Quiet Waters

I read the 23rd Psalm last night.  I've read it a million times, of course.  It's a pretty common one.  I even have it memorized, like most kids who grew up in Awana do.  But last night, verse 2 really stuck out to me.  Specifically the second line, "He leads me beside quiet waters."

My family loves water.  We love it all-rivers, lakes, oceans...ponds...tributaries...puddles.  All of it.  We've spent a lot of quality family time next to water.  When we lived on the East Coast we were able to go to the beach pretty often, and we loved to do that together.  One of our favorites was Rehobeth Beach in Delaware.  It was about a 2 hour drive from our home in Silver Spring, Maryland, so we would leave early and spend the day there playing in the sand with Caleb and Nate, and then we would eat at Cracker Barrel before coming home.  Sweet memories!

Now that we live in Alaska, we aren't really close enough to any beaches to go very often.  I don't think Alaska's beaches are really suited to the kind of beach activities that East Coast-ers (I made a word!) are used to, anyway.  But we have so many beautiful rivers and ponds!  We have found so many lovely little spots where the water is so calm and quiet.  One of our family's favorite summer activities is to find a nice spot by some water and grill some dinner, roast marshmallows, wade around until our feet hurt from the cold, explore up and down the shore, and, of course, skip rocks!  Many times, I have sat beside a gorgeous river or lake and just closed my eyes and taken in the quiet peacefulness of it.  Stillness, calm and quiet. 

Last spring, Eric and I were tremendously blessed in being able to take a just-the-two-of-us trip to Maui for our (early) 10th Anniversary.  While we were there, we visited the famous Black Sand Beach.  Very cool place!  The ocean there is very dangerous, though.  They had signs up warning against swimming.  The surf is very rough, there are huge rocks everywhere, and there are sharks and man of war jellyfish in the water.  

The water at the Black Sand Beach in Maui is definitely not quiet.  It is always violently churning. Waves crash down on the jagged rocks constantly.  There are many dangers below, hidden by the wild thrashing of the surface.  It's very loud, very unsafe water.  If I had to classify this deployment as any type of water, that would be it.

There are the obvious fears and pain that buffet me constantly-separation from the most important person in my life, extended lack of communication with him, news of casualties and catastrophic injuries.  The constant wondering if the next moment will be the one where I hear the life-changing knock on my front door.  The discouragement of having to handle all of the parenting and running of the household alone.  Every diaper change, every bad dream, every meal, every load of laundry, every juice stain in the carpet, every trip to the store, every doctor's appointment...all of these things and everything else, I have to handle, with no partner to support me in it when I become overwhelmed.  What we army wives affectionately call "Murphy's Law of Deployment" (if it can break, explode, lose it's mind, disintegrate, run away with the spoon, or otherwise cause significant stress to you while your husband is deployed, it WILL) has slammed me recently with both of our cars breaking down within days of each other.  The hand injury I sustained trying way too many times to start our worthless lawn mower is going from bad to worse and is really becoming a source of frustration for me.  The list goes on.

  And then roiling below the surface is the paralyzing sense of dread that the worst could happen at any moment, and that what I now see as a temporary hardship will become permanent.  I'm not going to go in-depth about that fear and all the million different aspects of it, because it's too painful, but it is there, and there are many times where I feel like it's just waiting to devour me.

Yes, I can say that I do feel battered and tossed about by the violent sea that is this deployment.

But...

"He leads me beside quiet waters."

Such truth in those words!  The long, harsh, lonely nights afford me the perfect opportunity to steal away from the chaos of everyday life and find a quiet place alone with God.  If only I would choose to take it more often!  His Word is living and active and it speaks fresh wisdom and comfort to me every time I open it.  I find there the hope that absolutely nothing in this life is permanent.  Good things pass away, but so does pain, and one day pain will pass away forever (can I get an Amen??).  I find the hope that I will most definitely see Eric again, even if my worst fear comes true.  I find comfort in knowing that this trial we are going through is being used by God to bring about good. And that no matter how scary things get, we are each held solidly in the palm of His hand, from which we can never be removed.  I find that nothing can harm me or my family.  Things may happen that feel harmful, but God in His infinite wisdom allows them to happen out of love, because He knows that there is not harm in them, but good.  Good that I will one day understand.

In Him I find peace.  He takes my soul from this:

   

To this:

   

He leads me beside quiet waters.

