Thought I’d share with you what’s been keeping me away for the most part all summer long – my new Bible study, Tour of Duty: Preparing Our Hearts for Deployment! -

It’s now available on LifeWay’s website for pre-orders and comes out this fall. I am so excited to share this with other military wives – this study walks through the hard emotions we so often experience going through deployment and how we can overcome them by staying focused on the One who brings us through this journey. It can be done both as an individual and with a group. I pray it’s a blessing and an encouragement to many who are going through these seasons away from their husbands.

My first deployment was wrecked – and I do mean wrecked with emotion. The emotions of Cliff leaving, the emotions of being by myself, juggling home and child, the emotions of the fears and the worries and just the weariness that can so often hit you as you go through it. And it occurred to me much later, even after I wrote GOD Strong, how I had spent so much time preparing in every way for deployment except spiritually, and yet that was the most important way I could prepare.

So that’s how Tour of Duty was born – I wanted, for myself, a study – a tool to take me through the Bible and God’s truth - that would help me get ready for deployment and something I could refer to as well when I’m in the thick of it. I’m praying it’s a help to other wives as well.

This was definitely one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on, mainly because of the tight deadline we were working with and my own changing situation, going from writing at home to working a 40 hour work week and then writing in the evenings. I’m grateful for the LifeWay Women’s team and all of the time and energy (and patience) they put into this project and me. Compared to the audience for the other Bible studies they do (anyone ever hear of a lady named Beth Moore? ), this is a small niche but they saw the importance and the necessity to have a study like this out there for military wives. I, for one, as a military wife, am deeply thankful. If you are too, you may want to stop over at their blog and let them know! I’m sure they would love to hear from you.

Before I close, let me just tell you that as we get ready to start our own deployment soon (this is our second), I’m so grateful I can share this journey with my sister Wives of Faith! These ladies are such an encouragement and an inspiration to me and I’m so excited about the plans we have for a new website and message board that’s coming soon. We have a new weekly newsletter and in my columns I’ve started writing about our experience as Cliff prepares to leave for another tour, this time to South America. If you’re not getting the newsletter, let me encourage you to sign up and we can go through this journey together.

I’ll try and post more updates as they come. In the meantime, go ahead and get your copy of Tour of Duty!

One of the exciting things about this new book (I think, anyway) is the Bible study that goes along with it. I started out wanting to put together something simple that a military wives group could do together as they read the book – a few discussion questions, a couple of scriptures. I had no idea when I started writing it, though, that it would turn into a full-fledged Bible study! But that’s what God laid on my heart to share and there is quite a bit of extra material in the study that wasn’t in the book.

Right now, the study is FREE and available on my web site. When designing this study, I wanted to make it super easy for anyone to do. You DO NOT have to have a theology degree to teach this! In fact, you’re not even really teaching. You’re facilitating – a fancy word for keeping the discussion going. Everything is written out in the study and can be read out loud and there are plenty of questions posed to get some good conversation going for each of the chapters.

Here’s a sample of the first session – let me know what you think!