Our first few months in Italy can be summed up in three words: Culture shock and HEAT. Oh man, it was so hot. Even after 4 summers here we’ve yet to experience heat like we had in 2015. A couple days after we got here the ‘real feel’ was something crazy like 130 degrees. It was pretty miserable. We were in the Navy lodge for about 2 weeks, not knowing anyone, sharing one bedroom. It wasn’t the worst situation ever but it was trying considering we were in a foreign country. I remember Justin and I looking at each other at least once a day those first couple of weeks thinking, “What have we done?” There were plenty of tears from all four of us.

Thankfully, we didn’t feel terribly unsettled for too long. The base has a great swimming pool and the movie theater played movies all summer long and the tickets were free for the boys. Even without our car, there seemed to be plenty on base to keep us busy during the day while Justin attended area orientation and settled in at work. The day we got our apartment we received our express shipment, and that helped so much. We had put almost all of the boys’ toys in the express, so they finally had things to do. Since I had mailed my iMac it was also here and I threw myself into rebranding our photography business. We had a new logo, new website, new portfolio, etc. I spent a lot of time marketing and working on advertising. I had made friends with a photographer who had already been here awhile and also with a photographer who arrived just a couple of weeks after us. Things were pretty exciting and I was so ready to hit the ground running with building my business and building a client base.

We knew that Justin would deploy since this is sea duty for him, but I have to admit I was surprised when we learned he would leave much sooner than anticipated and be gone longer than we thought. At about our two and a half month mark, he left for a two-month exercise that would immediately be followed by a 4-month patrol, making our first separation overseas 6 months long. By this time I had become involved with our local Protestant Women of the Chapel group and was in the process of building friendships with women I had met.

Things had been a little rocky with the photographer friend who arrived just after us but I was confident that it would all turn out okay; we just perhaps needed a little distance. The thing about military friendships, particularly overseas, is that you don’t really have time to figure things out slowly. You NEED people in order to thrive, and so people often become close quickly. Sometimes it happens before you even know too much about the other person. Occasionally, as was the case in this friendship, the more time spent together, the more you realize you don’t have as much in common or are not as compatible as you first though. Or maybe it was just on my end, but I was beginning to feel as if the friendship was not healthy or good for me in this particular season of my life. I began to seek counsel from a local chaplain (who eventually became one of my very best friends!) and began to search the scriptures for guidance on how to establish boundaries in a friendship that seemingly had none.

Unfortunately, things escalated quicker than I anticipated and the friendship ended up imploding during a phone call. From that second forward, everything about my time in Italy changed. Let me tell you, I know it is unhealthy to concern yourself too much with what others think of you. This is a trap that has ensnared so many women. It is one of Satan’s oldest tricks — to have us become so focused on how other humans see us that we begin to forget the truth of who we are in God’s eyes. I hate nothing more than to be misunderstood, misrepresented, or wrongly judged. In this person’s eyes I was selfish, fake, mean, and rude. The words she said to me were some of the most painful I have ever experienced. She attacked my faith, my character, my motives, and even my family.

This implosion happened in the week after Justin left, just as I sat down to dinner with my boys. For days the tears would not stop. I tortured myself again and again by reading the cutting words on Facebook and in text messages that she had used to destroy me. When I eventually blocked her phone number, her husband began texting me to add fuel to the fire that was burning not only my heart, but also my spirit. My desire to connect with anyone in my new community crumbled. I would meet new people and hear, “Oh, YOU’RE Danna…” as if they had already heard about what kind of person I was. I cried, and I cried, and I cried. And I tried so hard to counter act the damage by telling my side of the story, at least to those who asked.

In time, I realized this was not how I was going to redeem myself. In a lesson on the work of the Holy Spirit, my chaplain friend quoted Exodus 14:14. I had heard this verse many, many times, but this day it’s meaning was fresh for me.

            “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

I had prayed so many times over this situation. I prayed for this person, even for her happiness and success. I prayed for my pain to go away, I prayed that I would forget, I prayed she would get orders to leave early, I prayed we would get orders to leave early. I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed. But on this day, what I was hearing from God was so different than what I expected. He was telling me to STOP. Not to stop praying, but to stop struggling to prove this person wrong. To stop telling my side of the story. To stop re-reading those bitter, poisonous words when I was already so deep in self-loathing. So I deleted the messages. I will never understand why I hung onto them for so long. You guys… it was almost a year. For months I repeatedly poured salt on my own wounds by reading them again and again and letting them override God’s words to and about me. It’s so shameful and embarrassing to admit now. Those words had become a part of me and I didn’t want to delete them. I had almost become addicted to the pain they were causing me.

That day, when God began to speak to me through that verse from Exodus, I realized that I needed to get on with my life. I needed to stop thinking about it and talking about. If I just pursued Jesus then he would use all of this pain for my good. I was tired of being defined by those words; fake Christian, money hungry photographer, bad friend and person, REJECTED. I think that was one of the main feelings I was sorting through. Around this time, Lysa TerKeurst released her book Uninvited, and one of my favorite quotes contained within says, “There is usually some element of protection wrapped up in every rejection.” In hindsight, I am convinced that God knew exactly the friendships and family he had planned here for me in Naples because he knew what was coming next, and he knew exactly what I’d need. From that experience I learned so much about what to look for in a friend, what kind of friend to be, and what Biblical friendship should look like and how incredibly valuable it is!

Proverbs 17:17 – “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a difficult time.”

• All photos are from our first couple of weeks in Italy!