He restores my soul

Oh, hello!

Well, I was just thinking recently that it's been quite a while since I posted anything here, and I suppose it's about time for an update!  So here we go!

We are just a few weeks away from our half-way point in this deployment.  On one hand, I feel like that happened really fast and he just left, and on the other hand, I feel like it's been forever since I was last with my husband. 

As of right now, Eric has almost no access to communication euipment and we only hear from him on a very limited basis. We've spoken 3 times in the past month.  We write to each other frequently, but it takes an incredibly long time for anything he sends to get here.  He gets the mail we send, but I haven't gotten anything from him since June, even though I know he has been sending letters.  He has been able to send the boys a few videos of him reading stories, courtesy of the USO.  I think they must use a different mail system for those because they get here within a week or 2 of the date on the disk.  The times that I have been able to speak to him, he sounds upbeat and excited about what he's doing, hard as it is at times.  He is an amazing guy-you will never hear him complain about anything.  Not sleeping in the dirt, not having to give up absolutely every modern-day convenience known to man, not working for days on end with little to no sleep.  You might hear him say he hates being away from his family, but that's about as negative as he ever gets.

We miss him terribly, of course, and this deployment has been pretty hard.  There is a lot of fear and pain.  Learning to live under this kind of emotional pressure has been one of the biggest challenges of my life.  I would not have it any other way, though.  They are doing such great things over there, and I am so proud of Eric and all his fellow soldiers.  What they are accomplishing is truly making this world a safer place.  I am so thankful that God has allowed my family to play a part in this.  Don't ever tell me that this war is pointless or a waste-that's just not true.  I will never argue that point with anyone stupid enough to think that way, though.

Yeah, I said stupid. 

!

In other news, we live in Alaska.  It's got to be the prettiest place on earth.  No contest.  Fall here is absolutely gorgeous.  The trees turn these brilliant shades of gold that contrast with the white trunks of the birch trees and it is just beautiful.  Not to mention the Northern Lights, which I have been able to see from my own backyard several times this season.  Always a breathtaking sight.  It reminds me that even though the night may be long and hard, there is a beautiful reward promised to us for walking through it.  The darker the night, the more brightly and beautifully the Aurora glows. 

"One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days

of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord"

Psalm 27:4

Well, I can now officially say that I am the wife of a deployed soldier. Feels strange. I miss him like crazy already. I woke up at 3 AM this morning, and immediately saw the empty side of the bed that he has occupied for so many years, and I just felt sick at the thought of how long I have to look at it that way. Saying goodbye to him was the hardest moment of my life. I have never, ever felt such pain. There were so many tears, all day long. When we were leaving the house to take him in, I felt like my heart would pound out of my chest. stopped in the den on the way to the garage and just looked at him and choked out "No, no, I don't want to! I can't!". We stood there and both cried and then he took my handand we forced ourselves to walk out the door of our home together for the last time for a year. I was able to text back and forth with him throughout some of the night. But as soon as the plane took off, we lost all cell phone communication. He won't be able to communicate with me through his cell phone again until his deployment is over. Knowing he is not going to have a cell phone as of tomorrow is so much more painful to me than I expected it to be. He has gone on many trips over the years, but he has always been at least somewhat available to me by cell phone. When he goes on those trips, I am always glued to my phone, waiting to see his name pop up. But now I know that it won't for a very long time. I feel like I've been completely cut off from him. I don't know when I will hear from him again. Presumably not until he gets to a base in Afghanistan that has phones or email-whether it be the one he will stay on, or not. I expect it to be a few days at least. We are doing ok. We are very, very sad, but it has to be that way, I guess. After he left, Eric sent me a text that read "the hourglass has flipped, and now it's counting down to something good". So very true! The build-up to this was very long and hard, but it's over now. It's on now, and we get to start the countdown to his return.

The Time is Here

Almost.

Deployment is almost here. I said those words the other day when I had a talk with Caleb about it, trying to prepare him. "The time is here. We've been getting ready for this for a long time, and now the time is here. Daddy is going to leave soon, and I want you to be ready".

We have been getting ready for a long, long time. I can hardly remember a time when impending deployment wasn't the first thing on my mind, nearly all the time. We've know this was coming for almost 3 years. It's hard for me to even comprehend how close it is now. That it is really about to start.

