Jeremiah 29:11

Today there was a speaker at PWOC who gave her testimony on idols. Her Idol was the Army, and her go to verse which became a crutch was Jeremiah 29:11.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

She explained that for all of her husbands career this was the verse she quoted every time plans changed or it was time to move. As she spoke I realized that I am very similar in that respect. The main reason being my son's health issues. My husband and I know that without the benefits we receive from the Army that our son's quality of life will be much less than it is now. All of the success we have had is because we had access to better insurance and doctors. I am also able to be a say at home mom. Should he leave the Army we would need both of us to work, which would put both kids in daycare and afterschool care, and it means high co-pays.

Since the moment my husband announced  that he would like to join the Army I started praying, I began asking everyone for prayer. Next to my son being in the NICU, I'm not sure there was ever another time that I prayed so hard. And of course I read this verse over and over. I began to quote it at every set back. And then he prevailed, goal met and I knew for sure that it was all going according to God's plan. But we don't know what God's plan is for us until he begins to reveal to us what it is.

When I first began to doubt and wonder if we were really following God's will/plan was when hubby decided that he wanted to do Airborne. I was terrified of the place we would be going because all of the wives had very negative things to say. The people I talked to on the post were not overly nice. I began laying my doubt and fears onto my husband and before I know it, he has decided to drop out of Airborne and everything was changing again. I was praying hard, I was clinging to this verse, but I could never be sure again if we really were following God's will.

We ended up in El Paso and again things felt like they were going well, up until the husband announced that he would be deploying at the end of the year. There isn't really a good way to announce such a thing to your significant other, but them being pregnant and overly emotional makes the task much more difficult. So the delivery didn't matter, the reaction I had was over the top and beyond negative. But we made it through the year, baby girl being born and off to Tennessee we went.

I lived a little closer to God than I had been in El Paso, but I was dejected, depressed, stressed and lonely and I couldn't figure out how to cry out to God for help. I had an extremely negative influence that I had given a bit too much control in my life, I had my wonderful church family, and I had my Dad who bless his heart, was trying, who just didn't really know how to help.

To say I live the next year as an overly emotional train wreck would be an understatement. But all along I clung to this verse. And I made it back to El Paso with the kids and the hubby came home and all seemed to being going much better than before the deployment.

As the speaker noted thought there are two other very important verses that come after 29:11 and they are as follows.

Jeremiah 29:12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

And this is what struck me, maybe I wasn't LISTENING to God, maybe I wasn't PRAYING hard enough, or basically enough.

So my new goal is to actually listen when I pray. I can do this and whatever happens at the end of this year will be according to God's will, and will be because I prayed with all my heart, believed while praying, and listened and Knew that God had it all under control.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors,
and do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever
Amen.