Book Club Day 17: One Day at a Time

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In Your Book: Before we begin, please turn in your copy of Faith Deployed...Again to page 214 and read "One Day at a Time" by Rachel Latham. (If you don't have a book, don't go away! We'd love to have you join us for this discussion anyway!) Now Let's Talk: Today's discussion is led by Rachel Latham. When I wrote the devotion One Day at a Time for Faith Deployed…Again, we were in the midst of deployment #3. As I write this post, we have just been reunited two weeks ago and we are in the midst of reintegration. As any military spouse who has been through this knows, that heart-stopping joyful reunion you see on the evening news changes to day-to-day reality. It is an odd time of joyful reunion and hesitancy as both spouses search for new footing. A year changes a lot and everyone in the family changes and grows. The most common question I get asked now is, “He’s done now, right?” I have not yet found the answer to that question in the midst of reintegration. There is not really a defined moment where it “ends”. A decade of war filters into our everyday lives. But he is home now…and safe. I am thankful and we are slowly easing back into a family routine. I usually answer “I don’t know” to which I get an incredulous look. Do they really not see? My husband is a soldier. As long as he chooses to serve, there is a chance of deployment. His service is not limited to only deployment. But their question pricks at my heart. In the midst of reintegration, I can’t even imagine the idea of doing it all again, even though that is exactly what happened between deployment #2 and #3. Can you relate? We don’t know what the future holds, but we do have the ability to choose how we will respond today. I may not know the answer to “he’s done now, right?”, but I do know what to do today. Serve the Lord and keep my husband and my children as priorities. No matter where we are in the deployment cycle, our job hasn’t changed. If I let myself, I could get completely freaked out about what might happen, or if he could get deployed again, or if things will ever seem normal again. It really isn’t a far jump for me in my imagination. I battle against worry and fear of the future. But that isn’t how the Lord wants us to live.

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

Do you see? God doesn’t want us to spend our time living in fear. Questioning and fearing an unknown future is doubting that the Lord will be right there beside us. We can choose not to live that way. The Lord doesn’t give us fear, but power. Even in the midst of an uncertain future, we have choices about how we live our day today. I think I can change my answer to those questions from “I don’t know” to “I don’t know, but I am sure that I can face whatever comes with the Lord by my side.” Discuss: What Bible verses or thoughts help you to take life just one day at a time?