I'm very thankful to be in a community that understands deployment. I have so much support here, and that is such a blessing. I have my church family, our small group, my fellow army wives, and PWOC. It is such a comfort to be around people I don't have to "explain" my life to. They already know what we are going through, and while they acknowledge the hardship and pain that goes with it, they don't have the same fearful reaction to it that I get when I'm talking to people who haven't come to view the military lifestyle as...a sort of normal.

It's hard to describe the way I've been feeling these last few days. I have peace in my heart that we are doing God's will for our lives, and that this is the right path for us. But Eric is my best friend, and I have never had to be so far away from him for nearly as long as I will have to be. He has never been nearly as unavailable to me for support or help or just companionship as he will be for the next year. I am dreading it. The thought of it hurts my heart.

We are in the height of the anticipation phase. It's like a roller coaster car, slowly creaking to the top of the first huge drop on the track. We are in the moment where the very front of it starts to edge over the hill and you are waiting for it to plunge you downward at a break-neck, completely uncontrollable speed. I know it's coming, and I know it's going to rip the air right our of my lungs, I just don't know exactly which second it's going to hit.

I am begging God in my heart, almost constantly, to please just help me deal with the pain. To calm my fears about having to raise my family alone for a year. The thought of such a long separation from my husband is just so very painful. I have accepted that we are going to do it, and a great deal of peace comes along with that. But there is still pain, frustration, and fear. And I know that, even though God will sustain me through the pain, He won't take it away before the time is right, because it's part of the perfect path He's chosen for me to walk down in this life. I want to be in the path He chose for me, and if that means walking through some pain, I am willing to. I know it will be worth it when I get to the end.

No promises that I won't cry, though. And no promises that I won't occasionally have a brief urge to grab something glass and throw it into the wall so I can watch it shatter like my heart does inside my chest, over and over again, every day as we get closer and closer to the day we have to say goodbye. I don't want to say goodbye.

Psalm 126:6 says that anyone who goes out weeping, while bearing seed to sow, will come back singing songs of joy, carrying their sheaves. The Message actually says "armfuls of blessings". I believe that whole-heartedly about this journey we are about to take. We will start out with pain and sadness, but we will ask the Lord to give us seeds to sow, and when we finsish this journey, our arms will be filled with beautiful blessings we never could have recieved if we hadn't been willing to go through the hard times.

Thanks to everyone for the prayers for our family! When you pray for us, please just ask the Lord to make our paths clear for us, and to comfort us while we are missing each other. And no one should worry about our well-being. We are safe and secure and every step we will take has already been ordered by God. He has placed every resource we will need around us already, even the ones we can't anticipate needing yet, and He has made us ready for this.

NTC: We Did It!

Well, the huge training exercise that we have been anticipating for over a year has come....and gone!! It's over. As I write this, Eric is in the air on his way home from California, and I am sitting in my living room, waiting patiently (not really!) for the time when I am planning to get the boys up and drive to post to pick him up.

He wasn't going to be able to come until the end of the week, but I found out today that circumstances had worked out for him to be able to get on the flight today. Of course, I was incredibly excited and HAPPY! And also a little bit panicked because I really wasn't expecting him to come home yet, and I had a bunch of stuff I wanted done before he got home and I had been counting on having several more days to do it! No worries, though! Got it all done in plenty of time, and now I am obviously finished and sitting down to blog! :)

I know that the time seemed to be passing very slowly this past month, but now that it's over, I feel like it was nothing. It seems now to have gone by so quickly. And while I had my share of sad, lonely nights, for the most part, I have been encouraged through this process. I finally learned that there are two ways to spend my nights without my husband: 1. Feeling sad and lonely, feeling sorry for myself with the t.v. on in the background, possibly crying a little bit while I fall asleep. Or 2. Having some really focused one-on-one time with the Lord. And I have decided that I prefer the second! I feel like my relationship with God has grown so much this past month, and I am thankful for all the time I had to devote to it in the evenings.

