Love | Wives of Faith

Archive for love

“Just Another Army Wife”

Posted by Kim on Thursday, June 30th, 2011 in Devotionals | Comments (4)

One evening before heading out to our first Mess Dinner after my husband’s promotion, I asked him to give me an explanation about rank within his unit. He gave me a simplified answer, explaining that each Troop has a Troop Leader (Officer) who is in charge and under him, a Troop NCO (Sergeant or Warrant Officer).

What struck me in this was that the Troop Leader almost always has less experience than his NCO. He is a Lieutenant, a trained Officer and has gone to school to be a leader, but he may have less than 5 years in the military.

The NCO on the other hand, has worked his way up to that position from a Private. He usually has 10-15 years experience at his job. And he knows the soldiers under him better. He has the opportunity to spend more time with them and so can make more informed decisions on their skills and what they can handle.

Despite all this, at the end of the day, the Troop Leader makes the final decisions. That’s what he’s been trained to do. In the dynamic of the Military Regiment, it’s his job. And unless his orders are illegal, his Troop is expected to follow them whether they agree or not.

This may sound unfair, but as my husband pointed out, it works if you have a good Troop Leader. A good leader has a great deal of respect for his NCO. He consults with him before making big decisions and listens to his opinion. He also has to care more about the soldiers under him than anything else on the job. He will defend them, motivate, encourage and support them. The decisions he makes need to be based on what is best for the entire Troop, not just his own career. Nothing would get done without a Leader, or if the NCO refused to obey or belittled him in front of the Troops. They need to present a united front to those under them.

So on the ride into the Dinner, I realized something. This is exactly how God intended the family to work. To the world, it sounds unfair, outdated and old-fashioned. But the Bible teaches it! (1 Corinthians 11:3). The way God makes it fair – he tells husbands they need to be good Troop Leaders.

My husband the leader of our little Troop, but as his “NCO”, I have more experience with the day-to-day working of our lives and our children. I spend more time with them and I know their skills and struggles well. The day-to-day operations of our family, they are left to me because he can’t always be here to make every call and he doesn’t need to be. He trusts me completely. He respects and listens to my opinions. He knows that I have a better understanding on how things work in the home and trusts my judgement. And as our leader, he cares more about his family than anything else. Every decision he makes will be based on what he feels is best for us, not for him.

We talk our big decisions through and we almost always agree completely on the course of action. But if we don’t, he does have the final call. As any Troop Leader will tell you, that’s a lot of ownership, a lot of stress and a lot of sleepless nights. He will be the one who must answer to his Commanding Officer on how well he led his Troop. I need to pray for him, support him and stand united with him to our children.

My greatest blessing is that I have a husband who desires to follow God. What I need to do now is stop seeing myself as ‘just another army wife’, but instead being happy that is who I am! I was created to be the partner for a man who loves me as Jesus loves the Church.

I am my own person, I have my own dreams, goals and ambitions, but those seem to be accomplished best when I remember who I am first. A child of God and a wife to the one who was created to love me.

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

Popularity: 14% [?]

Simple Brown Packages

Posted by Guest on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 in Faith | Comments (3)

So I finally decided that today was the day I would unpack my bags from an amazing weekend with my better half. “A week later!?” you say? Yeah. But if it was the last time you were going to smell your significant other’s clothes smelling like them for at least a year, you might wait a week to wash them, too. All morning I have thought and thought and analyzed and worried and fretted and wrung my hands and cried…..then I had an epiphany!

Today is a special day! God is answering some very desperate prayers today! God is saving lives today! I can wring my hands and cry and worry all day long, but then I give God NO GLORY for what He is doing in my husband, child, and my life today. “You mean God get’s glory in war?!” Yeah, I do. Not for the war, but for what He can make come out of it.

Remember Joseph? His brothers were jealous and sold him off. Then one day there was a famine and Joseph interpreted a dream and saved them from famine. (That is the Terri abbreviated version, and may be slightly off – BUT) Joseph told his brothers what you meant for evil God meant for good! Had he never been sold to slavery, he would never find favor with the king and in turn never interpret the dream that saved his nation from famine! Can God be glorified in war? ABSOLUTELY!

I have prayed YEARS for God to help my husband find a job, to get us a home of our own, to make me closer to Him, to make me content where He wants me. Today it hit me. If Steven never went to war, we would not have the money to move out when he comes home or pay off our debt. If he never went to war, he would never get a chance to grow spiritually and find that God is closest to us when we are farthest from Him. I would always depend on Steven to provide the security and strength I need, and never learn to lean on God and find His strength is PERFECT and can carry me!

Today is a sad day for me. I cry because I miss my best friend and feel my heart is breaking in a million tiny pieces. BUT today is an excellent day for me, too! Today I can teach my child that God is amazing in power and has angels who protect his daddy! That He has angels who protect us!!! If you don’t believe it, read your Bible! It’s right there! I don’t walk into this blindly. It is HARD!

