Sound familiar? It def does to me... It's the advice that I'm given the most often as a military wife whose husband is deployed.
About 2 weeks ago, a friend of mine and roomie who lived with us for 5 months moved out to prepare for her soldier coming home from Iraq. I had all sorts of emotions that week. What I quickly realized is that I really can cherish this alone time. I never thought I would actually enjoy being alone, but I feel refreshed and as if God has just been waiting for me to experience what it's like to be "recharged" by Him and Him alone. I love coming home from work now and just hanging out with Sophie and reading, doing a craft, or catching up on Hulu. It is such a gift from God to embrace this alone time since I would not consider this my favorite season of life (mainly b/c my hubby is 5,000 miles away from me!)
If you would have asked me over the past 10 years what my biggest fear was, I would quickly blurt out "being alone." This has been a deep rooted fear of mine for a long time.
Going back to the first time my mama was diagnosed with breast cancer... I was 8 years old and I remember thinking "What would happen to me? Where would I go? Who would take care of me if something happened to my mom?" The underlying question was always "Will I be alone?"
As my fear moved from childhood fear of not having parents into adulthood it became a fear of lonliness in general. I never liked to be alone. It got to the point where I naturally made myself busy without even realizing it. I used to think that I was the type of person who simply was "recharged" by being around lots of people. I have recently realized that I don't think that is necessarily the case, instead I was filling my gap by being surrounded by other people or by being busy.
I could go on and on about how fruitful this time has been, but I'm going to save that for another post. It has been a sweet two weeks for the Lord and I and I'm thankful that He has been faithful to show me this. It just makes me sad because I know so many wives who love the Lord and think that staying "busy" will help the time go by as if they can race through this year of their life. If you think about just wanting this season to pass, it's as if you're holding a stop sign in front of God saying "I'm sorry, I cannot be used by you until my husband is home with me" or even "I cannot sit in your presence still because I have to stay busy to make this time go by..."Do we really make deals like this with our Creator? We try to...but they don't work, when we try to "bargain" with God, we never win. We may feel as if we are winning, but can not really experience true fruitfulness and restoration until we surrender the thought that we deserve something from Him. I feel like I need to distinguish between "busying yourself" and having special things to look forward to during deployment...the first one is a way of trying to make this time go by without thinking about our purpose in it or even being thankful for it. Yes I said it, thankful for deployment. I would never wish deployment on anyone, but my husband and I have both said that our marriage has already grown in incredible ways in less than 2 months of him being gone, so yes, we are thankful for that. I think every wife should have special things to look forward to during deployment and that is something very different than mindlessly busying yourself! God is challenging me to sit still in his presence and embrace this season of my life...if you are a military wife of a deployed servicemember, it's my challenge to you as well!
Thank you for the reminder that God can use us, even and especially when our hearts are aching. I have never been afraid of being alone, necessarily, and treasure quiet time-- but at the same time, there is a tendency to fill up the "waiting" during a deployment. I don't think filling up that emptiness is a bad thing, necessarily, but it's the way we choose to fill it that matters.
ReplyDeleteI saw that you're 25% of the way through-- whoo-hoo! :)