This Crazy-Necessary-Dangerous-Heart~Breaking Thing We Do

Dear Military Wife,

Hello, Sister.  I am so glad to call you friend, you who understands this wandering life of service.  

Are you new to those rows of hanging ABU's and steel-toed boots standing at attention in your closet?  Have you just said goodbye to Oklahoma, holding your Airman's hand tight as you wave goodbye to mama for the first time towards forever?

Or are your hands dry from packing paper and household cleaners, you who scrub down the walls of your heart every few years and struggle to find the perfect grouping of framed  memories to keep those you love fully present wherever home is today?

Today we name it, this crazy-necessary-dangerous-heart~breaking thing we do.  We say it out-loud and destroy the power silence has to convince us we are alone.  

Ken and I are not home-owners.  We never have been.  We've been moving since 1989, and truthfully we've never known where we might want to settle when these Air Force days are over.  Always, during the unpacking and setting up of home, my thoughts turn to how I would do all of "this" - moving furniture, hanging pictures, setting up electronics - without Ken.  Then when the final picture is hung, I wonder how I would fill all of those holes without him?  And fear lurks just over my shoulder, familiar in his new-home welcome visit.  With Ken gone there are holes that will never be filled.

I have learned through the years of moving to recognize fear and give him his proper place.  He is only a motivator for making a new plan, then I show him the door and invite him to leave.  I have moved enough times now that I usually don't open the door to his knocking.  I can make a plan without him.

You know your thoughts wander here too.  Whether it's during PCS season, or while he's deployed.  When your teaching certificate is tucked in a drawer and you sell lotion at the store, or your teenager said goodbye to the girl he loves two moves ago.  Where do I begin to live if I have to live without him?

It's crazy ~  we aren't wives with homes and communities, time in one place spreading the roots deep and wide.  I know they have other things that cause fear to knock on their doors, but I wonder how often settled wives imagine the knock from men in blue and where, just where they will move when the 180 days of BHA is spent?

It's necessary ~ I want to plan what is best for our family with the man who has dreamed and worked it with me.  He, who has devoted his life to our protection, welfare, and security, is the one whose strength I want to lean on if I can no longer lean into his arms.

It's dangerous ~ fear wants a room of his own.  Planning details of where to settle are as important as making a will, but plans fueled by fear will turn into walking nightmares.  No matter how many times these conversations are had, the day will be weary and sad and your thoughts will slip away to "what if's".  Don't let fear lay a heavy lead blanket around your shoulders, Favored Military Wife.  Everything beyond the plan is just vain imaginings.  God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine Eph. 3:20  Might I suggest you kick fear out now?

It's heart-breaking ~ I stood by my husband last week as he buried a co-worker.  I have been his helper through many funerals and memorials, but never have I stood grave-side, heat radiating through his service dress as I braced my back against the wall of his chest, and watched the honor guard fold the flag above the casket of one of USA's men of honor.  Never before have I braced against the crack of a 21-gun salute, my ears screaming at the insult those shots perpetrated against the reverent silence that moment demanded.

But it was the general's bent knees to the ground, placing the three-sided symbol of One Nation Under God in her lap and whispering, oh such a long time of whispering gratitude and comfort to the Dear Military Wife that undid me. 

Dear Military Wife.  Hello, Sister.  There now.  It's out in the open.  You are not alone.  It is so good to make a plan.  God and your husband know you are a creature who desires security.  Have your talks and remember to laugh while you do, because your man is right there making them with you.  Lock them up in your fire box, in the file directly behind the wills.  And now push fear out the door, turn on the music, and dance with that man, combat boots and all.

Dear Favored One, if this is not your world I know it is for someone you love.  Remind her she's not alone.  She's really good at going deep pretty fast - we don't have time to wade into friendship.  It's usually a big jump off the high-dive.  You will be surprised at what seeing her will mean to your friendship.  And she'll be pretty good at listening to your named fears as well.  None of us are alone.  We need to remind each other of that.  And then help each other kick fear to the curb.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

John 14:27

Linking at these pages of Grace:
 
Time Warp Wife, Finding Heaven, A Pause On the Path

Dear Sponsor Lady

Will you help me?

Dear Sponsor Lady,

Hi!  I am friends with Willy and Cristhofer and they thought you might be able to help me.  I was hoping one of your friends might want to be my friend too?  I made sure that I looked as good as I could when they took my picture.  Do you see how tall I stood?  I even tried to clean up my shoes, which was hard because I wear them to carry firewood and water every day.  Do you think I look the right way for someone to want me?

