It’s odd the way a memory can feel at once like yesterday and a lifetime ago.
June. 2019.
We were halfway through Jeff’s deployment to Afghanistan when a wish was realized: Jeff would travel to the States to attend a conference in Tampa, Florida.
He and I knew the possibility early into his mission but caution outweighed optimism so we kept it quiet. Still, it was hard not to hope.
One Friday morning, while Lily was at art camp, my cell phone rang with a video call from Jeff. Abby Kate was in the car with me and, after we disconnected, observed “Why is daddy in a different place? He’s not in his room.”
Nothing gets by that girl.
Jeff was in Kuwait, awaiting a flight. (Ku-waiting, as Lily later joked.)
I re-directed Abby Kate until Jeff could share the good news with both girls together. He called again a short while later to see Lily’s art display and, once we had moved her masterpieces into my car, told them he was traveling to Florida. The girls and I were going to see him.
It may have been the most excitement the sidewalk we were standing on has ever seen.
Two days later, we loaded with my mom into her Toyota Avalon (she didn’t want us on the road alone) and headed south to Tampa.
The drive was excruciating and not just because we were so close, yet so far away.
I fought a migraine almost the entire way.
Jeff met me in the lobby with affection and Imitrex. It was not the moving moment I’d envisioned after months apart but in sickness and in health, right?
Also, thank you Publix for transferring my prescription.
In our room (and after I medicated) we selfie-d our excitement to text a few close friends. For the first time in months we were a family again.
Together.
And then…
Our five days ended too soon. We had to leave. The girls and I were returning to the comforts of home.
Jeff was not.
I believe it was the hardest moment of our 13-year marriage. And harder days were ahead.
Our time together in Tampa triggered something in my spirit. Until that week, I had walked confidently through Jeff’s deployment. Now, six more months felt like a life sentence.
I started to sleep a lot. I told myself I was just tired but rest did not renew me physically or otherwise.
I could not ease the emptiness.
One evening as I sat (again? still?) in bed, I mustered a prayer that felt equal parts puny and powerful:
“I can’t keep living like this,” I confessed.
Because “this” was not living.
And then…
I can’t say I heard Him. It was more like I felt Him. But I know without a doubt it was Him.
God spoke:
“Just do the next thing.”
So, I stood up. I walked to the laundry room. I put clothes into the washing machine.
“Do the next thing.”
I retreated to the kitchen. I loaded the dishwasher.
“Do the next thing.”
With every step and effort I found supernatural strength and energy.
“Do the next thing.”
Those four words became my lifeline.
“Do the next (right) thing” continued to show itself for the duration of Jeff’s deployment. It was the message Thanksgiving week in the movie “Frozen 2” and, I discovered much later, a popular book title and podcast.
I am reading the book now.
Author Emily P. Freeman writes:
“Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and Jairus and his wife were given clear instructions by Jesus about what to do next – and only next. Perhaps he knew something about our addiction to clarity. He knew if we could somehow wrangle a five-year plan out of him, we would take it and be on our merry way.” (Chapter 1, Do the Next Right Thing.)
Wouldn’t we though?
I felt, and probably looked, rather pitiable as I sat in my bed barely able to pray.
God could have said “Hang in there, Julie. Jeff will be back in October for two weeks of R&R. He’ll make it home for Christmas though it’s gonna be a close call. Oh, and he will also make it home alive so there’s no need to worry or pray or trust.”
I would have welcomed such specific assurances. They would have more easily sustained me through uncertain and difficult days. But receiving all the answers at once would have robbed me of the relationship God wanted for me – a deeper relationship with Him built on faith and trust.
I think about the Lord’s Prayer written in Matthew 6: 9-13. My daddy points out in his study (and I shared this in my prior post “The Merry-Go-Round”) that in verse 11 we are to ask God to give us “this day” what we need. Not this week or this month or this year.
This day.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
My Bible interprets the verse in this way: Ask God to meet even your most mundane needs to accomplish your spiritual duties.
I expected God to walk me through a lot of things during Jeff’s deployment. I didn’t expect laundry to be one of them. His summons to “do the next thing” – even if it was literally a chore – taught me that He is in the details. If He cares about my laundry, how much more will He care about my life?
Faith is a common theme throughout my writings. I learned it, or more accurately am learning it, from my daddy.
Faith is what I want to teach my girls.
Faith is the legacy I choose to live.
One built on a memory that feels at once yesterday and a lifetime ago.
“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body and clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: they don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? … Learn how the wildflowers of the field grow; they don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that’s how God clothes the grass on the field… won’t he do much more for you – you of little faith?”
(Matthew 6:25-30)
