be will victual the ship accordingly.”

Matthew Henry

With a freshly minted MBA in hand, it was a logical choice for my husband to become a supply officer when he entered the Navy. After six months in Supply Corps School, we packed up for Jacksonville, Florida for our first sea duty. Rob became the assistant supply officer on a fast frigate. Even thought the eighties were a time of relative world peace, the ship still deployed extensively.

When it was time for a Mediterranean cruise, the supply officers and their department were responsible for lying in food, weapons, ship’s store items, cash and other necessities for extended time at sea. Not knowing exactly what their time before a port call might be, they had to assure the ship was prepared for a long journey. In addition, it was their job to “expect the unexpected,” not knowing what the needs of other departments might become once underway. So, we come to Matthew Henry’s quote about God victualling (to lie in food supplies) our ships.

I would like to think that I have planned well for my future journeys. However, the obvious truth is that I cannot, with any degree of accuracy, predict what will happen in the next five minutes – much less five days, weeks, months or years. Though my fortune telling skills are conspicuously absent, there is a God who knows and sees my voyage.

God is sovereignly aware of every circumstance I will encounter, every need I will have and every stormy or calm sea that lies ahead. He has also made sure, as my supply officer, that I will have everything I need for the journey.

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by

Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19 (KJV)

So how about you today? Where in your life are you struggling over the days that lie ahead? Trust can begin in a place where we acknowledge that God is sovereign. Know today that you have a supply officer who has seen the journey you must make and equipped you well for it.

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Not “Okay”

Posted by Kim on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 in Deployment | Comments (5)

Here in Canada, a new TV show has come out about the war in Afghanistan. Taking a cue from M*A*S*H, it tells the story of a military hospital in the Kandahar Airfield.

I’m not going to argue whether or not the show is realistic, or if it does any justice to the image of the Canadian military. Regardless of its quality, the thing is, I don’t want to watch it.

Now, I’ve never been to Kandahar. I’ve never fought in a war or had my life in danger. Yet I still find myself experiencing emotionally painful responses when it comes to viewing things that have to do with the war in Afghanistan.

As soon as I invest any time, whether it’s a news article, a movie or a TV show, I find myself feeling the familiar anxiety in my chest, knot in my stomach and over-all feeling of unease. It is, in fact, the same feeling I have through most of my husband’s deployments. Even though it’s been 3 years since he’s been home, it comes right back, like it never left.

Why? Honestly, that’s the subject of this blog which has so far been the hardest one I’ve written. Because it’s not something I like to admit.

Spouses at home can feel the emotional after-effects of a deployment.

We hear a lot about soldier’s struggles on return. We know that we can’t expect them to be the same. That there will be lasting changes. From the normal reintegration struggles to PTSD, invisible battle scars are something we hear about, are taught to look for in our spouses and learn to accept as a possible consequence of war just like a physical wounds.
Where does that leave us? Are we expecting ourselves to instantly feel ‘back to normal’ the moment his boots hit the ground at home? After months and months of living with lingering fear of his safety, of jumping every time you hear the news, of worry and anxiety and sleepless nights, can we just drop it all and go back to the way things were instantly?

I thought I could.

I thought I did.

The reality, though, is that I have changed too. And not just that I am more independent than I was before that first tour, or that I am stronger or more reliant on God. I am all those things.

I am also more anxious. While after years of living this life I can handle his short absences with ease, they have caused me the occasional completely-unnecessary fear for his safety. Remembrance Day turns my normally non-crier personality into a blubbery mess for weeks leading up to it.

Hardest to admit is that seeing families or reading stories of injured soldiers or those killed in action can make me feel a terrible, sometimes almost immobilizing guilt that we have seen the other side safely while they have had to endure so much.

I think it’s safe to say that my soldier is not the only one who was emotionally affected by his deployments.

So what’s my lesson in this?

• Admission that I am not perfect. It’s easy to hold the image of the un-phased military spouse. But that’s not reality and I am not her. Anyone who thinks I am has never seen my day 3 of absence meltdown or my military induced hissy-fits.

