Deployment | Wives of Faith

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Have You Hugged a Military Spouse Today?

Posted by Sara on Saturday, February 5th, 2011 in 8 Week Tour of Duty Online Study, Deployment | Comments (5)

This post originally was shared at A Woman Inspired last year in March of 2010. With our military families now closing in on 10 years of ongoing deployments, I thought I’d share this again. Let me encourage you to show it to your friends, your churches and your communities. This isn’t written to the military spouse, but to those who desire to support our service members and their families. Sometimes it’s hard to say it yourself. So let this article say it for you. Feel free to post it on your own blog or site, just be sure to include a link back to Wives of Faith. ~Sara

As the leader of a military wives faith-based support organization and a military wife myself, I’m often asked by women’s ministry leaders and churches what they can do to support military wives and their families. You might be unsure of how to minister to an older woman with cancer or a young mom with twins if you have never experienced those things yourself, and in the same way it can be hard to know what to do for a military wife if you’ve never walked in her shoes.

It’s easy to assume that if you don’t live near a major military installation that military wives don’t exist in your community. But there are more than a million military spouses in our Armed Forces today and military wives are everywhere – National Guard and Reserve families often live far away from where their respective bases are, and active wives make the choice to move home and live with family when their husbands are overseas. This gives you and your church some wonderful opportunities to make a difference for our military by supporting their families while they’re away.

Connect with a military wife

If you meet a military wife whose husband is away for deployment, make a point to check on her regularly and let her know you’re praying for her. Deployment is not an experience you “get used to.” It’s an emotional roller coaster from beginning to end and there are good days but there are hard days too.

With all the technology available today to connect with our loved ones, we can still go days and weeks and sometimes months without a phone call, an email or a letter. We can get lost in all that we’re responsible for and forget to make time for ourselves. Sleep can become an issue for a lot of women when they’re not used to sleeping alone and the quiet of the house at night gives them the first chance they’ve had all day to really think about their husbands being away. Exhaustion can make a hard situation even worse and fray our emotions completely.

One of the absolute best gifts I received during my husband’s first deployment was when my friend Allison, another military wife, sent me an email on behalf of her small group from church and asked me to make a list of things I needed help with around the house. She had asked me this a couple of times before and I’d always dodged the request, but when she sent an email in black and white, I relented and put together a list of little to big things I needed to get done, thinking I’d give enough options that the group would find a couple of things they would be willing to do. On a warm spring Saturday, eight to ten friends I’d never met came over to my house and took care of absolutely everything on my list. And at the end of the day, what touched me most wasn’t the honey-do chores they’d completed for me, though I was very grateful for their help; it was the fact that they’d reached out in a physical way and let me know I wasn’t alone.

Do something

One of the hardest things for a military wife to hear is “Let me know if I can do anything to help.” It’s very difficult to ask someone else for help, especially if you’re unsure of what that person is willing to do.

The best thing you can do to help a military wife is to put yourself in her shoes and like the Nike commercial said, just do it! Would you get tired of planning dinner and cooking for a year without a break? Give her a gift card to eat out or call her up and let her know you’re bringing dinner tonight. Would you have trouble knowing what to do with the car or the yard during the peak of summer? Rally the men in your small group to help change the oil or share yard duties. Would you be worn out if you were responsible for your kids 24/7 without another adult to give you a break occasionally? Offer to take the kids for an afternoon so she can do whatever she wants. Would it be hard for you to put Christmas lights up or other holiday decorations by yourself? Offer to do it for her.

If you offer to put a care package together for her husband, don’t forget to put a little package together for her – bubble bath, Starbucks cards, or a little book of Bible Promises are all little things that can make a world of difference for a military wife and give her encouragement and hope to keep going. And chocolate! Don’t forget the chocolate!

Be sensitive

As much as you want to be able to help and appear understanding to her needs, resist the temptation to compare your husband’s two-week business trip to her husband’s year-long deployment. Unless your husband is also trying to avoid mortars and IEDs (improvised explosive devices), it’s really not the same.

Avoid saying things like “I don’t know how you do it,” or “I can’t imagine being in your shoes.” Most of the time she doesn’t know how she does it either, but it’s the only choice she has – to do it or give up.

Encourage her. Tell her what a great job she’s doing and how her husband will be so proud to hear how well she’s doing holding down the fort at home. And then make sure he does hear how well she’s doing.

If a military wife is in your small group at church, make sure there are enough activities happening she can attend that aren’t strictly couples-oriented. Consider holding off on that Love and Respect marriage study and do another study that she’ll be able to feel included in. When you do have events such as Christmas parties or Super Bowl parties, make a point to call her and make sure she’s coming; there’s a greater chance she will if she knows someone will miss her if she doesn’t.

