Over my desk at Bagram is a card that I was given by one of the local chaplains. It says, " Be With Me LORD, When I Am In Trouble, Be With Me LORD. I pray Pslam 91 the Soldiers Psalm."
Psalm 91 is a powerful message to all those in perilous places.
1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the LORD,He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.
3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,and from the noisome pestilence.
4 He shall cover thee with his feathers,and under his wings shalt thou trust:
his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6 nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
7 A thousand shall fall at thy side,and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge,even the Most High, thy habitation;
10 there shall no evil befall thee,neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
12 They shall bear thee up in their hands,lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him, and honor him.
16 With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.
The FAITH it takes to trust your life and all you are to a power higher than yourself is not something everyone shares. I have felt the power of HIS presence and all that he has done to keep me safe while I travel in Afghanistan and other places across the Middle East.
Enclosed are the words of the wife of a Navy Seal. She puts her faith in a powerful message of how she is able to bear up under what we who have been deployed call " The Toughest Job in the Navy". Her message is one of faith and love for her husband and prayers for all who go in harm's way.
My Faith: The uncertainty of a Navy SEAL wife
By Leeana Tankersley, Special to CNN
On Saturday, my husband and I received news of a downed helicopter in Afghanistan with 22 SEALs aboard. I have been a SEAL wife for eight years—our entire relationship taking place during wartime—but we have never experienced this magnitude of loss.
We have been living in the Middle East for three weeks now, recently relocated for our next tour. Here, the fight feels so much closer, the losses more tangible.
I immediately thought of those wives and mothers—a wife and a mother myself—who would be waking up to the tragic news that their loved one was gone. I thought of how many times my husband has stepped onto a helicopter.
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And I thought back to another tragedy in the SEAL community, the death of Marc Lee in 2006, the first SEAL killed in the Iraq war.
When the news of Marc’s death arrived, my husband—not home two weeks from deployment himself—got on a plane and headed to New York to go meet Marc’s widow, Maya.
The Navy assigned Steve to be her liaison, helping her from the hours after she learned of her husband’s death through the first few weeks of grief, as she navigated innumerable decisions and logistics.
Steve called me a couple times while he was in New York to say things like, “You know I love you, right? You know I really love you.”
And I would say, “I know, honey. I know you do.”
After his trip to New York, he escorted Maya and her mother back to San Diego, where Marc was buried.
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He sat beside Maya as her official escort on the day she laid her husband to rest. It was the saddest day I can remember.
Hot sun burned my chest red as we sat in the August heat perched atop Point Loma, high above the San Diego harbor, looking out onto the ocean. We sat in rows of wooden folding chairs set up between the graves.
The sight of it all is suffocating, every headstone a father, son, or brother, a mother, sister, or daughter. Each with his or her own story of life and death.
Seated in front of a large picture of Marc and huge sprays of flowers, we waited for the black Suburban to arrive. Fellow SEALs, with quivering chins, brought the casket to the front as bagpipers breathed “Amazing Grace.”
The Suburban arrived, and my handsome husband in his Service Dress Blues emerged, extending his hand for Maya, who stepped out in a black halter dress with a flowing skirt. Dark red rigatoni ringlets framed her large sunglasses.
A widow at 25.
Maya grasped my husband’s arm as they made their way to the front row. An officer knelt down in front of Maya and presented her with the flag from Marc’s casket. “On behalf of a grateful nation,” he began, reciting the words no woman would ever want to hear.
Later, he told me that the SEALs present at the grave took turns pushing a Trident (the SEAL insignia) pin into the side of Marc’s casket. Before it was lowered into the ground, my husband knelt down next to Maya as she said her final words to Marc.
Marc’s death and the death of the 22 SEALs in Saturday’s tragedy speak to the utter lack of assurances life offers us.
No matter how much I believe in and trust God, no matter how spiritual I am, no matter how much I pray on my husband’s behalf, I have no guarantees that God will spare him.
Does my believing make his job any less dangerous? Does it bring back those we’ve lost? Or prevent another devastating loss like Saturday’s from happening?
No. I have to make peace with the fact that even my most fervent prayers may not spare a soul.
So does my believing change anything?
Yes, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us. This is the truth I hold on to, the bit of faith I can cling to. In our greatest pain, he sees us. May that sliver of hope somehow matter to all those who grieving today.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Leeana Tankersley. Editor's Note: Leeana Tankersley is the author of Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places (Zondervan 2009), a spiritual memoir of the year she lived in the Middle East with her Navy SEAL husband.
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