The hardest part of NTC was definitely the 2 week period that Eric was "in the box". During this time period, we had absolutely no contact whatsoever. No phone calls, no text messages, no emails, no skype...nothing. We knew it was coming and I was very nervous about it, but tried to view it as an opportunity to practice for the long periods of no contact that we will likely go through during his upcoming deployment. There were definitely times when it seemed to be passing very slowly, and I just longed to hear my husband's voice. But when it was over, and I finally got to talk to him again...that was the best feeling! It felt so good to just tell him what had gone on the past two weeks, and to hear about what he had done. He has been very busy, so we only were able to talk very late at night, but since he came out of the box, I have thoroughly enjoyed just being able to send him a text and know that he would get it that day. It felt like the coolest luxury! And it was also a huge relief to me that we hadn't grown apart at all. I was afraid there would be some awkwardness or distance between us after being apart and not speaking for so long, but there was none at all. We picked up right where we left off. I know that NTC is only a small picture of what deployment will be like, but I was still encouraged by that.

All in all, I am encouraged. He was gone for a month, and a month is about 1/12 of deployment (we hope), and I am confident that we can do that 12 times! We have worked very hard to prepare, and now that we have had the chance to try out some of the skills we have been trying to learn these past few years, I can finally say that I'm confident that we are ready. There will be times where I feel overwhelmed or where it feels like we won't make it to the end. But we know that if we just keep moving forward, we will eventually reach the finish line.

A theme that has emerged in my personal devotions this month is "This is temporary. Wait quietly; press on.". I have it on sticky notes all over the house. I believe this is how I will get through the next year of my life. By remembering that this is temporary-not only the deployment, but also this life and this world. No matter what happens to us in this life, we have eternity to look forward to, and all of the struggles we face in this life will be over then. By waiting quietly on the Lord for comfort and strength, and by pressing on when I feel too lonely and stretched too thin, remembering that I don't have to do any of this alone.

That's all for now! Soon I will be off to get my husband, and once he's home, I'm sure I will be much too wrapped up in him to blog for a while! :)

This has been my NTC theme song. It may turn out to be my deployment theme song, as well. We'll see. I love this song, and praise the Lord, He is always with me, carrying me through it all!

The Ammo Bearer

Today was the Spring Kick-Off of Protestant Women of the Chapel! I have been looking forward to it ever since the last time PWOC met, before Christmas. They had a breakfast buffet set up and table for us all to sit at and eat. So we ate and talked, and then we sang some songs. This semester's Bible study leaders got up and gave descriptions of the several different studies that are being offered. And then one of the women got up to speak.

She is the wife of an infantry officer who is in Eric's chain of command, which I think is incredibly cool. There are actually a lot of women who work with Eric who also go to PWOC, and also to our church. We have been very blessed to be surrounded by so many Christians!

Anyway, she gave a talk about being prepared. Many of us in the room are facing deployment very soon, and that can definitely feel like a looming crisis. And even those who are not facing deployment at this time are still facing other challenges as military wives. And the type of preparation she was talking about was knowing how to fully rely on God to get you through, rather than trying to learn how to do that in the midst of the crisis. She shared an analogy that really struck me, which her infantry husband had given her.

The guy who shoots the really big gun on top of the stryker or tank is called the gunner. He carries a belt of ammunition that contains just enough ammunition for him to shoot for 15 seconds. He does not carry enough ammunition by himself to get him through a battle. Only just the very beginning, and then he runs out.

But there is a man who stands beside him, called the "ammo bearer". He has all the ammunition the gunner will need to get him through whatever battle he is fighting, and he feeds it to him as he needs it. If the gunner were to try to fight the battle without his ammo bearer, he would quickly be overwhelmed.

God is our ammo bearer. He is right there beside us, giving us the ammo that we need to get through whatever battles we need to fight. What an awesome picture! What a comfort! So often (more and more often, the closer deployment gets), I have moments of overwhelmed panic at my absolute inability to handle things on my own. The words, "I can't, I can't, I can't" go through my mind over and over and over. I feel two inches tall-completely inadequate for the task. Completely emotionally overwhelmed. But with God beside me, giving me exactly what I need to get through every difficult situation, I can have such amazing comfort, because I know that I don't have to be adequate. I don't have to be able to do it alone. God did not create me to be fully adequate on my own-He made me to need Him. I will never be alone. My Ammo Bearer will be beside me the whole time. "I can't, I can't, I can't...but that's ok."

She said, "God is contstantly bringing us to a place of, 'I can't do this', and that's where he wants us to be...It's so easy to get to the end of what we can do ourselves, but it is impossible to get to the end of what the Holy Spirit can do".

And then she held up a toy army man, and said that there was one at each of our place settings. She said that she was going to put that army man on her key chain, so that whenever she reached for her keys, she would be reminded of her Ammo Bearer, and that she is never, ever alone.

