Bring the Rain (With an Update...)

** Please see the new update provided at the bottom of this post **

Mercy Me has a phenomenal song called "Bring the Rain." Many of you have heard it, but for those who haven't, it is a song that plays automatically on my blog.

"I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You with all that I've gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You

Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead I draw closer through these times
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am Yours regardless of
The dark clouds that may loom above
Because You are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me
By suffering Your destiny
So tell me what's a little rain
So I pray

Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty" ~ Mercy Me

We pray and pray for our protection, for our happiness, for wealth, power, health... every day we lift up prayers for our own selfish reaons. I am the worst of the offenders. But do we ever stop and pray for pain, for suffering, for the dark valley that we must walk through in order to fully know God's love? I certainly never have.

Here I am in the beginning of a very, very trying time in our lives and I ask God to bring me to a place of holy surrender. A place where I cannot be touched by circumstance because I am surrounded by the total love of our Father. That is the most vulnerable prayer that I have ever prayed.

And here I am seeing the result of that prayer: my husband is leaving us for so long. He's leaving for a cause MUCH greater than this family. And maybe God can use us in this time of "rain" to bring JOY and eternal life to someone in Afghanistan, on the plane over to the Middle East, in the airport, anywhere. I want my husband to be used in this time of downpour for our family to bring Jesus's love to someone else.

There. I have been avoiding putting "pen to paper" with these thoughts because writing makes something real. And it makes the author accountable to those words.

I remember my precious friend Boothe writing about losing her baby girl, Copeland, and how she never, ever thought that losing a child would be what it took to bring her to a place of total surrender. I remember thinking "God, please no..." because her words struck a chord deep in my soul and made me realize that I, too, needed to be praying for the opportunity to totally surrender my everything. One NEVER wants to pray that they are stripped of earthly comforts or security in order to be surrendered wholly to the Lord. And, again, here I am.

I told my sister in law recently that it felt like I was staring into the biggest, blackest hole imagineable and as I voiced those words, they choked in my throat and I felt like I couldn't breathe. My thought was "HOW AM I GOING TO GET THROUGH THIS, GOD? HOW?" Yet, I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question.... HE will get me through this. "It's not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit" ~ Zecheriah 4:6.

I know that I will have many more moments like that but I just ask that if Jesus brings the rain that is inevitable in this time in our lives, that He bring the calm that follows that storm immediately so that we (me and Noah and Dan) are covered in the ultimate sanctuary of Jesus's love.

I am by no means encouraging you to ask for Jesus's promise of protection to be removed from you. But what it is taking for ME is to be brought to a dark place in my life where I only have Him. When you can honestly say that Jesus is all you have, then you have removed any and all barriers that stand between your heart and your Savior. It is from those places that blessings will abound.

I encourage you to ask Jesus to "bring the rain" into your life. I challenge you to ask Him to strip you so bare that all you have is Him. That is the LAST thing that I or any of us wants to verbalize, but I know that when all is lost to me in this life, the one true thing that is left is Jesus and His overwhelming love for me and my family. He will never foresake His children but He's never promised us an easy life. Trouble faces us at every turn in our day, but to be covered in His love and His Word is awesome.

*** UPDATE: About 4 hours after writing this, my sweet husband came home to tell me that things have changed. He leaves in a few weeks for the mid-west for training for 4 months and will now leave directly from his training once it is over in February for Afghanistan.

We had been planning that he would come home for a couple of weeks to regroup, be with us and spend some time together as a family as he prepped for the War. However, that isn't going to happen and he will leave directly from being gone 4 months for Afghanistan. What was once seemingly doable to me is becoming more and more difficult the closer we get to his departure date. 16+ months....

God.... hear me. I am struggling here. I ask that you take this from us if it can be your Will. I am strong but I am not made of steel. I need my husband and giving him up for 16+ months is asking a lot of us. Please hear me, please. ***