• Recognizing I have limits, and that’s okay. I don’t have to watch every movie or TV show about Afghanistan. There can be enough reality in my life without it taking over my entertainment time.

• Acceptance that God taught me a lot but I still have much more to learn. Romans 8:28 says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” These things could break you, but they don’t have to. Every moment has a chance to be a lesson.

So here I am, on the other side of my blog and my admission that I’m not always “okay.” It’s not so bad. My prayer is that it will reach the woman out there who is struggling thinking she’s alone in it all.

You are not alone. And you don’t always have to be okay. We’re allowed to need time to adjust too. And if your fear, anxiety or hurts are enough that you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, help is there. Please speak up.

___________________________

Kim is a child of God who believes in Grace and is grateful that His mercies are new every morning. I am a 30 year old wife of a soldier in the Canadian Army. We’ve been married 10 years and have 3 amazing kids. We have survived 3 deployments to Afghanistan as well as numerous other training and domestic operations. While I went to school to be a Social Worker, right now attempting to mother my children is my full time job. www.kimberleymills.blogspot.com

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Starving

Posted by Amber Parham on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 in Faith | Comments (1)

I know it’s been a while. I don’t blame you if you don’t recognize me. Let me reintroduce myself. I’m Amber who used to be pretty regular at doing Blog Spotlights and would occasionally send Pattie some Daily Encouragements and a Blog Post or two. I wish I could say that I had disappeared because God was doing amazing things in my life and he was keeping me so busy that I just didn’t have a minute to sit down and type a few words. But, I can’t say that. Something else was keeping me away.

I was really surprised to see that I wasn’t the only one that felt like she had disappeared. My favorite Peanut Butter Ball chef admitted that she hadn’t been able to come here and write in her post Forgiveness. I really understood about wanting to, but not being able to do it.

What was keeping me away, you ask?

I was afraid. But, let me start at the beginning. A little over a year ago I quit my job. I didn’t find another one. I had been volunteering at church, but the ministries that I’m involved in do not allow me to attend Sunday School or Wednesday night church. Then, about five months ago, I got pregnant. Now, your first thought may be that I was afraid that we wouldn’t have the money. That was a concern, but not what was foremost in my mind. You see, two years before I had my son I had my first miscarriage. Then I had another. So my knee jerk reaction was to worry that I would lose this child too. I didn’t want to be afraid. I knew that it wass wrong to fear and that I needed to have faith. I needed to believe God’s promises. Over and over I begged God to take away my fear. I cried out to him to protect me and my tiny little baby. I finally began to ask him to show me why I was so much more afraid this time, after I’ve had one successful pregnancy, after I had passed the most dangerous stage for miscarriage, after every visit to the doctor showed that our baby was growing and thriving. Why was I paralyzed by fear?

It wasn’t until a week ago when I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia that things began to make sense.

There are two periods of my life that I will immediately name as the times that God grew my faith the most. My husband’s deployment and when I was pregnant with my son. I am no stranger to fear. This time something was different.

While I was working it was easy for me to stay fed. I mean that figuratively and literally. I listened to Christian radio everyday on the way to work and back, I ate lunch with my friend with whom I shared great food and even better conversations about religion. God even worked through our patients to minister to me, and at the time we were attending a church where I was able to ago to Sunday School as well as serve the church. My spiritual platter was spilling over the sides.

This time around, my life had transitioned into a much different routine. We started going to a larger church where I served gladly! I sing with the praise and worship team, I work with AWANA on Wednesdays and I started substitute teaching at the school. I felt like I was giving a little bit back of what had been given to me. It’s work that I love doing. But I didn’t realize that little by little I was depleting my spiritual health, until it was too late. I was sick. Very sick. And I knew that my heart was yearning for something but I was so far gone, I couldn’t tell what it was that I needed. Then I was attacked by Satan’s most dangerous weapon: Fear. The fear that consumed almost every minute of my day was a disease. Not a physical illness, but a spiritual one.

