military

by Donna Tallman Gently and quietly he clicks the door shut on his sedan so that even the breeze is unruffled. He deliberately walks toward the oldest row of graves in Section 60. His perfect posture looks military-trained, while the lines on his face mark him Vietnam era. Always focused forward, the eyes of the man in his sixties hone in on one of the markers at the far end. Finally, he reaches the right one and slowly kneels in the grass. The grieving father bows his head. Some have said that hospital waiting rooms are the great equalizers of life – that injury and sickness recognize no social class, no ethnic divide, and no age category. All are equally at risk. Cemeteries are even more equalizing than waiting rooms. None recovers here. The father does not tarry long at his son’s grave. He’s not really here to visit him. Instead, he has come to care for the living. While no one else dares interrupt a widow’s vigil out of respect for her grief, the father does. This tender, caring man can approach where others never should. He is a fellow sufferer, a tempest traveler…one who knows first hand the cost of war. The father begins his rounds of visitation to the daughters he has adopted in the graveyard. He knows each one by name and checks on their welfare. Over the months they have all visited Arlington to grieve alone together; this unlikely group has grown from being intimate strangers among the tombstones, to caretakers of one another’s sorrow. While he knows that he cannot bring his son home from Afghanistan, the father seeks to heal the history death attempts to write in each of their hearts. Rising above his own agony, he reaches out to care for those around him, and in the process, finds refuge for his own soul. Yes, Arlington is a graveyard, a place of the dead. It is also a showcase for valor, a field of honor for America’s most courageous soldiers. And for those knit together by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Arlington is a place of healing from war’s ultimate sacrifice. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). Prayer: When life’s raging tempest threatens to break my heart and my spirit, would you, oh Lord, step in with Your authority and restore calm to the churning waves around me? Deliver me and bind up any wounds incurred by my sojourn here on earth. *This devotion is an excerpt from Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The month of May is Military Appreciation Month! And I sure do appreciate our military. Being a former military wife myself, I can relate to the challenges and joys our military families go through. But even now that we lead a civilian lifestyle, I will never stop appreciating the sacrifices the military makes for the rest of us. Do you have time for a little story? A couple of years ago I was working on Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front, and one evening after the kids were in bed, I interviewed a Gold Star father who had lost his precious son in Iraq. It was an emotional conversation, and though my heart strings were pulled tight, I held it together while I was on the phone. (If you want to read the stories that resulted from that phone call, you can read them in the book on days December 3-6.) After we hung up, I cleaned up my notes and then went to check on my sleeping children, as I normally do before I call it a night. When I saw my little girl, though, the dam around my heart burst and I could not help but weep. Because there she was, sleeping with a small U.S. flag in her arms. I don't know why she had gotten out of bed to find it and decided to sleep with it that night. But it struck me that so many parents have lost their children to war so that my own children can live free. Thank you, military families! [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"952", "attributes":{"class":"media-image aligncenter", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"430", "height":"574", "alt":"100_3106"}}]] Book Give-Away and Sale [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"772", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft wp-image-900", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"140", "height":"218", "alt":"mwives nt cover_200"}}]]This coming Friday is Military Spouse Appreciation Day, specifically, so I am giving away two gift packages on the Faith Deployed blog! The first one contains both of my Faith Deployed books PLUS the new Military Wives' New Testament with Psalms & Proverbs, and the second gifts package includes Tour of Duty by Sara Horn, Heroes at Home by Ellie Kay, and Wounded Warrior, Wounded Home, by Marshele Carter Waddell and Dr. Kelly Orr. If you're a military wife, hop on over and enter the drawing! If you know a military wife, share the link with her so she can enter, too! Here's another cool thing going on in honor of Military Appreciation Month. Zondervan is running a special throughout the month of May. Buy one Military Wives’ New Testament with Psalms & Proverbs, get one FREE! Here’s how: Visit www.churchsource.com Add 2 copies to your cart, and enter promo code BD5W11 at checkout. How to Pray Even if we don't know any military personally, we can still pray for active duty members AND their spouses. Not sure what to pray for them, other than, "Keep them safe and encourage their hearts"? Well, I asked a military chaplain to give me a list of specific prayer requests for our service members, and I asked his wife to do the best internet casino same so we know how to pray for the spouses on the home front. In fact, I'm sharing these prayer requests in Book Fun Magazine this month, in an article I wrote that begins on page 77. To read it, visit the magazine, and then you can just flip pages on the way to page 77 (there are some great articles in there!) OR you can click on the search icon in the toolbar, type in "home front" and then click on the search result to go directly to the article. (There is also an excerpt from Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front there!) Happy Military Appreciation Month!  

