A Special Tribute to all of our Military Men and Women on Memorial Day:
Thank you for your service and sacrifice!
“As I Was With David, So I Will Be With Your Son”
Dick and I were watching baseball on TV one Sunday afternoon in our condominium. Our oldest son was two years old at the time, and I was pregnant with our next child. During a commercial break an advertisement for a war movie came on. There was a scene with soldiers in a live battle. Fear gripped my heart when the thought came to me, “Your son is going to fight in war.” My immediate response was, “Not my son!” I was so upset at the thought that my son could go to war that I left the room and went onto our little balcony off of our bedroom. I stood outside telling God that I did not want my son to have to fight in a war. In that moment, God began to take me on a journey through records from the Bible of David being in war. He recounted to me the number of different ways He protected David whether he was in a battle, hiding in a cave, or walking into the enemy’s camp. As long as God was with him, David was safe. It was like a movie trailer the way God showed me all the ways He protected David. At the end of the “trailer” God clearly spoke to me, “As I was with David, so I will be with your son.” A calm came over me because although I now knew our oldest son would be going to war one day, I knew in that moment that God would indeed be there for him however he needed Him to be.
I pondered these words in my heart and never told a soul about that moment on the balcony with God. Twenty-two years later our oldest son was indeed going off to war in Afghanistan just as God had told me so long ago. It was at that time that God’s promise came back to mind as we stood there saying our good-byes. “As I was with David, so I will be with your son.” rang out in my heart. So, I told both my son and husband about that moment, and about God’s promise during our parting words. We both hugged him, and Dick patted his back and said, “Walk with God.” Off he went.
Dick and I clung to God’s promise to be with our oldest son throughout the next year. Dick set his alarm to go off every hour so he would be reminded to pray for him throughout the day. There were many times in the middle of the night we would both wake up and know we needed to pray for him. We waited longingly to receive phone calls from him so we could hear his voice and know he was okay. Needless to say, it was a very long year.
“I’ll take God’s armor over my body armor anytime!” our son told us after being shot at for several hours while sitting on a hut in the middle of an open field.
There is much we don’t know about our son’s time in Afghanistan, but God held true to His word to him. He was there for him leading him on missions, telling him at times where to step to avoid bombs, protecting him when he passed out on a mountainside with a broken radio, and which way to go when leading his men along uncharted paths. One particular mission led our son and his men into a trap set by the enemy. He and his men stationed themselves upon a grape hut in the middle of a large field while the rest of his team remained on the ground ready to support them. All at once shooting broke out at his 12:00 on the field from a tree line. Soon after that, a sniper started shooting from their 3:00. A while later, villagers he was there to protect came out shooting using children as human shields. Bullets were flying all around them. Our son and his men were sitting ducks on top of the hut. For about five hours they were being bombarded with gunfire as he gave coordinates to air support. Our son said that the hut they were on was getting shredded by bullets as round after round of bullets were flying over their heads, but not one bullet ever hit him or his men. He later told his dad, “I’ll take God’s armor over my body armor anytime!”
Our God is very real and is a very present help in time of need. He has not changed. Many of us will never see war because of the men and women who serve in our military forces standing in the gap for us so we don’t have to. However,the spiritual battle we are in is not that different from the physical battle our son was engaged in. We need God’s whole armor listed in Ephesians chapter 6:12-18, as much as our son and his team needed it that day on the grape hut. We need to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might not our own, and we need to walk with God like our son did in the fields of battle, one step at a time. God will be with you just as He was with David in the Old Testament, and just as He was with our son in the present day we live in. For God does not change, He remains the same yesterday, today, and forever.