It’s On Your Face

It seems that when my hubby is gone if something can go wrong it will go wrong.  There have been so many stressful things that have happened since he left.  On top of just being without him it has been doubly hard with all of the added stressers.  I am thankful though that I have a Lord and Savior who reminds me that he is here and I am not alone.  It is still hard to deal with the stress though.  There are days when I know I am not dealing very well with it, I pray for strength to go on.  Then there are days that seem to be almost stress free, I praise God for an easier day.  Then there are those days when I think I am fooling everyone (hehe-yeah right).

This past Sunday was one of those days when I thought I had it all together and was fooling everyone.  As I was speaking with a friend and she made the comment that she could see the stress on my face.  What??  I thought I had it all covered up!

Image by angelsk via Flickr

At first, I was not overly happy that it was showing  but then I began to be thankful.  I was thankful that someone noticed!  It is hard when no one seems to notice or even care!  We military wives are expected to just suck it up and get over it!  That is often easier said than done. It is nice to have someone tell you that you don’t have to be tough all the time and that it is okay to struggle. I tell you, if it was not for my amazing church family here (and one neighbor) I would have no support.  I am so thankful for my church family here and how I can always count on them! I am thankful for how they step in and meet our needs.   I am thankful for how they encourage me, how they remind me to point my focus back on the Lord when I begin to focus more on my circumstances. I am so thankful for the friends that I have there!  I am thankful that  they notice and they care when I have had a rough week!  They have truly shown the love of Christ to our family.

Since my hubby left I have spent so much more time in prayer!  That is a good thing!  I have not had my hubby to depend on and it has forced me to rely more and more on my Savior!  Sometimes though it is good to have that physical hug from a friend.  I am glad that I have that with my church family.  I am thankful that the Lord provided me a family here.

So let me challenge you.  If you have military families where you live (well anyone for that matter).  Take time to notice and take time to care.  If you can see stress on their faces be an encouragement don’t just turn and walk away. Make sure to remember them, their situation, and their struggles throughout the separation not just in the first month. Sometimes just noticing and genuinely caring can make all the difference in their day!

Please leave a comment and share some ways that you encourage others or what others have done to encourage you.

Do Not Be Discouraged

If you have been following as I have blogged through this booklet; Bringing the Gospel to Covenant Children: In Dependency on the Spirit by Joel R. Beeke and are feeling as if you have failed.  Do not be discouraged, it is not too late to start.  You can always repent and begin a new.  Evangelism is a lifelong endeavor.  Whether it is your own children, your grandchildren, or those in the neighborhood or at church, you can share the gospel of Christ and what it means to live as a child of God.

If you have gleaned from the last week or so of blogging through Beeke’s booklet, I would encourage you to spend the $2 and order your own copy.  There is so much more!  Just follow the link above.

I will close this the same way Beeke closes his booklet.  It is with a great prayer from a seventeenth-century Puritan.

O God, I cannot endure to see the destruction of my kindred.  Let those that are united to me in tender ties be precious in thy sight and devoted to thy glory.  Sanctify and prosper my domestic devotion, instruction, discipline, example, that my house may be a nursery for heaven, my church the garden of the Lord, enriched with the trees of righteousness of thy planting, for thy glory.  Let not those of my family who are amiable, moral, attractive, fall short of heaven at last.  Grant that the promising appearances of tender conscience, soft heart, the alarms and delights of thy Word, be not finally blotted out, but bring forth judgment unto victory in all whom I love.

Prayer and Family Worship

In the last post, I left you with a list of  things to ponder.  Ways in which we can bring the gospel of Christ to our children.  In the next couple of posts will touch on those.  I will continue to reference the booklet Bringing the Gospel to Covenant Children: In Dependency on the Spirit by Joel R. Beeke.

• Prayer

How should we pray for our children?  We should be praying for them in a habitual way.  Set a specific time aside to pray for them but also be spontaneous and pray for them whenever the need arises.  Pray also for them covenantally, specifically, and earnestly.

I would like to share a few quotes with you about praying for our children.

“A family without prayer is like a house without a roof, open and exposed to all the storms of heaven.  Thomas Brooks.

“You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you can’t do more than pray until after you have prayed.” John Bunyan

“O Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, give us a seed right with Thee!  Smite us and our house with everlasting barrenness rather than that our seed should not be right with Thee.  O God, give us our children.  Give us our children. A second time, and by a far better birth, give us our children to be beside us in Thy holy covenant.  For it had been better we had never been betrothed; it had been better we had sat all our days solitary unless our children are to be right with Thee…..But thou, O God, art Thyself a Father, and thus hast in Thyself a Father’s heart.  Hear us, then, for our children, O our Father…..In season and out of season, we shall not go up into our bed, we shall not give sleep to our eyes nor slumber to our eyelids till we and all our seed are right with Thee.”  Alexander Whyte

• Family Worship

Beeke mentions four aspects that should be included in family worship and also gives some very practical ideas on incorporating those four aspects.  They are as follows:

1. Scripture reading
2. Biblical instruction
3. Prayer
4. Singing

Let your family worship be regular and sincere.  As Richard Cecil said, “Let family worship be short, savory, simple, tender, heavenly.”  God requires such family worship, the Lord Jesus is worthy of it, Scripture demands it, conscience approves it, and children profit from it.