When we get sick we try to take care of ourselves and we take medicine. When my doctor called with the results from my bloodwork, she told me to eat right and take iron. Honestly, my eating habits have been pretty sorry lately. I’ve always tended to be nutritionally conscious. Blame it on being raised by a Home Economics teacher. But, combined Morning (meaning All Day) Sickness and first trimester fatigue depleted my reserves quickly. I wasn’t taking in the nutrients I needed to thrive.

After I prayed to God to tell me why I was so scared this time, he revealed to me that just as I was physically undernourished, I was spiritually anemic too. My Daily Bread routine had been reduced to occasional Bible readings. Reading my Bible was good. But it wasn’t enough to fight off spiritual attacks and minister to others. I realized that I had been starving for the food, the bread of life, that I had had in such abundance before. Just like our bodies require certain amounts of nutrients and calories for us to stay healthy, our spirit needs constant replenishment for those times that we use up our spiritual stores of energy like when we are facing times of trial or an onslaught of spiritual warfare.

God showed me that to get well, to get rid of the disease of Fear, that I need to make some serious effort to continually nourish my mind. I have to quit relying on spiritual snacks to supply everything I need and pull belly up to the banquet table. I’m going to have to feed myself a well balanced diet of the Word by reading daily, listening to teachers and making a point to interact with my Christian friends. And I’ll supplement all that with a good dose of Christian music.

I’m struggling with Fear even as I type this. But I’m getting better everyday. If you are struggling with fear in your life, pray that God will show you how to fill your mind with his love and hope leaving no room for fearful thoughts. Reach out to someone that you can trust to help you through your trial and above all be willing to accept the truths of God’s instruction in your life.

Scripture to snack on.

God is love. 1 John 4:16

If we have love, there is no need to fear. 1 John 4:18

God will deliver us from our hunger and thirst. Psalm 107:5-6

Jesus is the Bread of Life. John 6:32-33

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An Unexpected Hospital Stay

Posted by Ralene on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 in Kids | Comments (0)

Nothing tugs at a mother’s heartstrings more than a sick child. A whole new set of emotions overwhelm her when that sick child gets admitted to the hospital.

I know it’s been awhile since you’ve seen anything from me as the Infant/Baby blogger, and I apologize. At the end of April, my then 10-month old son was admitted to the hospital for a week. Though I’ve had sick kids before, neither of the other two have had to be hospitalized like this, so it was first for me. A scary first.

Connor had been sick for a couple of days. One night, he had an “attack” of some sort. He was having trouble breathing and seriously sounded like a seal. We tried a few home remedies to calm him down and get him breathing, but nothing worked. Finally we decided a trip to the ER was necessary. There’s a long story there, but the end is essentially that we didn’t go to an ER, but his breathing did return to normal. Instead, we went to see the doctor the next morning.

Doc couldn’t find anything wrong with him, suggested if he had any other problems to try the home remedies we’d already tried (don’t get me started on that doc…), but he did prescribe an inhaler for Connor.

We went home and, over the next couple of days, Connor only got worse. He had the breathing problems all night for two nights, but seemed fine during the day. My heart kept telling me to take him back to the doctor, but my head told me to stick it out because I was probably overreacting and didn’t want to be humiliated like I had been at the first appointment (selfish, I know; we’ll get to that).

On the third day, he started having trouble breathing during his waking hours. By the time my husband got home, I was in tears because I just didn’t know what was wrong with my son, and it broke my heart. He told me to take Connor to the ER immediately.

I did.

The ER nurse took us back as soon as we got there. Within minutes, he was on a breathing treatment and being hooked up to an IV. Twenty minutes later we were on our way to the big Army hospital on the island. I was so scared as they loaded us into the ambulance.

Connor ended up being admitted to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed him with a severe case of croup that had caused his bronchial tubes and trachea area to swell, causing strider and other breathing complications. Croup is a viral illness, so there was nothing they could do to treat it–they could only treat the symptoms with breathing treatments, steroids, and some Tylenol to ease some of the pain.

Connor was in the hospital for a week. We had a couple of setbacks the first couple of times we tried to wean him from the breathing treatments, but finally the virus ran its course and we were able to take him home.

