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Not “Okay”

Posted by Kim on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 in Deployment | Comments (5)

Here in Canada, a new TV show has come out about the war in Afghanistan. Taking a cue from M*A*S*H, it tells the story of a military hospital in the Kandahar Airfield.

I’m not going to argue whether or not the show is realistic, or if it does any justice to the image of the Canadian military. Regardless of its quality, the thing is, I don’t want to watch it.

Now, I’ve never been to Kandahar. I’ve never fought in a war or had my life in danger. Yet I still find myself experiencing emotionally painful responses when it comes to viewing things that have to do with the war in Afghanistan.

As soon as I invest any time, whether it’s a news article, a movie or a TV show, I find myself feeling the familiar anxiety in my chest, knot in my stomach and over-all feeling of unease. It is, in fact, the same feeling I have through most of my husband’s deployments. Even though it’s been 3 years since he’s been home, it comes right back, like it never left.

Why? Honestly, that’s the subject of this blog which has so far been the hardest one I’ve written. Because it’s not something I like to admit.

Spouses at home can feel the emotional after-effects of a deployment.

We hear a lot about soldier’s struggles on return. We know that we can’t expect them to be the same. That there will be lasting changes. From the normal reintegration struggles to PTSD, invisible battle scars are something we hear about, are taught to look for in our spouses and learn to accept as a possible consequence of war just like a physical wounds.
Where does that leave us? Are we expecting ourselves to instantly feel ‘back to normal’ the moment his boots hit the ground at home? After months and months of living with lingering fear of his safety, of jumping every time you hear the news, of worry and anxiety and sleepless nights, can we just drop it all and go back to the way things were instantly?

I thought I could.

I thought I did.

The reality, though, is that I have changed too. And not just that I am more independent than I was before that first tour, or that I am stronger or more reliant on God. I am all those things.

I am also more anxious. While after years of living this life I can handle his short absences with ease, they have caused me the occasional completely-unnecessary fear for his safety. Remembrance Day turns my normally non-crier personality into a blubbery mess for weeks leading up to it.

Hardest to admit is that seeing families or reading stories of injured soldiers or those killed in action can make me feel a terrible, sometimes almost immobilizing guilt that we have seen the other side safely while they have had to endure so much.

I think it’s safe to say that my soldier is not the only one who was emotionally affected by his deployments.

So what’s my lesson in this?

• Admission that I am not perfect. It’s easy to hold the image of the un-phased military spouse. But that’s not reality and I am not her. Anyone who thinks I am has never seen my day 3 of absence meltdown or my military induced hissy-fits.

• Recognizing I have limits, and that’s okay. I don’t have to watch every movie or TV show about Afghanistan. There can be enough reality in my life without it taking over my entertainment time.

• Acceptance that God taught me a lot but I still have much more to learn. Romans 8:28 says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” These things could break you, but they don’t have to. Every moment has a chance to be a lesson.

So here I am, on the other side of my blog and my admission that I’m not always “okay.” It’s not so bad. My prayer is that it will reach the woman out there who is struggling thinking she’s alone in it all.

You are not alone. And you don’t always have to be okay. We’re allowed to need time to adjust too. And if your fear, anxiety or hurts are enough that you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, help is there. Please speak up.

___________________________

Kim is a child of God who believes in Grace and is grateful that His mercies are new every morning. I am a 30 year old wife of a soldier in the Canadian Army. We’ve been married 10 years and have 3 amazing kids. We have survived 3 deployments to Afghanistan as well as numerous other training and domestic operations. While I went to school to be a Social Worker, right now attempting to mother my children is my full time job. www.kimberleymills.blogspot.com

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Summer Study: Tour of Duty Week One

Posted by Sara on Monday, June 6th, 2011 in 2011 Tour of Duty Summer Study | Comments (260)

Welcome to the beginning of our summer online study of Tour of Duty: Preparing Our Hearts for Deployment! (If you are just finding out about this, you are more than welcome to participate with us – however, registration is closed, so you will not be able to be added to a small group or receive the weekly emails.)

Please review the video and the information below for a welcome, ground rules and some thoughts on building community and making friends while we’re going through this study. Be sure to READ TO THE END because all of your discussion questions are located at the bottom of this post!

Welcome!

122 of you have signed up to participate from all over the country. Some of you have only been married for a few months, others of you more than 20 years. All of us have a desire to seek God first when it comes to deployment.

The book is divided into 8 weeks – this is an introductory week and I am asking you to have Chapter 1 read before we meet next week. Each Monday a new post will be up, including a video, but you can watch when it is convenient for you. We only ask that you please comment at least three times during the week with your thoughts/questions about each chapter.

Ground Rules

An online study is a little different than meeting in a small group face to face. So please be mindful of Op Sec! Don’t share specific movement dates,or specific locations for your service member or for you. Iraq and Alabama are ok – Al Asad Iraq and Auburn, Alabama are too specific.

Feel free to use your first name, but please do not use your full name, do not share email addresses or phone numbers in the comments. A member roster will be emailed this week to all of our participating study members who indicated they wanted to receive a member roster. If you do not receive this, please contact me (sara@wivesoffaith.org) and I’ll try to help.

Be kind and loving and respectful when talking with one another. Understand not everyone may have the same experience with church as you may, and some ladies may be very new to a relationship with God.

Leave rank at the door (and in your comments). We are all spouses supporting our service members.

While the majority of our participants are wives, we do have a few fiances and girlfriends joining us as well. Please be respectful and supportive of their feelings as well.

Please comment at least 3 times each week – ask a question, respond to someone else’s question, share your thoughts about what you’re reading/studying. There will be many discussion prompts for you each week to pull from.

