There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother.
There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.
“For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?”
This too is meaningless-a miserable business!
Ecclesiastes 4:8 Read More→
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For two and a half years, I worked at a women’s fitness facility, and part of my job as a coach was to weigh and measure women–arms, waist, hips, legs, weight, fat percent with the little grippy machine thing. I learned very quickly that this was most women’s least favorite thing, but to be honest, I found it fascinating. So many shapes and sizes, so many different manifestations of God’s creation: woman. I learned to appreciate the differences that make us unique, both as a gender and as individuals.
Another thing about this all-women’s fitness club that I found interesting was the fact that many of the women came in to work out with no makeup and their hair hastily combed or pulled into a messy ponytail. And in my eyes, each one of those ladies was absolutely beautiful. Sure, sometimes there were blemishes, or uncolored grey roots peeking through, or tired eyes from too little sleep after staying up all night with sick children, but they were beautiful, just as they were.
One of my favorite scenes in Bridget Jones’s Diary is where Mark Darcy tells Bridget that he likes her just as she is. The entire book (and film) is full of Bridget’s self-condemnation: she weighs too much, she drinks too much, she smokes too many cigarettes, she doesn’t work hard enough at her job, etc. But in the end, the man whom she loves doesn’t seem to care anymore about her faults–he loves her just as she is.
God is like that. He sees us, He knows us, and He loves us just as we are. John 3:16 tells us how much:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Dear friend, you are “the world” to God. He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for you. He knows you, and He loves you.
We at Wives of Faith welcome you, the military wife, just as you are. No facades or masks needed here. We are here for you, because we are in the trenches with you. We are you.
Connect with us in a way that makes you comfortable. We encourage your interaction on Facebook (www.facebook.com/wivesoffaith), or in our community (http://community.wivesoffaith.org), or even by leaving comments here on the blog entries that speak to you. But please, come as you are. Even if your hair is in a messy ponytail 
Come as You Are is more than just a phrase on our blog header:
it is our theme for 2011.
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After I got home from the PWOCI conference in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, I was on Facebook friending people and “like” button-pushing all over the place. Kari Jobe had been our worship leader at the conference, so I went to her fan page to “like” her and post a thank-you on her wall. Later that day I went back to the page, and I saw a name that looked familiar to me. After a few moments of brain-wracking (now that I’m in the over-40 crowd, those moments are more common than I care to admit!) I realized the first and maiden names matched someone I knew from high school.
I am not shy like I used to be, so I popped a message off to her (Hey, there. Do I know you?) and not long after, I got a reply. YES, she was indeed one of my high school classmates! We used to hang out with the same drama-music-debate crowd. We were also nuns in The Sound of Music and flappers in the Sugar/Some Like it Hot choruses together.
We probably walked past each other at some point during the conference. We’ve both aged a little bit in our 20-plus years out of high school. But it was so fun to connect with an old friend, especially to find that we were fellow sisters in Christ as well as fellow military wives!
I wanted to share this with you, not just because it’s a great example of the “It’s a small world” principle, but because the whole “Do I know you?” question really made me think about God. I know He knows me, every part of me, and loves me anyway. But do I know Him? Really truly know Him? I think it would take a million lifetimes to know everything there is to know about God. But that won’t stop me from learning all that I can about Him, and really worshiping Him.
I would encourage you, if you don’t know God, please email me (pattie@wivesoffaith.org) and I’d be glad to talk with you about Him.
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That’s Job with a long ‘o’. The Job with a short ‘o’ is another post.
For Mother’s Day I got a Chronological Bible. I think it’s one of my favorite gifts ever. The last two weeks I’ve been reading about Job. As in ‘the patience of’. Well, he wasn’t very patient. I’m not sure the author of that old cliche had actually read any of the book. However, his whining and crying is all too easy for me to identify with. That insight inspired me to look at the story a little differently. My inspiration has come from reading about Job’s friends. The very first thing that struck me was that they knew about his distress and went to see him. They didn’t do much at first other than share in his sorrow. And listen. They weren’t able to give him the help that he needed. But they listened.
I am a mother. I am a fixer by nature. When my friends have problems, I want to help them fix what’s broken. As my mind starts whirling away as possible solutions, I forget what they really needed was for me to listen. As I read through the pages of counsel offered up from Job’s friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar and, in turn, Job’s defensive replies, I realized that they didn’t have the answers either. And they, just like me, had stopped listening. They wanted to fix Job’s problems the only way they knew how. Even though the things they told Job weren’t wrong, they weren’t right either. They assumed that Job’s torment was a result of his sin. I’m not sure they were entirely wrong in their assumption, as the young man Elihu points out later. But they forgot their purpose of comforting Job in the effort to solve the problem. Their mistake was as serious as Job’s. They were convinced that they understood God’s purpose.
How often, as friends, do we offer loads of advice to our hurting sisters, convinced that we see their problems as they truly are? Do we see our friends as the next project to be fixed? Or simply as a wounded spirit in need of a caring ear?
Do we pray with our sisters in praise of God’s greatness, or for removal from (or of) the hardship? Do we remember that God is in charge and that we may not see the whole picture to understand the whys?
In 33:23-25 Elihu says “Yet if there is an angel on his [a man's] side as a mediator, one out of a thousand to tell a man what is right for him, to be gracious to him and say, ‘Spare him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for him’ — then his flesh is renewed like a child’s; it is restored as in the days of his youth” (NIV).
Praise God that we have a mediator on our side! Jesus paid our ransom long ago. We can offer our praise for God’s grace and the renewal of our soul. Instead of chastising our sisters so that we can ‘fix’ them, let us be guided to praise God with them so they can see that God is in control of even the worst situations. He understands the ‘whys’. Let Him be the fixer.
“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Romans 15:7
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Welcome! We’re so excited you’ve found us. Whether you’ve arrived here from a search engine, or from a friend, from Facebook or from Sara’s recent interview on Focus on the Family, we want to welcome you to Wives of Faith!
Wives of Faith is a faith-based organization founded by military wives to support and encourage military wives through all the joys and challenges of life in the military. We are here for you, because we’re just like you: military wives facing deployments and TDYs and all those other acronyms! All of us here who serve with Wives of Faith are volunteers, passionate about seeing military wives experience and see God’s love first hand, especially through deployment. We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Read More→
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