I walk into this knowing that my God is bigger than any terrorist and bigger than any situation I will ever see. He loves my husband far more than I can imagine and wants the best for us. I prayed for answers, and He is delivering! It isn’t the package I chose. It isn’t in the pretty wrapping I prefer. But sometimes the best gifts are in simple brown packages, aren’t they?

The end result is going to be worth the wait. So I will come to Him and TRUST Him. (Matthew 11:28) I want THAT rest! I want to wait quietly in calm expectation for God to restore my strength and help me recover when I am so tired I can’t even breathe! And I want to let Him lead me the next year, because I KNOW that where He goes, only good results will follow. It won’t be easy. It’s going to hurt and I am going to fall, but thankfully when I cry out, He IMMEDIATELY reaches out and picks me up!

So I ask, what is in your brown package? Did you miss your little God hugs today? Watch for them! They ARE there!

So I sat down and watched Alex terrorize the poor seagulls and just prayed….”God please give me peace. Peace and strength….” So when i got up, I looked down and this is what the bench said…..What an amazing God!

by Terri Melvin

Terri is a a photographer/stay at home mom of a rambunctious 5 year old boy and has been married for 7 years. Her husband has been in the Alabama Army National Guard for 11 years, and he is currently serving his second tour in Afghanistan. Terri is also currently leading Tour Of Duty: Preparing Our Hearts for Deployment at her local church, and has loved EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Love is Patient

Posted by Catherine Fitzgerald on Friday, February 5th, 2010 in Faith | Comments (1)

Ahhh, love is in the air. Yes, it is upon us once again. February, the month dedicated to the one emotion that can incite wars, produce Hollywood blockbusters, and cause even the most levelheaded of us to “act a fool,” as the kids say. Love. I love love. And usually, I love the month of February because it means the celebration of love. It also means chocolate and flowers. I love love, but I also really love chocolate and flowers.

Yet, this February I find myself not to be in my normal state of jubilation as I usually am this time of year. It is, of course, directly related to the fact that my love, the one I want to celebrate love with, and the one from whom I would love to receive chocolate and flowers, is deployed. When you find yourself in this state as a military wife, that once exciting celebration of love quickly can turn into a nasty reminder that you are alone on a day that is meant to be shared.

I’ve really been thinking about this a lot lately. How do we as military spouses navigate the sometimes murky waters of relationships when much of our relationship is spent apart? Relationships require time together, and that is something that is often in a dangerous deficit for us military folk. The world is ready to give us answers that are both unhealthy and wrong. Their answers seem to revolve around us making impetuous choices that seek to destroy any semblance of true love. So, in an effort to answer this question, I had to go to the One source that would tell me truth.

When you want to know the truth about love, your best bet on any day is to go straight to 1 Corinthians 13. This is the definition of love. While I know this to be true for regular people, I wanted to find the definition for those of us who love a military man. I didn’t have to read too far. In fact, I didn’t even have to go past the first three words of verse 4:

“Love is patient…” 1 Corinthians 13:4 NIV

The word patience in the verse means to “be long-spirited,” or to endure “longsuffering” (Strong’s Greek Lexicon). Long spirited, longsuffering, endurance. No other words can best describe what military marriage needs most of all, nor can any other definition reveal what love means to those in the military. Endurance defined is “the fact or power of enduring or bearing pain, hardships, etc.; the ability or strength to continue or last, especially despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions.”

When we stepped in front of our God, our family, and our friends and pledged our love, we said that we would continue to love our partner despite “fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions.” Perhaps more so than our civilian counterparts, we have the opportunity with each and every separation to show the patience and endurance that love is supposed to have. Even in times when it can be painful to watch as others rejoice, we are given the chance to truly live God’s definition of love through our patience. Patience in the waiting for our love to return. Patience in the stressors of military life. Patience in the endurance that we as a military spouse have to maintain. It can be hard, I know, but when we love in accordance with His word, it produces a love worth celebrating any time of year.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Worthy of Love

Posted by Katherine Wilburn on Friday, October 9th, 2009 in Faith | Comments (2)

Have you ever fallen into the trap of believing that your worth comes from your works? I have. I’ve tried so hard to mold myself into that cookie cutter image of the perfect Military Wife and mother that I’ve literally put myself on my knees. I let myself fall into the trap of thinking that I HAD to volunteer with the FRG, MOPS, PWOC, and a handful of other charities. I HAD to bake cakes from scratch shaped like yellow ribbons for welcome home ceremonies. I was Army Wife Barbie complete with perfectly coiffed hair, and a double strand of pearls, bravely holding her family together and serving her community while her husband served his country.

If you find yourself falling into that trap ask yourself, why are you doing it? Are you doing it because you love to serve others? Are you doing it to prove your worth to yourself or to others? I have to admit that I was doing it because I thought I had to. I do love to serve others, and love to glorify God with my actions and service. However I wasn’t thinking about glorifying the Father when I did these things. I was thinking how nice it was to be appreciated, but at the same time I knew that what I was doing was for myself and not for others. I knew that the other wives were marvelling at my ability to do it all. I was looking to others to decide my worth and fulfill my need to be loved. Needless to say this did not work out well. I overloaded myself trying to prove my worth to everyone and to myself until I crumbled under the pressure and the weight.