Support those who support our heroes
Military wives don’t want pity or to be felt sorry for, but they can use prayer, encouragement and all the emotional support they can get. Ask most service members what their greatest worry is when they’re deployed and they may surprise you when they say it’s not getting wounded or killed – it’s making sure their families are okay back home.

I believe God can use the hardest of times, like deployments, to grow us and stretch us and make us into the daughters He wants us to be. But we need others to come along side us in the journey.

Help to make sure that the spouse and family are well taken care of and you also help take care of the soldier. So feel free to pass those hugs out to military spouses today – they will thank you for it!

Sara Horn is the founder of Wives of Faith (www.wivesoffaith.org) and the author of GOD Strong: A Military Wife’s Spiritual Survival Guide and Tour of Duty: Preparing Our Hearts for Deployment, A Bible Study for Military Wives. She enjoys speaking to both women’s and military wives groups about God’s incredible strength. Email her at sara@sarahorn.com.

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Tour of Duty: Thoughts from Jessica

Posted by Sara on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 in 8 Week Tour of Duty Online Study, Deployment | Comments (10)

As you may know, we are sharing video blogs from various military wives through the course of our Tour of Duty online study. I’ve asked Jessica Crow to share some thoughts about deployment with you. Many of you know Jessica because she’s our MemberCare Director and does a fantastic job welcoming our new members, sending e-cards to everyone having a birthday, anniversary or even a welcome home when we know about a deployment homecoming. Jessica is a National Guard wife and has such a heart for military wives. It’s been so fun getting to know her over the last year or so and particularly now since both of us are now going through deployments!

Check out her thoughts below – if you’re a parent, you’ll appreciate what she shares on how she and her husband prepared their young children for yet another separation, and in the second video, she actually interviews her adorable kiddos along with her friend’s children who are older and gets their take on what it’s like to be military kids. She also discusses things you can do the day you say goodbye as well as things you can do to keep the family connected while your service member is away. Fantastic information that I hope you’ll take the time to check out.

Part One: Telling Your Kids About Deployment

Part Two: How the Kids Feel About Deployment, Ways You Can Help Your Children

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Stretching During Deployment

Posted by Jessica on Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 in Deployment, Faith | Comments (0)

In this deployment (and the months leading up to it beginning) I have really felt God grow me and stretch me. That has been my specific prayer since last January when we received word that Jason would be deploying again.

Deployment was not my plan.
It was not on my list.
Not even close.

This prayer was not my intial response. Its hard to re-live the thought of how I reacted. It was not a reaction of a woman completely trusting a sovereign God. It was not the reaction of a woman who had complete faith in the journey that He was placing me on. I recall asking why (a lot). I know that God knew me and knew how I was hurting. I knew He understood my questions, even though He wanted my complete trust in Him and not my questions. And I slowly began to realize that it was not for me to question. That I just needed to have complete faith in the One who determines that this was my journey.

And so I started praying for God to grow me and stretch me. And He has–oh, He has. He has taken me out of my comfort zone of complacency (how thankful I am for that). He has opened a door for me through my position as Member Care Director for Wives of Faith–something I would not have ever been able to do on my own, but I know that it happened because I asked Him to grow me. And He did. What a blessing it has been to me. I kept praying though. Kept asking Him to grow me…to take me where He wanted me to go.

And He did. Faithful provider, He did.

I felt an urging to start a Bible study with military spouses. I have never led a study before. I always relied on others to do that. I had no idea what to study. No idea where to begin. I thought, Are you sure you have the right person for this? So I just prayed about that, not knowing that my friend Sara was already in the process of writing a Bible study aimed specifically at military spouses (you see where I am going with this…He is in every single detail!). Then Sara contacted me asking me to proof the study before it was sent to the publishers…I knew just a couple pages into it that this was the study I needed to do.

As soon as Sara let me know the book was published I purchased my book and put the word out (via email, facebook, my blog) that I would be doing a study for military spouses facing deployment if anyone was interested in joining me (I was nervous that no one would contact me. Its hard connecting with military spouses when your not active duty). But they did.

There are about eight of us in the study. It has been wonderful and we are only two sessions into it. I cannot wait to see what is revealed to us. Can not wait to hear what the other ladies are learning. We met this past Friday night. Our study lasted four hours! (we had no idea it was 11 pm…and probably would not have noticed if someone would not have called wondering where their mom was!). It was amazing. It was four hours of reading and researching God’s word (I know, a bunch of women get together and you are probably thinking…mmhhhmmm sure, the whole four hours? but yes, it really was). I look forward to sharing what I am learning. Maybe I can even convince a couple of the ladies to do a guest post type of thing and get them to share.

