For me, the story of “Taps” is a local story because I live close to where it was composed. I could easily drive to Berkeley Plantation in Virginia, where there is a monument marking the “birthplace” of Taps. Tour guides will tell you that the haunting 24-note bugle call is actually a revision of a French call to signal to the troops the end of the day and “lights out.” The story goes like this:
I just want to say it, “Deployments stink.” Whether they’re one month or fifteen months, they’re just awful. Ask my husband the Army fanatic – he loves wearing muted brown uniforms and shining boots and the smelling like fuel and weapons – even he will admit that living in a tent and looking at sand for any period of time is lousy. But he’d do it again tomorrow if you needed him to. I am not that dedicated. The “inner me” fights against the unknowns of war, the weariness of single-mothering, the feeling I’ve given away another year of my life. You can see where moping can take me. My inner side (yep, the flesh) is not real pretty—which is why God doesn’t want me dwelling there!
A few years ago our church decided to reach out by email to our deployed couples with a nightly prayer--to be offered, at the same time, in the morning on the other side of the world. We decided to use Oswald Chambers’ daily prayers from his own personal journal, many written when he was a deployed chaplain. They are short in length, but long in meaning.
This Mother’s Day I join the ranks of millions of mothers who have gone before me, saying good-by to their sons and daughters and sending them off to war. Today my son is deploying to Afghanistan.In the past I have seen my brother off to the jungles of southeast Asia—and my husband off to the airfields of the same. Later, good-byes became common during our military career (love those Hellos!) . . . . but I had always heard that feelings are different when it is your child leaving. I think that’s true. I need perspective.
“I have concluded that when it comes right down to it, there is really only one thing I as a pastor have to offer my congregation---and only one thing that the church has to offer the world. In my role as a pastor people come to me with all sorts of problems, but I confess: I am a physician with but one medicine to prescribe, and that is the gospel of Christ. It may need to be applied in various ways, various aspects of it may need to receive the right emphasis, and it may need to be administered in the right form. But only the gospel of Jesus Christ can heal the deepest wounds of the human heart and enable us to prosper according to God's design, bringing glory to our Lord.” Dr. Bill Kynes of Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church, Annandale, VA This is a powerful quote, posted on The Gospel Coalition blog. Thank you, Dr. Kynes, for speaking truth to all of us.
Once again my husband and I fall to our knees and plead to our living God for this hurting couple to have hope—because they have lost hope for their marriage. What to pray . . . what to pray . . . what to pray . . . we wonder, and turn to the only sure source of hope---Jesus Christ. In his excellent book Before the Last Resort, Dr. George Kenworthy states: “. . . where should we start when we find ourselves in a hurting marriage that has left us hopeless, weak, and defeated? We focus on God, that’s number one. And, of course, we do this through prayer.” (p. 27)
Several years ago my husband and I closely watched two weddings—one on TV and the other through photos on Facebook. One, a royal wedding, costing millions of dollars and the other probably less than $200. Both couples deeply in love and truly committed to each other; both weddings in churches; both military couples with obligations to duty; both brides beautiful and both grooms handsome; both families excited and happy for the couples.
Several military wives, myself included, had crammed into an apartment living room for a book club meeting. As we chatted between bites of crackers and cheese, our conversation veered away from the book of the month when the hostess unleashed a bitter monologue concerning her husband’s frequent absences at sea and punctuated it with a booming, “I did not sign up to be a single parent!” With one toddler and another baby due soon, this woman was clearly frazzled. Unfortunately, her resentment over having to be solo spilled out of her like a toxin and threatened to poison the evening.
Have you seen those billboards across America which are black with white lettering—with “messages” from God? Have you seen, “We Need to Talk . . . . God”? Or “Loved the Wedding, Invite Me To The Marriage . . . . God”? Or “Need Directions? . . . . God”? The sponsor of these billboards is apparently an anonymous client, but whomever it is has put truth on display which we can all clearly understand. Or do we understand?
In the last pages of "What Did You Expect??" Paul David Tripp summarizes his writing with this: “What has this book been about? It has been a detailed description of the daily work of love that must be done with commitment and joy when a flawed person is married to a flawed person and they are living in a fallen world." Did you catch that—“Daily work ..." So how do you do that under the challenge of deployment?