I have been a wife of the Army National Guard for three years. In many ways, it has been a true adventure, full of memorable moments. Most of the time, it has been an easy ride and if I had a chance to choose it again, I would. As I accepted all the blessings, some things happened that challenged me in my relationship with God. I faced adversity in the early days of our marriage that forced me to change. I thought my husband’s commitment to being a soldier didn’t really affect my life too much at all. She believed that all she had to do was support her military endeavors and be a great wife. Piece of cake, I mused. After we were married in September 2007, orders were immediately sent to him to do a three-year tour at LetterKenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He had to show up in December just three months after our marriage. I was so excited that our first years together were taking us to a new place and I was grateful for moving from Florida for a season. We went out in November just after Thanksgiving and I was so happy to be back in a northern town, not far from New York, where I had grown up. Chambersburg is a quaint town that was small, friendly, and full of lovely residents. We rented a three-bedroom, three-bath townhome and furnished it modestly. In just a month after we moved in, I got a job as a contractor at LetterKenny Depot. I would see my husband around the base during the day. How cool is that for a newlywed! I thought I was ready for the next three years blessed with a new city, a new marriage, and a new job. I was over the moon with joy.
In October of the following year, the news I most feared reached our home. We were informed that my husband’s tour would be shortened. His Army National Guard unit was being activated to go to Iraq and immediate terror filled my soul. His orders directed us to begin packing for relocation back to Florida so that he could rejoin his unit. I thought I was going to pass out at the thought of him going to the war-torn region. I couldn’t believe this was happening to us and I thought that since I was a believer, God should not allow MY husband to go to such an unstable place. I was sure that we had a lot to do together in our lives and that this new assignment was not in God’s plan at all. I became convinced that this was the enemy (the devil) whose goal was not only to separate me from my beloved, but also to delay our ministry together. How can it be God? I thought. I started crying privately and praying until I almost fainted. I prayed that their orders would change. I prayed that the conflict in Iraq would end before his unit was deployed. I even prayed that my husband would not pass his PT (physical training) test so that he could completely fail the deployment. I thought I was not emotionally strong enough to survive a deployment. How could he live with the idea that he could die at any moment in Iraq for twelve months! Wives who seemed to do this successfully were like heroes to me, but I didn’t want to join their ranks at this exclusive club. I sought God in fear for my husband’s life. I was half angry and half begging him to change the fate of my husband’s unit. I didn’t want to be a widow and the idea terrified me. Since none of my friends or associates were military wives, all I felt was just my fear.
I imagine the same thing happens in most people’s lives. We all have something in our life that makes us confront God with a “why?” Why did my marriage fail, why did I get fired, why did my son get sick? Why, when I am a believer, would God allow such an egregious tragedy to befall me? I am one who loves God, pays my tithes, and shares His love. I learned something valuable from that experience with my husband’s deployment. God wanted to show me how He uses daily circumstances as a backdrop for the massive blessing He had in store for me. He wanted to show me what the real force really was and where it comes from. He wanted to teach me that the force he attributed to me was weak, ineffective, and not steeped in faith. In fact, he showed me that even the drop in bucket strength he relied on was all his as well. The Lord showed me that I can endure difficult days in Him and be victorious. My strength was just a modified version of my own selfish pride that led me to believe that God would not allow “certain things” to happen to me. I thought that by thinking this way, I could manipulate God. I thought that God would not let me down if I accepted this belief. Actually, he was furious with me and needed to show me who God was and who needed God.
God wanted me to get out of the false sense of security that I had created in my mind so that I could focus on Him. Period … not on my new city, marriage, or job. He showed me that I had to constantly keep Him and His will at the center of my existence. I needed to be challenged to seek God more, but not because of my wishes, which included the warning of my husband’s deployment, but because of His will in my life. Many times we seek God only for our little circle of people. When we’re happy, blessed, and healthy, it’s easy to take God for granted. We tend to forget to pray for strangers, volunteer to help others, or intercede prayerfully for the sick. God wants to show us that we should trust Him with everything, including the lives of our loved ones and the things we cannot control. This faith that he kept telling everyone that he had was being tested in a way that I never believed would happen. I thought that God was being very unfair to my husband and to me. We had just gotten married and I felt like God wasn’t giving us a chance. People tend to think that when adversity arises, God does not protect them or answer their prayers. God always responds to us, it just may not be the way we imagine.
God wants us to trust Him with everything because He knows how much we really need Him. He wants to cultivate a real force in the life of every believer. For God to achieve this goal, opposition must be present in our lives, sometimes in the most extreme way. In these dangerous times we have to seek God’s word for comfort. He reminds us in Romans that all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28). We may not believe from the outset that negative or dangerous situations are for our improvement, but the reality is that they are.
Adversity sharpens our sense of resistance! We discover how much of our determination to serve you is due to our own reasoning or a cultivated relationship. It confronts our belief system and forces us to live up to our faith or realize the lack of it. We learn to become more involved with God and humbly ask that our faith be lifted to respond to the challenge we face. When we allow God to cultivate our faith, He erases our fears. Adversity is a stark reminder that we are not in complete control of anything. My arrogance led me to believe that God would not allow my husband to be sent. My desire to control the events of life forced the Lord to address my pride by reminding me that no matter who I thought I was, I still needed him.
Looking back on my experience, I can now see God’s hand at all times. My ability to trust God is strong. I have a deeper walk with the Lord and my prayer life is the most important aspect of my spiritual life now. My faith is rooted in the strength that comes from the Father, not in a proud litany of memorized scriptures. The lesson shared here is to trust the Father with all your heart. To freely worship, know, and appreciate our salvation, God must be in total control of our entire life. So give your heart to the Father today so He can unleash your potential by giving you true strength from the inside out.
Cheer up son of the Most High God!