My papa and mama are still married and that makes me happy.  One of my friends is worried because he thinks his mom might leave their house.  He has three sisters and his grandpa, grandma, and his uncle and aunt live with them.  It is a small house, just like mine, with concrete floors and brick walls, but that's a lot of people in there, and I guess mamas just have too much to do sometimes.  My friend told me he heard her say she had had enough.  He told me he asked you to pray for his mom and he said you really care about him, so I believe you prayed!

I am happy my parents are together, but they do fight a lot.  My mama stays home and I get to help her take care of my siblings when I'm not carrying firewood or water.  It scares me when my parents fight.  I don't know if someday my mama will have too much to do, and had enough, and want to leave me.  My papa works hard in a factory, but I hear them when they fight because it is so loud and scary.  It is always about money.  We don't ever have enough.  My papa works hard, but sometimes there just isn't any work to do.

My friend Cristhofer likes to help his mom with the fire while she cooks.  Me, too!  I work very hard, so if you have a friend who might want to sponsor me I promise I will work hard in school.  I don't think I am very smart.  My papa says that sometimes, but I know he loves me.  He says that when he comes home looking so sad that he is angry.  But if I could go to school I know that I would work hard.  Cristhofer says it is good to be together at the center. There are many boys who are together in our village that are not nice boys.  The pastor at the center said they are gangs, so violence has increased lately very much.  He said it is because so many papas and mamas struggle to stay together that the older boys just form a gang because they have been forsaken.  I don't know what all of that really means, but Cristhofer told me some classmates hurt his head.  He also told me you prayed for him.

He has shown me the letters you send.  You look like a very happy family.  I love the pictures you sent him, and sometimes I pretend that you are my sponsor.  I really can be as nice and good as Cristhofer.  He said one of the staff members read your last one to him and you told him you pray for him to become friends with the other boys you sponsor.  He said that you want him to walk with wise boys and take care of each other.  He and Willy, and their friends Mario, Jorge, and Moises, want me to be in their group.  He said it is not a gang, because those are mean boys, but kind of like we can be brothers for each other.  Brothers look out for each other.  So far we have played ball, hide and seek, and cars.  They tell me they love you very much.  Sponsor Lady, could you please help me find someone to love like this?

I am happy that I have friends.  Willy shared some stickers with me that you sent.  He told me you sent an extra Christmas gift and he received a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and his favorite part of the present were the toy cars, the grapes and the apples.  I love grapes.  I only had them one time, but they were wonderful!  We usually only have maize, beans, bananas, chicken, bread, and rice.  Grapes are very special.  I hope I have a sponsor before Christmas so that maybe this year I can have a special present.  I have been waiting forever!  Okay, not forever, but six months seems like forever when you are seven years old!

So, dear Sponsor Lady, can you help me?  I want to know that someone cares about me and that I can be special too.  Do you think maybe if you can't find a sponsor for me, that you could write to me sometime?  It would make me so happy to get a letter on mail day, like Willy and Cristhofer.  And would you mind saying a prayer for me?  I want to grow up big and strong and see my mama and papa happy.  I would like to learn more about Jesus too.  The pastor at the center said Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them" and that he loves me.  Maybe Jesus will help me find a sponsor friend.  That will make my heart very happy.

Thank you, Sponsor Lady.  And may Jesus bless you.

I say goodbye with lots of love.

Sincerely,

Jairon Daniel Leiva Mendez

(Dearest Favored One ~ as a final Compassion Blogger assignment I have written you a letter from the eyes of a child in poverty, hope-filled that someone will let him know how valuable he is.  It was a preposterous assignment.  Who am I to attempt to write through the lens of abject poverty?  The best glimpses I could give are written in red, the phrases cut from letters my sponsor children have sent me.   Jairon and our five Guatemala boys are not from the same center and don't know each other.  I was simply asked to write a letter and I found a child who needs to be sponsored.  Everything written about Jairon is fiction and pieced together from general knowledge of life for these families.  As of last Friday, we were at 2,006 new sponsorships this month.  We have one week left to give 1,102 more children the gift of being sponsored this month.  Won't you consider sponsoring Jairon?  My promise to you is you will receive so much more from his sweet little heart than your $38 monthly sacrifice can cover.)

Favored One, this Sponsor Lady was asked to help Jairon find a friend he can love.  Will you be that friend?  Click on the Will you help me? link under his picture above.  If some blessed person has already adopted him, you will certainly find another child just as happy to get to be part of your life.  Click away, Favored One.

Please leave me a comment.  I want to celebrate your joy with you!  And if you have been touched, please share this with someone else.

Linking today with kind friends ~

Free

photo credit

Dear Friend,

I am so glad you came and stayed awhile.  Laughter and tears are beautiful companions for those who are learning to be seen.

What I speak to you, this is from a place of knowing.

A healing heart who puts on reading glasses to see His word and takes off worldly glasses to see His children.  I told you  Emily said children are great recorders but terrible interpreters.  Don't all families of origin add links of pain to the chain?

