Preparing your Heart for a Rough Season Ahead

I scanned the detailed list of my husbands upcoming work engagements and I began to feel the stress and anxiety pile on.

We have a baby one month and then he leaves for TDY the next, and another the following month, and again the following month. Multiple TDY’s occupying 4 back-to-back months.  All while I manage caring for a newborn and a toddler.

Can you feel the kind of fear that overwhelmed me?

How? How am I going to manage taking care of two babies while he’s gone? Why would the military do this to us! Couldn’t they give us a little bit more time together?

Anger. Anger at the military for putting our family through more added stress. Anger that certain noble operations have to even exist in the first place!

My eyes start to water as I worry about what the rest of 2019 is going to look like. In this moment our future looks bleak. It looks like it has many lonely nights. Nights filled with crying babies and a crying momma. Nights of sleepless desperation, while trying to hold it all together. After all, that’s what a milspouse does---she keeps it all together.

I want to remain in this moment for a while. Wallow in the stressors of what our future will hold, but I can’t. By remaining in self-pity, I am denying a much bigger truth that exists.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” - Matthew 6: 34.

The truth that God tells us not to worry about tomorrow (or the distant future).

An internal dialogue breaks out between our heavenly father and me as I battle what I believe to be true.

Yes, Lord, I get it. I know not to worry about tomorrow (or 4 months down the road), but it looks so bleak. It looks hopeless. I don’t know how I am going to survive it alone. I can barely manage with my two-year-old daughter alone. I don’t want to go through this. Haven’t we gone through enough?

Gently, He reminded me that He wasn’t asking me to do it alone. At no point has God ever sent someone through a storm, alone. This would be an opportunity for me to open the door and allow God to dwell with me; to be in my home on those helpless nights and cry to Him in desperation at my weaknesses of having a newborn. To be comforted in knowing that it wasn’t my strength that would get me through but His.

The earthly truth is, my husband will be gone... a lot. The earthly truth is, I will be tired exhausted, and emotional; but the heavenly truth is that He will provide everything I need.  The heavenly truth is that I will not be alone. The heavenly truth is that through this upcoming season there is hope.

Hope because we have been saved through faith by the grace of the very One who strengthens us.  And this hope is what I will be meditating on every second the enemy tries to scare me with the reality of life. I will choose to look at my desperation as an opportunity to draw near to Him. I GET to lean on the Lord in a very real way.

2019 has not changed for us. My husband may very well still be traveling back and forth a lot. I may very well be parenting without him. But our future is no longer hopeless. Our future is filled with ample opportunity for God to shower His love for us. Our future is an opportunity for Him to continue to prepare us for His kingdom.

I refuse to remain in the pits but will prepare my heart with His truth. His words. His embrace.

Will you join me?