What is love? Love is not just a feeling, or emotion. Love is an action. Love is when someone is hurting and you take the time to help heal their hurt. Love is when someone needs you and you literally stop all that you WERE going to do and listen to them, let them know that you are there for them, pray for them… That is love. Love is all these things and so much more.
Being a military wife, love can feel very absent sometimes. It is easy to turn the TV on and watch romantic love stories unfold and think, ” I wish I felt love like that. I wish someone could love me that much!” But then reality sets in and really, that kind of love is not real. It’s fake. Yes I am sure that there are men out there that really love their women like you see on TV, but they are very few and far between. Love is sacrifice. Love is hard work. Love is loyalty. My husband is not around a lot, and there are times that I wish he was around more to love me the way that I sometimes want to feel loved. But then I will stop and think about how much love he really has for me, for us. He sacrifices so much of himself so that we can live on this beautiful mountain. He works so hard and puts in hours upon hours so that when he does want to take a day off to spend more time with us, he can. He is the most loyal person that I have ever had in my life besides God. The boys and I know that he will always be there for us, and that he will do anything, and I mean anything to make us happy. That is love from my soldier.
I am not the type of person to seek out love. I do not seek out attention or friendships, I just mostly keep to myself. I think being a military spouse, with all the moving around that we do, has really taught me that there is no real reason to seek out friends because we will be packing up soon to move somewhere else so what is the point? I have my close childhood friends that I grew up with and I talk to them every now and then, and my sister, we talk all the time, and of course I have my acquaintances that I talk to when I see them, but I really do not have a friend that I talk to on a regular basis, or that I hang out with once a week, or anything like that. If I need to talk to someone about something personal and it isn’t Rob or my sister, I usually just pray and talk to God. I tell him all the time that he is my counselor. Which he is. He is the best counselor that we could ever have. But I learned this week that he does not expect us to go through this life alone. The enemy sure wants us to be alone all the time because he wants to keep us in a vulnerable state of mind where our minds are literally his playground. That’s how I have felt as of recently. I have been so alone that the enemy has really crept up on me and attacked my mind. I have allowed myself to be alone though. I haven’t reached out and asked anyone to hang out or asked anyone for prayer or let anyone know that I truly needed someone to walk along this life with me. That all changed this past week. Thursday I was really feeling alone, attacked, afraid and very defeated. There is a couple in my church that have bible study on Thursday nights. I usually do not go because my son has basketball games every Tuesday and Thursday nights, or my husband comes home on Thursday nights so I am busy getting ready for him, but this night there was no game and my husband was not coming home and I felt like I really needed some people in my life. On my way to bible study I almost turned around three times thinking to myself, ” I do not need anyone, I have God, I’ve got other things to do, my kids need me home etc..” Excuse after excuse was going through my mind. But I pressed forward and kept driving because I knew it was the enemy. I knew that something great was going to happen at that bible study because he was trying to convince me so hard that I didn’t need to go. But oh did I ever need to be there. To make a really long story short, the leader of the bible study asked if anyone had a prayer request. Oh my goodness it was like all of a sudden I couldn’t speak. I of course did not want to be the first one to say anything so I just sat there very silent but also screaming on the inside. Wanting to shout from the top of my lungs “ME!! ME!! I have a prayer request!!” But then it was like my mouth wouldn’t open.. And then finally I was brave enough to ask. I said it! I needed prayer and I finally opened up and asked for it. I was struggling. Struggling with so much! Bad thoughts running through my mind, keeping me up at night, lies from the enemy, loneliness, fear, anxiety, doubt and unbelief!! No one wants to admit those things especially when you write a book about fear and knowing that God delivered me from the fear of death! But death wasn’t the fear I was experiencing this time. It was a different kind of fear. Fear that I will write about later, but I learned something just this morning. Fear is all the same! It’s a lie, and it all leads to destruction. No matter what your fear is about, stop and actually think about it… What is the ultimate answer to your fear? Death! Even if you are not necessarily fearing that you are going to die, if you study your fear long enough, the end result would be death. Either death to your life, death to your relationships, death to your children, death to something. All fear stems from the fear of death!
Anyway I opened up and asked for prayer, and my church friends, my church family came together, stopped their bible study to help me! Just me. They all prayed for me and told me that they had been waiting for this. They knew that I was struggling, but they were waiting for me to ask for help. They were all ready and willing and able to be my friend. They know that this deployment that my husband is getting ready to go on has really been eating at me, and they have all committed to being my friend and making sure that my kids and I are not alone in this. That is Love.. I have often not felt God’s love. I know that is bad to say as a Christian, but it is the honest truth. Maybe I have felt his love but haven’t let it in. I do not know why I do that sometimes, but Thursday night bible study I felt so loved. Not just by my friends of the church but by God! Oh how he loved me so much that he wanted me in that house, that very night, so that I could feel the love all around me. The women of the church even made me a blanket, they had been working on for months! A blanket of love. A blanket made with love. All for me. That is love. Jesus says in John 15:17 ” This is my command, Love each other.” That is love from my friends.
God loves us through all different avenues. He may bless us with something our hearts have desired, gives us a much deserved raise at work, blesses us with beautiful families, shows us his love through feelings he gives us, or sunsets and sunrises. His word shows us just how much he loves us. Jesus dying for us shows us just how much he loves us. There is so many ways God shows us he loves us and sometimes it is through other people. There is a scripture that I cling to all the time when I start to have fear rise up in me. And it does. I have had a hard time admitting it, because again, no one wants to admit that they have any struggles. We all want to look like we have this perfect little life with no personal struggles. But even though I know Jesus died to set me free, and even though I know that I am saved through his grace, and even though I know that I am his and he is mine, I still struggle. I still have times in my life were fear creeps in. Doubt boggles my mind. Unbelief tries to confuse me. It happens to all of us. But God’s love is so powerful and if we will just let it consume us, let it overwhelm us, if we will just remember all the times that he has shown his love and care and protection for us, if we will think only on how much God loves us, fear won’t exist. The scripture that I cling to is this 1 John 4:18 ” There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” God doesn’t want us to fear. He wants us to live! He wants us to enjoy this life he has given us regardless of what our lives have thrown at us. That is love from my God.
The Fight in Me 