Dear friend, He wants to release you completely from your past.

He wants you free from torment.  He wants you released to love completely.  Not from brokenness or pain, but from His wholeness.

He wants peace for your soul ~ days when you never once think on the past but live in the present.  His presence.

He wants you to put down the incapacitating fear you will wound your child.  You will, and yourself in the process.  You will fail as a mother.  But He will never fail as a Father.

He wants you to fight against the diagnosis the enemy whispers in your ear.  He wants you to stop listening to the enemy point out which body parts were shot off in the battle. Stop lying pinned to your bed with images of what you should be able to do but were robbed from.  It is a lie, clothed in sorrow and compassion, that there is an image of wholeness we deserve from one another.  Our whole image is seen only in Christ.

He wants you to know you are so much stronger than you have believed, not the desperate strength you have relied on to survive, but His strength untapped inside.  He wants you to believe we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  Romans 8:37 

Little girls should be protected.  Little girls should be delighted in.  Little girls should be told how beautiful they are.  Little girls should know they are enough.  And mothers were little girls first.  And link after link, the chain grows desperately long, and little voices cry out for rescue.

He wants you to know It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Galatians 5:1

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  Colossians 1:13

We have been rescued and redeemed.  He whispers we are protected, delighted in and beautiful.  We are enough.  And our redemption is forgiveness of sins.  Not only ours, but those that branded our hearts and taught us we have only ourselves to trust.  He wants us to know we are free.  I know, because as I keep living into this freedom all I really see are the little girls.  Some are still tiny.  Others wear crowns of gray.  And all I really want to do is wrap my arms around them, or cup their faces with my hands and look deep into their eyes and whisper, "All you should have been was a little girl.  Protected, delighted in, and loved."  Every mamma was a little girl, and rare are the beauties who had these words whispered into their hearts.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”  ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dear Favored One, see the little girls.  It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.  And because of His love you have been redeemed, the forgiveness of sin.

Love you, friend.  So glad you shared my home and my heart. 

With Skillful Hands

With upright heart he tended them,

and guided them with skillful hand. 

Psalm 78:72

My Dearest Friend,


I suppose reading as a six-year-old the love story between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Manly helped.
Feeling it from a place deeper than my bones,
this knowing that a real man works the land, wrestles the wolves,
and weathers the wind that bends mere males, but never a man.


A real man bends, not by burdens, but to bless the name of the One who called him to manhood. 


He chose his servant David,
and took him from the sheepfolds;
from tending the nursing ewes he brought him
to be the shepherd of this people Jacob,
of Israel, his inheritance.


I have been with you almost from the beginning.  From the days of small pens and little land, through the years of rocky soil, and then great expanses of prairie and miles of open sky.  Two and plus decades, and I have never heard you complain. If there is work to be done, you work.  And the beauty of your strong character, all-grown-up these years stacked on years together, is you work with joy.  Not always because of the work, but because of the calling to do it.  You work the land well, Dearest Friend.


I have watched you wrestle the wolves, some many times your size, because you were given the gift of loving others.  And loving others always meant sacrificing yourself, at least a little, that they might live ~ a lot.  Thank you, Dearest Friend, for being a husband I am always safe with, a man whose strength we all lean into, and a leader who is courageous enough to stand up for even the "least of these."  


Squadron Commander.  I know you dreamed of this job from the very first days of tending sheep.  And I know there will be many more jobs to follow.  Jobs that will challenge your strength, enlarge your vision, cultivate your gentleness, and grow your smile.  


But these last two years ~ well, He chose you and brought you to be a shepherd to these people.  You have tended them with an upright heart and guided them with a skillful hand.  Others may know better the details of the wolves and wind you stood against, but only I know how deep is the love that sustained it all.  And it is deeper than your bones.


Well done, Dearest Friend.  I am so proud of you and so grateful to be your wife.  The land is well worked, the fruit hangs in abundance, and once more we bend the knee and bless the name of the One who has called us.  I look back through the years at the ways He has equipped us for each new land.  I look forward to the next place we will settle with anticipation and great longing for worship and community.  And I look beside me always, for the man who loves God first, the father who models mercy and justice, the leader who serves others before self, and my Manly, who holds my heart in his hands.


Love,
Me


...counting grace always...