Me, too.

Sunday Afternoon Revelations...

1. Pull-on boots which I tuck my pants legs into are the winter-equivalent of flip-flops. Easy, comfortable, and they go with everything.

2. I can sometimes gauge what the temperature is according to how fast my exposed skin starts to sting when I'm outside. Today I guessed 0, and it was actually -2. Go me!

3. The first time in winter that you notice the sun coming up high enough over the horizon to look bright yellow is a huge mood-lifter! I noticed it today when we left church and it made me feel so optimistic. Even the fears about upcoming deployment seem a little bit smaller with the sun shining on them!

4. This is the most beautiful place, and I am so thankful that we get to live here! It's amazing! Always changing, sometimes challenging, always beautiful.

A Little's Boy's Understanding

We have been discussing deployment with Caleb for some time now, preparing him for it. I think he understands pretty well what it is, what Eric will be doing, and how long he will be gone. We used the time between birthdays as an example to put it into perspective for him.

But Nate has only just turned 3, and until very recently, I was pretty sure he was not able to understand the concept at all. In the past few weeks, he has started asking some questions, though. Mostly after hearing Caleb ask Eric (for the millionth time), if he really has to be gone for a whole year, or if it can just be a few weeks? A few weeks ago, Caleb was talking to Eric about Afghanistan, and Nate joined in. He asked if Daddy was going "dancing with Sam". We didn't get it at first. Huh/ Dancing with Sam? But then Nate said, "Daddy, are you going dancing with Sam to fight bad guys?"

Ohhhhhhh. Dancing-with-Sam = Afghanistan.

Go ahead and cry. I did.

Another example: Today I asked Nate if he knows what Afghanistan is now. He said yes, so I asked him what, and he just ignored the question, like he does sometimes. So I asked him if he knew what Daddy was going to be doing there. He said, "Getting us some pwesents!". Sigh. Ok, so how long is Daddy going to be gone? "Until we open them!".

And my first thought after that was, "We better make sure Eric is able to have some presents with him when he comes home", because the thought of poor little Nate just not understanding what is going to happen hurts my heart and I don't want to think about it. He will be old enough to understand that Daddy is never around, but not old enough to understand why, or that he will eventually come back. I won't be able to give him any perspective on how much longer it will be.

I'm worried for all three of the boys. I don't want them to be sad and hurting and confused. I want to be able to make this tough time as easy on them as possible. I guess I need to pray for God to give me wisdom to help them understand and to comfort them. If anyone is reading this, say a prayer for all the little military children. They go through such hard times while they are so little.

A Moose and His Toy

Moose is turning out to be a very interesting little guy! It's been pretty cool getting to know him. I was a little nervous when we brought him home because I had no idea what to expect from him and no idea what kind of life he had before. Would he be trained to do anything? Would he have psychological problems from being horribly mistreated? Would he be nervous around people because he was neglected? Would his time spent in the shelter have given him any issues (it is incredibly loud in there!). Would he even be house-broken?

So many questions! But we are gradually getting answers. He doesn't appear to have any serious problems, aside from the submissive urination, which isn't too much of a problem. He is very friendly and affectionate and seems pretty intelligent. I can tell he already loves our family, and he is protective of us and the house.

When we picked him up from the animal hospital, I took a toy that I bought at Walmart for a dollar to give him in the car. I bought such a cheap one because I wasn't sure if he would like it, but I wanted him to have something that didn't have Baxter's smell on it. Well, Moose and that little toy have been inseparable ever since! He takes it everywhere. Even outside to do his non-submissive urinating and other business. Today, I noticed him sitting by the back door for a long time after I had just let him out, and when I finally let him go back out again, he trotted right up to a mound of snow and pulled his toy out of it. He had left it out there and wanted it back! He got a little distracted with some various smells, and left it again when I called him to come in. At first I was like, "Great, now I'm going to have to freeze to death going to get that thing for him because I know he'll want it, and there's no way I can get him to realize that he forgot it", but then I decided to try something crazy, just for the heck of it.

