Anyway.....
These are some Bible verses that I came across this past week. I have an NLT Bible that is divided up into daily sections so that you can read the whole thing in a year if you want to. I opened it on Monday to the section for that day, and I came across this:
Turn to me and have mercy, for I am alone and in deep distress. My
problems go from bad to worse. Oh, save me from them all! Feel my
pain and see my trouble. Forgive all my sins.
--Psalm 15:16-18
It stuck out to me that it was one that I should definitely hold on to, since I feel sure there will be plenty of times when I will feel exactly this way. I didn't know I would be pulling it back out by the end of the week! When I would start to feel totally overwhelmed and frustrated and just couldn't stand how mad I felt, I would read these words. "My problems go from bad to worse", and mostly "have mercy, for I am alone and in deep distress".
And I know that-at this point in time-I am not going through anything that qualifies as "deep distress". Certainly not when compared to watching my husband head off into a war zone less than a year from now, and knowing that he won't be back for at least a year. Maybe not at all....
But what you have to remember is that every single situation that comes up in my life has this huge, scary, dark and horrible shadow hanging over it. Deployment is coming. It's going to be miserable, hard and lonely for me and the boys. And it's going to be very dangerous for Eric. When he goes out in the field to train, I know that he's training to fight people who are going to be trying to kill him. He mentions things to me, like some medic training he had to participate in where they filled a stryker with a lot of fake blood and had them run up and look inside, not knowing what to expect. When I asked him why they had to have the fake blood, he basically said to take away some of the shock in case he comes up to one like that in Afghanistan.
Stuff like that doesn't seem to bother him too much, and he just says it like, "Oh, yeah, and I had a ham-and-cheese for lunch....". Maybe it does and he just compartmentalizes it well...I don't know. But when I hear him say that, I get this sick feeling, because he rides in a stryker. What if somebody else comes up to a stryker and opens the door and his blood is all over the inside of it?
And then I start thinking, "they are training for that because it happens. It could happen. This could be the last year we ever spend together." And that phrase, "this could be the last..." is the one that really makes stupid little problems seem so huge. "This could be our last summer together, and he's spending the whole thing in the field", or "This could be our last anniversary, and he's going to be in the field for it". And it goes on and on...Name a situation, and it could be "the last".
Anyway......I was curious how my NIV Bible would phrase those verses, so I opened it up and read them, and then my eyes drifted over across the page to these words:
Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to
help.
--Psalm 22:11
I don't know exactly what my trouble will be, but I do know that it's near. It gets nearer every day. Remembering that God is not far from me becomes the challenge. He has proven himself to me before on many occasions, and I know I should trust Him more. Maybe someday I will be able to. Until then, I hope that He will forgive my weakness and be near to me, because He is the only one who can help.
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