I’ve rarely been so scared, and rarely have I clung to the Lord with such faith. As I watched my son sleeping, I pleaded with God to heal my son. I called out to God, I cried, I questioned His purpose, I wrestled with Him over all of it. All I wanted was understanding.

I learned several things from my son’s illness and our stay in the hospital (I stayed with Connor most of the time, and my husband took care of the girls):

1. The most important thing I learned wasto follow my heart. After the first doctor visit and the way the doc talked down to me, like I was a first-time mom who was overreacting, I didn’t want to be wrong again. I let my son’s suffering go on longer than I should have instead of listening to that small voice that God placed inside of me.

2. Steadfastness is a Fruit of the Spirit that must be cultivated. It does not come naturally.

3. Prayer is sometimes the only thing that can sustain you, even when you’re not sure you feel the presence of God. Let’s just say that I have a new perspective on the “Footprints” poem.

4. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil 4: 13)

I hate being hardheaded. It’s a flaw. But God met me where I was at and brought me through this experience wiser and stronger. It’s taken awhile to catch up, but I’m getting there, and I’m glad to finally get a chance to share this experience with you. God bless.

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Trading it all

Posted by Kim on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 in Deployment, Faith | Comments (2)

This fall when a group of soldiers from my husband’s unit returned from Afghanistan, it marked the first time since the war began that all members of that unit would be home in Canada. For that brief time no one from the Regiment was at war and to celebrate, his Commanding Officer threw a party.

A hall was rented, food was catered, huge door prizes were donated and all the soldiers and their spouses came dressed up and ready to enjoy it. A big name Canadian band even donated their time to play a private show just for us.

I remember looking around the room that night happy that everyone was getting the chance to just be proud of their unit, their friends and themselves. If I’ve noticed one major difference between Canadian and American military, it’s the level of pride. Soldiers here are much more reserved and while we have things like Regimental shirts and sweaters and stickers and flags, they are for the most part just for work. Maybe it’s the stereotype of the humble polite Canadian, but they tend to leave all the ‘army’ stuff on the job. So to see them all, in a room with the Regiments crest projected on the walls, celebrating their hard work, it warmed my heart.

After dinner the band got up to play and about halfway through their set they got to one slow song that everyone in the crowd knew the words to and they all sang along to the chorus:

“If I traded it all, if I gave it all away for one thing, just for one thing…”

I stood on the outskirts of what had for the last song been a mosh pit, and I watched all these soldiers with their eyes closed and their hands and cell phones in the air, sing that line over and over with the band.

And I realized the truth of it – that they had been willing to do just that. They had traded their safe lives at home, their time with their family, the opportunity to spend milestone dates with their kids and holidays with their wives, for a war in the desert to fight for something they believe in.

The even harder reality was that they had been willing to give even more and lay their lives on the line for that one thing – the safety of the people back home. Not every member of the unit was with us at that party because some had gave it all.

Doesn’t that just give us a glimpse of God’s ultimate sacrifice? That Jesus, who having it all and living with God in perfection, traded everything he had to be born a man and live on earth, to be persecuted, shamed, beaten and killed, all for just one thing – us.

Jesus’s Disciples dropped their entire lives to follow Jesus during his lifetime on earth and after His death and resurrection, many were imprisoned, beaten and executed for their faith.

The truth is that in many persecuted nations, they understand those early believers and what giving it all for their faith really means. For many, following Christ means being willing to risk their homes, jobs, families and lives for the sake of Jesus Christ. This is not a world that we live in here. And all too often that means that my faith becomes a fair-weather faith and my sacrifice is almost non-existent.

Just as not every soldier will give their life on the battlefield, not every believer is called to face such trials for Christ’s sake. But in the same way, just as every soldier stands willing to make that sacrifice for their country, we as followers of Christ need to stand willing to lay our entire lives on the alter for the sake of His Name.

Interestingly as I scanned that party I realized that the Regimental motto of my husband’s unit is “Perseverance”.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4