Every military spouse will tell you there is a point during their spouse's deployment that you realize that they are gone, have been gone, or will be gone for a long time. When this realization occurs differs for each spouse, but none the less it hits you like a ton of bricks. As a self-professed control freak, the fact that my spouse is outside the realm of my control is frustrating. I don't know everything he is doing, and lets be honest, he can't tell me everything either. Today the Lord revealed the only way I am going to get past this.
The past two weeks have been hard. I go out and have fun with friends and enjoy visits from family. I look forward to future trips to visit family and some of the European quilt shows I will be going to. As nice as those distractions are, they don't make my husband's absence change. Last night I was feeling pretty low. I hadn't gotten to talk to my husband in a few days, and my control freakness was starting to control me. It's hard to describe, but when your other half is away you truly don't feel whole. I received a phone call from my husband which greatly lifted my spirits, but something was still amiss. This morning my answer came.
Our Chaplain chose James 4:1-5 as his focus this morning. The title of that section is "Submit Yourselves to God." To say that control freaks have trouble submitting is an understatement. The verses read;
" What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?"
My thoughts ran "What are my desires? Have I been asking of the Lord with wrong motives? Wait...Have I been asking the Lord at all?" I used to consider myself a person that did o.k. trying to pray without ceasing. I realized that recently I have been sending quick short prayers to God, mainly focused on asking for something, but rarely desiring His will. 1 John 5:14 says, " This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." In any good relationship constant communication is a necessity to keep the relationship strong. In recent weeks my communication with God had been lackluster at best.
As the communication decreased, I felt more and more out of control. You see, the truth of the matter is that I was never really in control in the first place, but I used to daily relinquish my control to the Lord. Without this daily relinquishment, I was leaving that control in my own hands, hands literally not strong enough to carry the weight of my own life. Even to a control freak like me, the act of letting someone else take control is seriously freeing.
To receive this freedom I only must, "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up." James 4:10
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