Learning to Live by Faith

We went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance. (Ps. 66:12 ESV)

My mom must have kept every letter I ever wrote to her. Last year, when she was moving into a smaller home, she gave them back.

In the days when long-distance phone calls were expensive, I ended up living over a thousand miles from Mom. So we wrote letters. When my husband joined the army, I stayed home with small children while he spent nearly twelve of the next eighteen months in the field. I wrote more. Our kids were five, two, and one when the army sent us to Germany. Knowing that our parents were going to miss the next three years of my children’s lives, I wrote even more.

We were making plans to come back to the States in the fall of 1990 when the Gulf War started. My husband’s unit had about three weeks to prepare to be gone for the duration. Families had to stay put. I wrote to my husband every day for six months. But Mom also needed to know we were going to be all right. This meant yet more writing.

This past fall, I put all those letters in order as well as I could, and I read my own story.

One letter from November 1990 is full of our plans for coming back to the States. The next week I was explaining to Mom why we didn’t know when that would be, and how the entire community was scrambling to ship all our soldiers to the Persian Gulf. Of course, I hadn’t forgotten that, but I had forgotten the intensity of the shock and bewilderment.

The army took most of the able-bodied soldiers from the Stuttgart area and left the wives (and some husbands) and children in a foreign country. They told us to keep a low profile because we could be targets for terrorists. They stopped our children’s school buses to sweep for explosives before they entered the post where the school was. My son’s teacher told me the entire class would break down if someone came to her room with a note because the kids thought someone’s dad must be dead. Friends gave birth to their babies while husbands were three thousand miles away. Newlyweds struggled with the separation. Women divorced their absent husbands and went home to mother. And yet,

I have trusted in your steadfast love;

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

Because he has dealt bountifully with me (Ps. 13:5 ESV).

I was often lonely, but I knew I wasn’t alone. There were times when I was afraid, but I was never hopeless. I knew women who sat for weeks glued to AFN news. Many of them were afraid to send their children to school. Others ranted at those left behind to support us, demanding constant updates on the progress of the war, indignant almost from the first day because no one could tell them how long the war would last. Not only was I thankful for the faith I had been learning to live by since childhood, but I also learned how rare such faith is.

Having been raised in the church, my circle of acquaintance for my first twenty-five years was comprised mostly of Christians. I had a vague impression that more people than not were at least nominally Christians and shared the same basic beliefs. Those three years in Germany, and the six months when my husband was in the Gulf more specifically, were part of God’s continuing education curriculum for me. Perhaps the course descriptions read something like this:

What Is the World?

Course Description: You will experience complete immersion in a community made up almost exclusively of soldiers and their families. As Christianese will be a foreign language to them, you will learn to exhibit your faith by your behavior.

Why Do You Believe What You Believe?

Course Description: Multiple visits from a persistent Jehovah’s Witness will cause you to delve more deeply into God’s Word than ever before. You will need answers to questions you were previously unaware people were asking. Resources will be limited.

Hysteria 101

Course Description: You will gain firsthand knowledge of the spectrum of behavior among people who have no faith in God. You will pray and remain calm, offer your hand to the fearful and hurting, and leave matters in God’s hands when your help is rejected.

Increasing Faith/Waiting with Patience

Course Description: You will squarely face the fact that your husband may not come home, and learn to say, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him (Job 13:15 KJV). This course will be ongoing. For the remainder of your life, you will be given new assignments at irregular intervals. Your grade will not appear on your transcript. You will have finished the course when you hear your Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master.”

This was just the first semester of my freshman year. Your curriculum is tailor-made for you.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;

teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth and teach me,

for you are the God of my salvation;

for you I wait all the day long (Ps. 25:4-5).

Learning to live by faith is a process, a lifelong education. Take time to reflect on the courses God has assigned you so far. Remember that he doesn’t mean for you to work through them alone. Ask him for help, and seek support from Christians who have already completed similar assignments.

Through the gift of a faithful mother and grandmother, Diane Pendergraft grew up knowing Jesus as a friend. Married for nearly two-thirds of her life, there has been time for several seasons, from homeschooling to owning a coffee shop. She has three grown children and eight grandchildren. An element of this season is writing about literature and life at Plumfield and Paideia.