Walk with Me

           “Walk with me?” my husband asks, his eyes soft with invitation. I smile and try not to glance down at the chaos of school books, papers and unfinished to-do lists scattered about the table in front of me. “Sure. Let me just finish this math page. Twenty minutes?”

Just about every day since he donned his uniform for the last full day of military duty, he has asked me to take a walk with him. The last time that we walked regularly was in Germany, during our first full-length duty station. Twenty years ago.

                Our snug, one bedroom apartment was nestled in a sleepy hamlet aptly named Kirchheim, which means “church home.” Our apartment, like many others, looked down on a stretch of green farmland that alternately grew rapeseed flowers and sunflowers in the summer season.

                A dirt path led through these fields into one of the many forest areas in Bavaria. Several times a week, I’d pack up our baby into a jogger stroller and walk my way up the path and into the woods.

                I had mixed feelings about going into the forest. My overactive mid-twenties imagination conjured up all the potential animals and people I could encounter on my run. Interestingly, I don’t think I saw a single one of either, and if I did, it was someone like me who just wanted some quiet space to think and to get some fresh air.

                The memory of the stillness and beauty of this forest has stayed with me, one of those frozen in time moments that you capture about a place where you’ve been. I wish that I had felt more at ease to just soak in and enjoy the sound of the trees, the sunlight sifting through their branches, and the space to breathe.

                It’s the ability to be fully present, to not let my emotions or fears keep me from experiencing exactly where I am, that God has been teaching me over the years. And I still am learning.

                So when my husband of over twenty years extends an invitation, and I’m knee-deep in homeschooling, I need to still take a deep breath, quiet the busyness of the urgent and remember what is important.

                We’ve endured years of living at beyond full capacity, deployments, international and local moves, where our time together was either limited to FaceTime or to moments snatched late at night. I know what it’s like to have to fight for time. I don’t know who I was fighting at the time—God? Steve? His employer? Myself?

                I’ve trudged through seasons of discontentment, when Steve asked me to be grateful for the snatches of time that we had. But in my desperate need for more (time is my love language), I simply begged and fought for more. Contentment with what I can’t change came after a dark season of time, and my heart had to choose to be content. I finally understood that my discontentment came at a cost to my relationship.

                Funny thing life can be, that as I made this choice of the will years into our marriage, my love would finally decide to retire from his fast track career and be home for months. We are in our seventh month of stay at home together (not to be confused with COVID-19 stay at home!) and time is what we have.

                In each season, God asks me to trust Him. Now that I have time, what will I do with it? Will I let each day go by, without thought? Or will I enjoy the time I have, knowing that this season will not last forever.

                I will enjoy each day of walking alongside my husband, talking and praying about our day and our concerns for our kids, the future, our hopes and desires. And when he asks me to walk with him, I want my answer to always be, “Yes!”



Soli deo gloria