In deployment, it is typical for me to have goals….lose weight, get things organized, pay off all debts except house (did that one in deployment #2), maybe re-do a room or two or three, save for a big vacation, etc. Those are a few of my goals. I am working on a blog post to share those with you. And while those things are all well and good, are they really what I want to accomplish?

When I look back at this deployment, do I want to just see a checklist of completed goals? Or do I want to see something more? What do I really want to accomplish? The answer is simple (though the means to reach it may not always be easy). The answer is I want to accomplish His work. The work that He gave me to do so that in the end it is all for His glory and not about me.

So, let me take this time to encourage you. No matter what your journey is, ask God to grow you in it. You know that He is with you in the journey, now trust Him to take you somewhere you would never go on your own. Trust Him to equip you to do His work.

Jessica is the Wives of Faith Member Care Director and mother of two. Visit her personal blog, which this post is excerpted from, at Just 4 Crows.

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Overcoming anxiety during deployment

Posted by Sara on Monday, January 24th, 2011 in 8 Week Tour of Duty Online Study, Deployment | Comments (8)

“Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7, HCSB

As I write this, I’ve experienced yet another night of little sleep. Or, to be more accurate about this night, hardly any! After a week of mostly intentional late nights, staying up to finish specific projects, I think this most recent lost night of sleep has more to do with my sleep cycle being messed up (I took a couple of naps over the weekend because I felt so tired which is unusual for me ), rather than me being anxious, but I’m sure stress plays a role on some level.

Anxiety and stress are definitely common when it comes to deployment. Over the last few months, I’ve heard from many military wives who are struggling with this, specifically emailing me about the panic attacks they’re experiencing and their frustration in not knowing how to make them stop.

I only recall experiencing an actual panic attack once and it wasn’t during deployment, though it was during a very stressful time (and I’m sure there have been other moments during deployment that have come pretty close.) My husband and I were both finishing school and he was working as a marketing director for a retirement home while I worked as a news director at the university we both were finishing our degrees at. I don’t remember what exactly was happening that week, but I was stressed with my job, with my classes, with life and it was all reaching a boiling point. He called me and invited me to come over to his work and have lunch with him in their little dining area. I remember breathing a little easier after his call, as I headed over to see him. That’s what I needed, just a quiet little lunch, just the two of us, where I could talk and get out some of whatever was bothering me with work.

But that wasn’t to be. As I followed Cliff into the dining room, he led me not to our own little table in a corner somewhere, but over to a long table filled with his coworkers and his boss. Apparently, we were having a group lunch. I felt completely blindsided and as someone who can be shy and uncomfortable in new situations, I was thrown for a loop. Suddenly, I felt like the temperature in the room had just hit 100 degrees. My hands felt clammy and my heart raced. My stomach churned and I struggled to breathe. And inside I felt enraged, angry that my husband would do this to me. As I sat down, I felt an enormous urge to get up and leave. Not just leave. But RUN out the door. And after what felt like an incredibly long time, though it literally was probably only two minutes, after barely taking a bite of my food, I did get up and leave, much to the frustration and confusion and probably embarassment of my poor hubby. I was having a panic attack.

Panic, anxiety, stress, can certainly all be experienced during deployment, one of the most stressful things we can go through. Being separated from your loved one is hard emotionally, and when you’re by yourself to take care of the house, take care of the kids if you’re a parent, and offer support to the spouse who is away, that’s a lot to hold up. I always shake my head a little at the news articles that come out at least once a year, ringing the alarm of some recent study that’s discovered deployment causes spouses and children more stress. Uh, DUH!

So what do we do? How do we overcome this emotional challenge which can also affect us so physically? I wanted to share with you some of the things I’ve been trying to do to help alleviate my own stresses I’m dealing with as we are almost 100 days into our second deployment. Here’s my disclaimer: Please keep in mind – I am not a doctor, nor am I trained in psychology or counseling so as with any advice, check with an actual doctor for your specific concerns or treatments.

Experiencing panic attacks, or stress, or anxiety, is not necessarily a reflection of your faith. Let me repeat that: Experiencing panic attacks, or stress, or anxiety, is not necessarily a reflection of your faith. You are not a terrible Christian for experiencing worry. You have not disappointed God for feeling stress. I think sometimes we can make things worse than they are when we struggle because we tell ourselves we’re just not praying enough, or we’re just not trusting God enough. Where we are spiritually can play a part I think in how we handle stress, but there are also other things at work, such as your physical condition, and your environmental conditions that need to be considered.