It was as I was lying on a hospital bed trying to recover from my first ever anxiety attack that I realized where I had gone wrong. I was looking for others to tell me that I was worth loving. My worth never came from how many cakes I baked, or how many FRG functions I stepped up to run. I was a whitewashed tomb. On the outside I looked like everything a military wife should be. But inside, I was empty, and it was this emptiness that I tried in vain to fill. As I lay on that bed I knew that the only thing that would fill that emptiness inside of me was God’s love.

I am not worthy of His love but he gives it to me anyway, just as He gives it to each one of you. I was reminded of this at a program night at the chapel. The ladies who planned the event had set up a small white tent in the banquet hall. We were asked to enter the tent and look into a mirror placed against the wall and think about ourselves. It was easy to find the flaws when I looked in the mirror. A hair out of place here, a wrinkle in my slacks there. It was then that my eyes fell on the scripture versus printed and placed around the room. Verses like 1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a special people, a holy nation, priests and kings, a people given up completely to God, so that you may make clear the virtues of him who took you out of the dark into the light of heaven”, and 1 John 4:9 “And the love of God was made clear to us when he sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.” It was after I read these versus that I looked into the mirror again and saw myself in a whole new light.

God loves me. He loves ME. I am unworthy of His love and nothing I do will every change that. But nothing I ever do will take away His love for me either. I can neither deserve it, or do anything to diminish it. . I challenge each and every one of you to look into a mirror today. For once, don’t look at your flaws, but try to see yourself through His eyes. Remember, you are a beloved of God. A Daughter of The King and loved with an unconditional love so strong that He sacrificed His only son for YOUR salvation. Even if you were the only person who would benefit from this, He still would have done it. You mean that much to Him. Finally I want you to ask yourself, if He can love you, isn’t it time that you loved yourself too? Stop defining yourself by the standards of the world and live your life with the knowledge that you are a beloved daughter of God and you nothing you do will ever stop Him from loving you.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Love & Military Wives

Posted by Catherine Fitzgerald on Friday, October 9th, 2009 in Marriage | Comments (0)

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what God’s word means to me as a military wife. One of the best things about the Bible is that it applies to all. There are no caveats, no small print, and no asterisks of exception. So, while I would like to pick and choose the passages that assuage my selfish self, God is constantly reminding me that He is talking to me too in every word He speaks.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 is perhaps one of the most recognizable passages to both Christians and non-Christians alike. It is quoted at just about every wedding and can be heard at every sermon on the topic of love. It is a passage that I sometimes like to add a “but” too. For me, it is far too easy to blame this whole military life as the reason I can’t show true love to my husband at any given a moment. “But God, my situation is too hard to show love!” “But God, you didn’t mean it for people going through what I am going through!” Yet I know good and well that the Lord’s word is just as applicable to me, a military wife, as it was to the Christians in Corinth. I wonder what these verses would have sounded like if Paul wrote them to us military wives? Perhaps, it would go a little something like this:

Love is patient during long deployments, demanding training and an erratic schedule.

Love is kind after months of being a single parent with no help with the house, the kids, the finances, the pets, the cars, homework, grocery shopping, sickness, or dirty diapers.

It does not envy the fact that every so often you get to deploy to a place that sounds more like a vacation than work.

It does not boast that I get to eat Mexican food for dinner while you finish yet another MRE.

It is not proud…well, actually it is proud of what you are doing for your country and your family, but never in a self-righteous way.

It is not rude because you aren’t really a phone talker and don’t have much to say during our few phone calls while you are away.

It is not self-seeking as evidenced by the sacrifice I make, along with you, each and every day.

It is not easily angered when you come home late, miss another soccer game, or don’t get back on the date I was told.

It keeps no records of wrongs because we know that our time together is so limited and precious that we can’t waste it on such pettiness.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth that through every deployment, every challenge, and every trial God is strengthening our marriage in a way our civilian counterparts can never understand.

It always protects our marriage from steering clear of temptations during separation,

Always trusts that God will bring us back together again,

Always hopes that it will be during our time on earth, but we know it may not be until we reach heaven,

Always perseveres through this military life because we have the strength of our Heavenly Father and an intense love for one another.

Love never fails because it is in it for the long haul, no matter what the cost, no matter where this military journey takes us.

Have you let this military existence become your excuse? God’s word is speaking as directly to our lives as He was to the Israelites, the Corinthians, the Thessalonians and every other group in the Bible. It is easy to allow our circumstances to excuse our behaviors that show a lack of love. But, we must never forget that the words written in the Bible were meant for us all without a mention of a caveat, minus all small print, and devoid of a tiny asterisk of exception for military wives.