1514.  Change of Command is done and we have heard His "well done"
1515.  Legacy
1516.  Your strength sustains us
1517.  we are going home in the morning
1518.  we will worship at NCC this weekend
1519.  to have been homesick
1520.  to have recognized it is homesickness for God, not a place
1521.  I have a husband I respect
1522.  I am cherished
1523.  to have made a difference in others lives
1524.  for Key Spouses
1525.  for Bela
1527.  for friends and commanders and spouses and life
1528.  for dinners and fellowship and 5 extra pounds
1529.  for packers and shippers and airlines
1530.  for on-base lodging booked out and spending our last few nights in our village
1531.  for riches to share with a young NCO family ~ 220V items they won't have to buy
1532.  suitcases all packed
1533.  my husband, taking a nap
1534.  my boys, who sacrificed our time with them for weeks
1535.  for the 86MUNS squadron, and the ability to love greater than myself
1536.  for Daniella and hugs and laughter and tears
1537.  for love that is deeper than your bones.  Thank you, Jesus.

Letters to My Friends

I used to write letters.

It was one of my favorite things to do.

I loved the many patterns of stationary,

and writing clean, straight lines across a page.

I loved that words could raise life again from the dead fibers of the tree.

I don't write on trees very often these days.

I had this charming idea this morning.

I want to write letters to my friends again.

And because I am disciplining myself to write regularly, I thought Tuesdays would be wonderful letter-writing days.  Because this is the beginning of a dream, I'm not sure what will unfold.  I hope this becomes a place to share letters with each other.  For that I will need to learn a few more technical things, like how to set up a link to this blog.  But today I will focus on the part I love, and I have just the friend in mind.  I hope her letter might be exactly the words you needed to hear this day as well.

Dear Friend,

I wish you were here with me.

I know, that sounds so canned.  But I do.  I know you would love the peacefulness of the river, the vineyards sloping up the valley walls, and the quaint villages along the Mosel.  After we strolled the streets I would take you to my favorite little hotel in Bielstien and we would sit under the grapevines on the terrace, sipping wine and watching the river slip by soundlessly.

We would be quiet with one another.

Yea, I know ~ that would last for all of 15 minutes.  Then we would get all chatty until we closed the terrace down.  No worries, friend.  They serve a great cup of coffee at the Hotel Lipmann as well.


I am really proud of you.  I know this first year, trying to live into wholeness after separation has been difficult.  But you have done it with grace.  And a lot of coffee.  I know.


Thank you for letting me and Ken be your family and help share your burdens.  I wish we still lived there.  I would put a surprise flower on your desk at work.  Or pick the girls up from school and insist you go home and take a bubble bath.  Or lace up my running shoes and pound out a few miles together regularly.  But most of all, I would just be there to give you a hug.  Followed by a cup of coffee.  I know.


I was reading through a letter I wrote you a few years ago.  Do you remember it?

I just want you to know that you and ***** and the girls are in my conversations with God. 

We talk about your strength, wisdom, patience, and joy. 

We talk about your marriage ~ your hopes for it’s wholeness, fullness, and centeredness in Christ. 

Your marriage as the most tangible understanding of your love relationship with Christ. 

Your marriage as a legacy to your children and those you model to. It’s joy. 

We talk about your children ~ your witness, your responsibilities, their hearts, minds, souls and strength. Their joy. 

We talk about your friends ~ your influence, your service, your practice of selflessness with those that sometimes disappoint. Their joy. 

We talk about your community and your world ~ your response to God’s justice and mercy, your exercise of these gifts in the world. Your joy. 

I love talking to God about you. My friend. My sister. 

I pray you will encounter God in a new way.

I pray you will be restored, refreshed, convicted, and filled to overflowing by the Holy Spirit.

I pray you will experienced Agape love in the fellowship of believers in a way that gives amazing hope for what the unity of the Bride of Christ is intended to be on this earth - in this period we wait longingly for the return of Christ.

I pray you grasp how lovely, beautiful, and exquisite you are to the Lord. 

“I am my Beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” Song of Songs 7:10

I pray that you boldly live into your faith, knowing that Christ alone truly is enough.

You are my friend.

Always my sister.

I just wanted you to know that I'm still talking to God about you.  I'm thanking Him for His grace in your life, and the witness He is sharing through you of the marriage of mercy and justice.  Thank you for your courage, friend.

... counting a few graces because of you...
*you have a community of believers to support you
*you have family who loves you
*you have a job where you are supported
*you have a home
*you have a college-aged daughter, who has grown to be a friend
*you have a teen-aged daughter, who reminds you to still dream 
*you have a little girl, who shares simplicity and joy and laughter (and maybe a bit of "why not?" strength some special people who see the world as not to be tamed are born with)
*you have friends who will not leave you
*you have a heart that is alive
*you have not stopped loving, even through the re-ordering of your life
*you have a God who knows you, loves you, and has plans for you
*you are my friend
*coffee ~ evidently from your daily facebook posts, an unlimited supply
*and you know how to laugh.


Now to slip this in the mail and go make dinner.  I'm looking forward to Tuesday Letters, Favored One.  And any other day you'd like to send me one!