Let me share a few thoughts with you that I’ve been thinking about when it comes to managing my own stress during deployment. I pray that maybe something I’m trying may be something that helps you.

Sleep – When you’re not getting good rest, your emotions can be the first thing to go. We handle life’s stresses better when we’ve slept more than 5 hours. It’s important to set a routine and stick to it. This I think has been my struggle of late. We had a good routine going when my husband first left but since the holidays came and went, it’s been harder getting back into that routine.

If you have kids, set a time when they’re in bed, and stick to it. And if need be, make them go to bed earlier than they normally would. I know one mom who made her kids go to their rooms about 30 minutes early. They could read or play quietly, but they had to be in their rooms. This gave her some quiet time as she picked up and got ready to start the next day.

If you’re a nervous nellie like I can be, hearing every creak and groan in the house, run a white noise machine, or turn the fan on at night. A dog is one of the best security features you can have. I have to tell myself that if he doesn’t hear it, than it’s not worth me hearing either. Check the locks and tell yourself all is well. Trust that God is watching over you. Remind yourself – He doesn’t sleep!

Sleeping pills or aids can also help, but if you’re like me as a parent, you don’t want to take something so strong you can’t wake up in a moment’s notice for your child. A friend of mine suggested taking melatonin – it’s a vitamin that’s a natural hormone that helps with sleep which you take 30 minutes before you’re ready to head to bed. You can find it in the vitamin aisle of any grocery store or pharmacy.

Diet and Exercise – It sounds so basic but it’s so often overlooked. How are you eating? How much are you exercising?

After reading someone else’s tips on struggling with low feelings during winter months especially, I’ve started back taking a regular multi-vitamin. Watching how much fattening foods you’re eating can also make a difference. Vegetables and lean meats are the much better choices and they do have an impact on how we feel emotionally.

Exercise, exercise, exercise. Even if it’s getting out for a walk for 10 to 15 minutes a day – and if it’s too cold outside, find a gym, or a rec center, or the Y, or even a mall! Whatever you do, make a point to move. It will help. My son and I are trying to walk at our YMCA a few times a week. I’m hoping to get back to taking Zumba classes, at least on Saturdays, soon.

Drinking water can also make a difference. When you’re dehydrated, it’s easier to feel down, which can evolve into feeling anxious. Sometimes, especially during winter, we don’t even realize we’re not getting enough water in our systems. I’m trying to drink a big glass at least in the morning when I start my day and around dinner time. I try to drink it at my desk at work but for some reason I get distracted and don’t always do it. I used to drink water all the time before using plastic water bottles became the environmental no-no. Drinking out of a washable thermos just doesn’t have the same effect for me. Weird, I know. I may just have to start back to the plastic water bottles. One last thing I heard about recently regarding nutrition and emotions is to make sure you’re eating more fiber in your diet.

Blue light – Have you heard of blue lights? These are specially designed light machines that are supposed to help folks who struggle with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and I read a highly respected publisher’s post recently who started using this and swears by it. I ordered one and am hoping to try it out starting this week. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks if I see a difference! (I’m wondering if this had any affect on my not sleeping last night – I was trying to set the thing to go off this morning and the light came on while I was trying to get it set – it is BRIGHT!) Using a blue light in the morning is supposed to help regulate your mood as well as your sleep cycle. We’ll see.

Laugh. Laughter really is good medicine, and in the seriousness of deployment, we can miss this. Go out with friends, or if you’re in a new place and don’t really know anyone, call a friend up. Watch comedies and stay away from shows like Criminal Minds. Which I watched a marathon of this week… hmmm… really need to take my own advice!

Talk it out. If you have a friend you can talk to about your deepest concerns, do it! I don’t recommend using only your husband – if he’s deployed, he’s dealing with his own stresses, and there is a certain balance needed there. Let him know you’re struggling so he can pray for you and encourage you as he can, but don’t depend solely on him for that support. Find a good Christian counselor you can talk with, if you have no one else. Your church may have recommendations – or you can contact Military OneSource for a referral to a counselor in your community and if you go through them, you can have up to 12 visits per issue, at no cost to you and it’s confidential which means it cannot be reported or affect your husband in any way. Having moved to a brand new city and state and knowing no one, I knew I would need someone to talk with as we go through this deployment. I’ve been seeing a Christian counselor twice a month and it’s been very helpful having that extra set of ears. I highly recommend it if you can do it and with the free option through Military OneSource, you have nothing to lose except some stress!