If you are connected to the Faith Deployed Facebook page or my author page, you may already know that The 5 Love Languages Military Edition is now available for pre-order. But  I have to tell you, I just noticed that right now it’s on a major sale- it’s $6.98 instead of $12.99! Not sure how long this sale will last, but it’s going on at both Amazon.com and BN.com. The actual release date is Sept. 1, 2013 (believe me, I wish it was sooner, too!), but by pre-ordering now, you lock in the sale price and will receive the book as soon as it’s released. Some of you may be wondering what’s different about this book compared to the original 5 Love Languages. Special features of the Military Edition include: Stories of military couples from every branch of service who have found ways to use the 5 love languages in their unique lifestyles A Decoding Deployments section at the end of each love language chapter, offering tips on how to express love when you are apart. A new chapter, Love Language Scramblers, explains how to speak the love languages through some of the most challenging times of a military marriage. An updated Q&A section to include questions specific to military marriage. The 5 Love Languages has a successful track record of helping military couples heal broken relationships and strengthen healthy relationships. Now that this #1 New York Times bestseller has been adapted specifically for military couples, Dr. Chapman and I hope it’s even more effective.

A note from Jocelyn: Last summer, I visited Virginia's Peninsula to research my Civil War novel, Wedded to War. While there, I stayed with Linda Montgomery, the editor of ExcellentorPraiseworthy.org, the devotional Web site of Campus Crusade's Military Ministry. In honor of Memorial Day, I want to share with you an article by Linda about the origin and meaning of "Taps." It first appeared at ExcellentorPraiseworthy.org.  July 2012 marks the 150th anniversary of Taps, as it was written after the Seven Days Battle (which appears in Wedded to War). Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast. — Psalm 139:7-10 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: “In of July of 1862, in the aftermath of the bloody Seven Days battles (Peninsular campaign), hard on the loss of 600 men and wounded himself, Union General Daniel Adams Butterfield called the brigade bugler to his tent. . . .Oliver Wilcox Norton, the bugler, tells the story, ‘. . . showing me some notes on a staff written in pencil on the back of an envelope (some accounts say that Butterfield hummed it to Norton), (he) asked me to sound them on my bugle. I did this several times, playing the music as written. He changed it somewhat, lengthening some notes and shortening others, but retaining the melody as he first gave it to me. After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed me to sound that call for Taps thereafter in place of the regulation call. The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard far beyond the limits of our Brigade. The next day I was visited by several buglers from neighboring Brigades, asking for copies of the music which I gladly furnished. The call was gradually taken up through the Army of the Potomac.’” From “History of Taps.” Savage's Station, Virginia, June 30, 1862, Union field hospital during and after the Seven Days Battle. Photo courtesy: Library of Congress   Not long after Taps was composed, it was used for the first time at a military funeral. Union Captain John Tidball, commander of an artillery battery, had it played for the burial of a cannoneer killed in action (during the Peninsular Campaign) because the traditional three-rifle volleys fired over the grave might have alerted the enemy nearby. This event is commemorated in a stained glass window at The Chapel of the Centurion, also nearby at Ft. Monroe. Ten months after it was written, Taps was played at the funeral of Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson. By 1874 Taps was officially recognized by the U.S. Army and was required to be played at military funerals by 1891. Taps is played throughout our nation on Memorial Day as it is traditionally sounded at funerals, wreath-laying, and memorial services. In order to honor those who died in service to our country, giving the ultimate sacrifice—Taps is played in remembrance of all of those who have insured our precious freedom. While we are hearing the strains perhaps you can also remember the words which are associated with the bugle call. While these lyrics are not “official,” the first verse is commonly sung with these words: “Day is done, gone the sun, From the hills, from the lake, From the sky. All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.” God is nigh. The definition of “nigh” is “near in space, time, or relation.” The American College Dictionary, 1955. God is near: You are near, O LORD, and all Your commandments are truth. — Psalm 119:151 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. — Psalm 34:18 But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works. — Psalm 73:28 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. — Psalm 145:18 Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. — Philippians 4:5 The last verse of Taps, traditionally, is similar to the first verse: “Thanks and praise, For our days, ‘Neath the sun, ‘Neath the stars, ‘Neath the sky, As we go, This we know, God is nigh.” Is there any doubt in your mind and heart that God is near, during deployment? Even during the lowly conditions of war in 1862, God was there. Jari A. Villanueva is a bugler and bugle historian, considered the country’s foremost authority on Taps. He wrote: “.. . it is hard to believe that Butterfield could have composed anything that July in the aftermath of the Seven Days battles which saw the Union Army of the Potomac mangled by Lee’s Army of Northern Virgina. Over twenty six thousand casualties were suffered on both sides. . . . In the midst of the heat, humidity, mud, mosquitoes, dysentery, typhoid and general wretchedness of camp life in that early July, it is hard to imagine being able to write anything.” From “24 Notes that Tap Deep Emotions”. But write it (or revise it) he did, and Butterfield’s desire to honor his soldiers is forever the way that we seek to honor our brave soldiers. The Scripture from Psalm 139 is a reminder of what we declare in the singing of Taps. With a lump in our throats and perhaps tears in our eyes, we remember this Memorial Day, with grateful hearts, those courageous patriots who have gone before us in battle. . . . and we remember that our God is faithful . . . . and near. Questions to Share: 1. What thoughts come to your mind when you hear Taps? 2. On this Memorial Day, is there someone who served our country whom you could tell your spouse about as a way of honoring them? Note:  Additional information on Taps is available at www.tapsbugler.com