My husband returned four months ago from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan. This was our first deployment, and we were stationed in the United Kingdom when he was given the orders. We quickly had to decide whether I would stay in the UK or return to the States to be closer to family while he was gone. My husband thought I would be happier being close to family, but I felt the Lord telling me to trust Him and stay in the UK, even if it meant I was going to be alone. This was a hard decision because I felt I was staring my biggest fear right in the face—I was going to be left alone in a foreign country while my husband went to war. Scary!
40 Days of The Deployment Dare
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. —1 Corinthians 13:7,8
On October 30th of last year we posted an “Excellent or Praiseworthy” devotional entitled “Can You Take a Dare?” This is how that message began:
I have been reading The Love Dare, the book featured in the recent movie “Fireproof.” This book is unique in that it examines love—married love—in all of its dimensions. And in forty lessons, forty days, the reader has the opportunity to be challenged in ways that perhaps he or she has never been challenged before—hence, “the dare.” Each day’s reading begins with a scripture, followed by writing about an aspect of love (honorable, patient, kind, impossible, accountable, enduring, etc.), and then concluding with an exercise—a dare—to demonstrate that particular aspect of love unconditionally to your spouse. On the back cover of the book you will find this statement, “The Love Dare is a 40-day challenge for husbands and wives to understand and practice unconditional love. Whether your marriage is hanging by a thread or healthy and strong, The Love Dare is a journey you need to take. It’s time to learn the keys to finding true intimacy and developing a dynamic marriage. Take the dare!”
I have been going through the book day-by-day, reading the material and considering how The Love Dare can be accomplished while separated by deployment. Actually, it hasn’t been that difficult to think creatively about ways to accomplish each dare even though you are experiencing the many challenges of deployment. In some ways—The Love Dare is easier to do while separated! Don’t let Satan deceive you into thinking that it is not possible to grow together when duty calls you apart!
If you have answered the question, “Can you take a dare?” with a “YES!”, then we invite you to join us each day for “40 Days of the Deployment Dare.” We have taken each of the forty “dares” in the book, The Love Dare, and have suggested, for each, how you could accomplishment that task even while deployed and separated from your spouse by military duty. Just click on the “Excellent or Praiseworthy” sidebar under “Pages” where it says “40 Days of the Deployment Dare.”
We also want to invite you to join in FamilyLife’s 40-Day Love Dare Challenge called “Love Like You Mean It.” You can subscribe to this, or listen to “FamilyLife Today” on the radio, and receive daily instructions and encouragement in order to join others around the world in completing this challenge. Both Military Ministry and FamilyLife want to help you grow your marriage into all that God wants it to be—and The Love Dare book, and the movie “Fireproof” have been two recent tools which have proven to be effective in bringing a couple closer to each other.
We look forward to what the Lord is going to do with these new opportunities to use the principles of The Love Dare and practice unconditional love for your spouse. Whether deployed or at home, whether you have seen the movie “Fireproof” or not, whether you have a copy of the book or not, there will be something in this exercise which will challenge you to “love like you mean it.” Please, take the dare. It will be worth it!
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