Get into God’s Word. Do a Bible study like Tour of Duty, or just pick a book of the Bible and start reading it and taking notes. There is something about connecting daily with God that can be wonderful medicine and help our stress levels. But it’s a daily discipline that won’t happen unless you do it intentionally. Don’t make excuses why you can’t. It will benefit you health-wise so much more than you realize.

What are some ways you’re overcoming anxiety during deployment? Share with the rest of us!

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Low-cost ways to connect during deployment

Posted by Sara on Monday, January 10th, 2011 in 8 Week Tour of Duty Online Study, Deployment | Comments (13)

During our first deployment, when Cliff was in Iraq, the idea of bringing a cell phone to a war zone seemed crazy. Not to mention extremely expensive. So we shut his phone off before he left and depended on the fact that he’d have access to MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) centers as he traveled around the country to access computers. Because he was working with Special Forces, he was limited in his communications as it was – no photos or video, and phone and emails were monitored. Instant messaging was often the closest thing we had to a live personal conversation and we went almost the entire deployment before I got to see his face on a video screen, and that was after they made it back to California to demobilize. I consoled myself by remembering it wasn’t that long ago that my mother-in-law could go 7 or 8 months when my father-in-law was out to sea on a Navy ship and not hear anything.

But with time has come a lot of progress. And just over 3 years later, after that first deployment, we’ve continued to see technology explode in ways I’m sure my MIL and her friends never imagined we’d get to when they waved goodbye to their husbands from a Navy pier.

This second deployment my husband is currently on is much different than his first when it comes to communication. He’s serving in South America with a group of Seabees, doing humanitarian relief work in 8 different countries over the next 10 months. They’re building and renovating schools, and sharing supplies and expertise with their military counterparts in those countries. They’re currently living on a small civilian ship that is serving as both their home and transport and figuring out communication has been interesting… they have wireless internet but it cuts out frequently and because of their constant moving around and the fact that the ship they’re on is self-sustaining (meaning they don’t have regular shipments brought to the ship), mail is not an option. This time we sent Cliff off with his cell phone because 1) we knew he wouldn’t be in a war zone and 2) we had no idea how communication would be so we added international service to his phone. The service is only $5 more a month, but it still costs extra for every text and minute we talk. We’ve been trying to take advantage of the internet but got a little cell phone careless and got a little blown away by a very high cell phone bill this month. Whoops!

So, as a refresher for me , and hopefully as a help to you, I thought I’d review some of the ways you can stay connected to your service member when they’re away… and feel free to chime in with your own methods and what works for you!

Skype – (skype.com) It’s amazing to think that just less than 4 years ago, I and a lot of people I know had not heard of this wonderful tool, and yet it now seems indespensable for military families around the world. Even if bandwidth where your service member is doesn’t allow video, you can still at least instant message for free, provided you have an internet connection. And I highly recommend if you’re preparing for a deployment that your service member carries a laptop and that both of you have web cams so if you do have the opportunity to do video, you can. If you have kids, it’s a great way to help them stay visually connected to their parent who’s away and doesn’t make them seem so far removed.

Take advantage of DSN lines if you can: This isn’t always possible (it isn’t for my husband this go round) but if your service member is near an established base with DSN lines, he or she can call a base near you (for example, last deployment, Cliff would call the DSN line to the National Guard armory in Nashville) and then the operator connects him to you. Calls like this usually have to be brief but it can be pretty helpful.

Instant Messenger Services - Yahoo, MSN and others offer both text and video messaging. If you’ve got Internet, you can connect.

Smart Phone Apps - what my husband just discovered (after receiving the news of our latest cell phone bill) was an awesome free phone app we’re going to start using which allows you to share voice mail messages with each other for FREE as long as you have a wireless connection!

Both of us have iPhones and we just started using this new app, HeyTell (also available for Android). It’s an easy way to “talk” to each other without paying for the air time. Think of it as an answering service or if you’re both on at the same time, a walkie-talkie. All you have to have is a wi-fi connection. What I like about it is it saves each message so I can go back and hear my honey any time I want. So far this may be the best solution for us.

Another app we’ve heard about and downloaded on our phones though I haven’t felt like I’ve had much success with it is eBuddy which allows a mobile way to instant message using the social media services you already use like Facebook, Twitter, or Google Mail.

So those are just a few of the low-cost ways I’m trying to use to stay connected with my husband while he’s away. I would LOVE to hear what you’re doing or what you’ve done with past deployments! What’s your best way to communicate with your husband? Do you have any smart phone apps you’re using? Share your best tips!