"Moose!", I said. "You forgot your toy!". He stopped in his tracks and did a total cartoon-dog "huh??", with his head cocked to the side and ears perked up, one paw up off the ground. And then I watched in total amazement as he turned around and went back for it! I could not believe he just understood what I said! Cool, right?! I experimented with it a few more times during the day-asking him where his toy was-and he went to get it every time

In other funny-things-Moose-does-with-his-toy news, he likes to carry it around with him, as I mentioned before. Very often, I will be trying to give him a treat and you can just see him struggling with the choice he has to make-hold the toy, or put it down and have a tasty treat? Until today, he would eventually drop the toy, but today he figured out that if he opens his mouth just a little bit, he can keep the toy in there and slowly pull the treat out of my hand. And thus I have determined that Moose is an excellent problem-solver.

I think that's pretty cool, especially since Baxter has only ever been interested in playing with dirty socks. And occasionally a flip-flop.

Anyway, in case you can't tell, I'm kind of with smitten him. He's a pretty awesome Moose.

:)

There's a Moose in My House!!!

Welcome home, Moose!

As I mentioned before, we adopted a new family member! His name is Moose, he's a wirehaired dachshund, and he's been with us for almost a week. So far, he is a perfect fit!

He's definitely not what we started out looking for, but I guess God had other plans! Originally, I wanted a big, scary-looking and (most importantly) lazy dog to make us feel safe while Eric is gone. It was important to me not to have to start from scratch training a puppy (I do not have time!), so I was looking for an adult dog, at least 2 and preferably 3 or 4 years old. So I started watching Craigslist, the classifieds, and the Fairbanks shelter's website for dogs that might be a good match. And then I happened to scroll past a picture of Moose.

This looks like a big, scary guard dog, right? Right??

Ok, so not really. But no matter what other dogs I looked at, I just kept coming back to the picture of Moose. And eventually I decided to go check him out, because I just couldn't resist that sweet face. It was love at first sight. I met him at the shelter and I didn't even have to think about it that long. I signed the paperwork and Moose came home the next day, after being sent to the animal hospital to be neutered.

They have told us that he's about 2 years old. He is very friendly and happy, and appears to be house trained, except for the occasional submissive urination incident (do not scare Moose, please. At least not on the carpet). It was a little testy at first, introducing him to Baxter, but they are pretty good buddies now. They are pretty much always together. Moose loves the boys, and the boys love Moose. The shelter told me he would have to warm up to the small childen, but he seemed to take to them right away. They don't even make him pee. :)

He is pretty calm, and loves to play with squeaky toys. His favorite game is fetch, and he will sit up and beg you to throw his toy for as long as it takes. And he has the best dog eyebrows I've ever seen!

So, maybe not a guard dog, but that's ok! Welcome home, Moose!

And for anyone in Fairbanks who is looking for a dog, please go to the shelter! It is such a quick, easy process, not nearly as expensive as buying a purebred puppy, and they have so many sweet dogs!

Back to the Grind

Sigh. Block leave is over tomorrow. It's depressing.



We had such a nice time. We started with a trip to Chena Hot Springs for just me and Eric. Our good friends kept the boys for us, and we had an awesome time! Then we went to see the new Narnia movie with friends, went Christmas Eve ice skating and to the candllelight service at church. Christmas morning-watched the boys open all their presents, and then had Christmas dinner with good friends. Then Eric and I got to go see Tron in 3D at the IMAX, which was absolutely amazing! And we did a lot of resting and hanging out! Went down to the shelter and adopted our newest family member, Moose the wirehaired dachshund, who is fitting in beautifully! We did some more resting and hanging out, went New Year's Eve ice skating and then had dinner out with friends and then went home for a low-key New Year's Eve together. We spent New Year's Day with more wonderful friends, having a delicious dinner and playing cards, and now here we are on the last day of leave.



Sigh. Back to getting up really early, running around like crazy all day and not seeing a whole lot of Daddy. And we have a month or so of that before Eric has to leave for a longish training exercise that I have no idea what to expect from. And then of course, not long after that is over will come the deployment. Double sigh.



I know you're supposed to be optimistic and excited about what a new year can bring, but thinking about the year that we are facing makes me feel tired, sad, and lonely. Just being honest! I am trying to have faith that God is in control and that that this will work for our good somehow, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't a daily struggle. I just don't want to have my family pulled apart for so long. It hurts to think about it.



But God IS in control, and He WILL use these circumstances for good! I just need to remember that. If anyone is wondering how to pray for us, pray that we will be able to remember that. Pray that God will give us the strength to get through whatever is coming our way and that we will be able to be a testimony to His love and power.