Trusting More

It has been almost an entire week since I last posted here.  It has been a rough emotional week for me.  I have also been feeling a bit ill.  (I just love it when I go to the hospital healthy to pick up a prescription and come home sick.)  This past week (or so) has really been a big struggle for me.  I am often distracted and to be completely honest I know I am not really good company right now.

This morning in worship was a sweet time as it always is but I was very distracted despite my prayers to be focused.  I heard most of the sermon.  I drew my attention back to it over and over again.  I remember listening.  I really only remember one line really sinking in.  I also remember being a little annoyed that God brought it to the forefront of my mind.  After all, I KNEW this.  I already KNEW I was struggling with this.  Did I really need the reminder?  Obviously, I did, I just didn’t really want it.  Even when we know our troubles sometimes it seems easier to try and ignore them that to face them.

The line went something along these lines……

It is easy to trust God when things are going well but when times are hard trusting God can become difficult.

I know this to be true.  I have dealt with this many times.  It is a lesson that always brings about growth but often pain and struggle in the process. Usually in the end though the outcome is better than I ever would have imagined.  And I find myself amazed and a little annoyed at how much I fought it.

I think maybe that is where I am.  Not that I question God or even distrust him.  Sometimes it just takes a little more trust than we are used to investing.  Sometimes it seems easier to focus on our struggles than to surrender them.  It is hard, especially for someone like me who likes to have things under control, to relinquish that control.  Maybe that is a big part of my struggles these past few weeks.  My level of trust in the Lord is being stretched.  I am being called to place more and more trust in him.  I am questioning whether my more of my struggle is with the many circumstances that are bringing bucket loads of stress into my life right now or if it is because I am trying to hold it all together on my own.  Do not get me wrong, I am praying every day and depending on the Lord.  But maybe, just maybe I am trying too hard to hold things together that I am not really receiving the strength, grace, and power from the Lord to really hold things together.  Does that make any sense?

Well, if you have kept with my pathetic ramblings thus far please pray that I would surrender everything to the Lord.  That I would be relying on his strength and not my own.  That I would not play tug of war with God over my stresses, fears, and struggles but that I would let him carry me through.

This will be good for my blog readers too……maybe my posts won’t be such a downer anymore!  )

How to Pray Badly

It is the Lord’s delight to grant us what we ask of him in prayer. Like David, we all ought to pray, “O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 54:2). If Christians did not believe in the effectiveness of prayer, there would be no reason for us to ask anything of God. He is the one who tells us that we can have confidence that our prayers ascend to him. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14,15). While as Christians we pay lip-service to the superlatives in that sentence (“whatever” and “anything”), how often do we really believe it?

The fact is that our prayers are often hindered. There are times when it feels like our prayers are reaching the ceiling and going no further; times when we are lying face-down on the floor and feel that our prayers are rising no higher than the fibers of the carpet. While we can be sure that God does hear our prayers, there are times when he chooses not to heed or answer them. The Bible gives us at least six reasons God may not heed our prayers.

To finish this great article just follow the link! Then come back and tell me what you think!

How to Pray Badly | Challies Dot Com.

Prayer Filled Stars

Several months ago as I began to anticipate and prepare for this deployment, I began to pray for a meaningful way to count the days away.   On our first deployment we put up a paper chain.  One link for each day and took one off each evening.  That was a visible way to do things and one that the younger children can easily understand.  The chain worked pretty well but was draped all over the house and sometimes was too much of a reminder.  It was however easy to adjust the number of rings in case the dates changed.  It didn’t serve much of a purpose other than counting down though and I wanted something more substantial.

I had someone tell me that what they did was get a large jar and put enough Hershey’s Kisses in them for each child to have one each day.  When the jar was empty, dad should be home.  It was also easy to adjust the number if days changed.  I have so many people in our household that I would need to buy stock in Hershey’s to make it worth while!  That would be A LOT of chocolate (even for me).  A kiss for daddy has a little more meaning than just paper chains I suppose but it isn’t what I was longing for.

I continued to prayer that the Lord would show me what to do.  I am not the most creative person in the world and nothing was coming to mind!

Then one night the Lord woke me from a sound sleep and this idea was running through my mind.  For several minutes I willed myself to not forget in the morning.  Sadly, I often do forget things by morning.  I did remember but forgot to mention to hubby and eventually over the following days the thought vanished from my mind.  I knew I had forgotten something great and prayed that I would remember.  The Lord woke me a few more times from sleep in the following weeks and reminded me of the same idea.

I mentioned this to my hubby and he thought it was a wonderful idea too.   So we went with it.  Let me explain how we are counting away the days.

One thing I would like to mention is that one of the ways daddy will be greatly missed around here is at bedtime.  Bedtime is daddy’s job.  He prays with each child before bed.  That is just daddy’s job.

What we have done is purchased enough die cut stars for each day that daddy will be gone.  They will be easy to adjust if the dates change a bit.  They do not take up too much room and are neatly stuck on the wall in the corner of the hallway.  They are visible but not “in your face” for a too constant reminder.  We will take one down each night before bedtime for our countdown.  Here is the blessing part.  Since daddy is the one who prayers with the children at bedtime and that will be sorely missed, we have written a prayer on the back of each one.  Daddy wrote some before he left and I wrote some.  They are prayers for him, for us, for leaders, for giving thanks, for the cars to not break down, and just about anything we could think of that we would need prayer for during this separation.  There is meaning and substance now included rather than just counting the days away.  It helps to fill a void that is there because daddy is gone.  The Lord is so good to show us this.

So here is a photo of our hallway corner with approximately 200 prayer filled stars.