If you get behind, don’t give up!! Just jump back in where we are and plan on going back and catching up when you can.

All of our participants who finish with us at the end of July will receive a special Tour of Duty study achievement certificate.

Community

For this summer study, we have recruited small group leaders we are calling Tour Guides, who have been assigned to contact and keep up with the assigned ladies in their groups. This will be one way for you to connect directly with other military spouses. You will also have the member roster as I mentioned above – let me encourage you, as you get to know ladies on the website, or if you see ladies listed in your state, to contact these new friends directly. The more active you are in talking with ladies each week, the more support and community you’ll experience. You are not alone!

A BIG Thank You to my co-leaders, Jessica Crow and Alicia Shepherd!

Jessica has been part of Wives of Faith for almost 2 years and has served as our MemberCare Director for just over a year. Her husband is in the Alabama National Guard, currently serving his third deployment to Afghanistan, and they have two adorable children, a boy and a girl. She is a leader for her husband’s unit’s FRG. Visit her beautiful blog at The Crow Family.

Alicia joined Wives of Faith at the beginning of this year. She is an Army wife and mother to two beautiful kids, also a boy and girl. Her family is stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. Her husband just recently left for a deployment.

Both Jessica and Alicia have taught the Tour of Duty study – Jessica, with a group of friends in her home, and Alicia with a group of ladies from her husband’s unit as they got ready to start their deployments. I am thrilled to have both of them helping with the study this summer. They will be online, responding to comments and if you have any questions, feel free to contact either of them (Jessica – jessicac@wivesoffaith.org or Alicia – alicia@wivesoffaith.org).

I also want to welcome our Tour Guides for this semester – Holly Massie, Joanna Rummel, Judi Fuller, Kim Wade, Kelly Hurtado, Pamela Price, Sarah Gravely, Alaina Fitzner and Tonya Van Winkle. These precious ladies have all been through the study before as well and have agreed to be small group leaders for this semester. They will be connecting with the ladies they’ve been assigned once a week, and I’m grateful for their willing hearts and how they will serve military spouses in this way. Thank you ladies!!

OK, LET’S GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THIS WEEK (answer these in the comments below):

1. How long have you and your husband been married?

2. What has deployment been like so far?

3. What are you hoping to get out of this small group experience?

4. What do you think a tour of duty looks like for a military wife?

5. How would you describe your journey as a military wife to this point?

6. Read Proverbs 3:5-6. What does it mean not to lean on your own understanding? How easy or hard is this to do during deployment? Why?

YOUR HOMEWORK THIS WEEK: Read Chapter 1 in Tour of Duty.

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Happy Anniversary Jessica!

Posted by Sara on Thursday, May 12th, 2011 in News | Comments (4)

One year ago this week Jessica Crow, a National Guard wife from Alabama, was kind enough to agree to my invitation to be the MemberCare Director for Wives of Faith. At the time, she told me she had been sensing that God wanted her to do more to reach out to other women and particularly other military wives, and she has been SUCH a blessing to our ministry and to our members and the wives we reach since she came on board!

Jessica, for those of you who may not realize this, is the one responsible for all of the hundreds of e-cards we send out to our members on a weekly basis – birthdays, anniversaries, and deployments when we know about them – Jessica has been so wonderfully dedicated to lifting up and encouraging our ladies through this way as well as responding and helping as she can when spouses email her. She’s also led a Tour of Duty study in her home, including some friends who attended via Skype! And she’ll soon be part of another special feature we’ll hopefully announce very soon here at Wives of Faith. She’s done all of this while going through her own year-long deployment her husband is away on and keeping things running smoothly for her two small children at home. She loves the Lord and it’s clear every time I talk with her how much she wants to follow His will for her and her family’s life.

Please help me let Jessica know how much we appreciate her service through Wives of Faith. Comment here or email her directly at jessicac@wivesoffaith.org. She also keeps a blog at just4crows.blogspot.com. I know it would bless her to hear from you!

Happy Anniversary Jessica! We love you and we are so grateful for the blessing you are to military wives everywhere!

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She Heard, She Came, She Received

Posted by Deanna on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 in Faith | Comments (1)

As I pondered Wives of Faith’s theme for this next season, “Come As You Are,” I am reminded of the scripture Mark 5:25-34. This is the story about a woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years. She spent all of her money on many physicians and still was not healed. She had heard about Jesus and heard He was in town. Somehow she knew if she could just touch the hem of His garment, she would be healed. She made her way through the crowd, came behind Jesus and touched His garment. Immediately, she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction. Jesus knew someone had touched Him because He felt the power go out of Him. With excitement and enthusiasm, He asked the disciples who touched Him. Because of the crowd of people pressing up against Him, they did not see who it was. Finally, when Jesus sees this woman face to face, He tells her that her faith has made her well and to go in peace and be healed of her affliction.

Imagine for a moment that you are this woman, sick for twelve years, having seen many doctors with no relief and you are broke. You had heard that this man named Jesus who healed a multitude of people and performed many miracles was in town and He could heal you. You are desperate for some relief and will do anything to get to Jesus, even if all you could do is touch the hem of His garment. You have played this image over and over in your head. You have gone back to the people that told you about Jesus and asked them to tell you again about this man that can heal you. You go to where He is and make your way through the crowd to only touch the hem of His garment. Immediately, you feel relief. Afterwards, with a sense of awe and reverence, you finally have an encounter with this man named Jesus. You see the excitement in His face because He knows that you heard about Him from others, you asked about Him, you came to see Him and you exercised your faith. With much love and kindness, He cups your face in His hands, just like a father would his child’s, and blesses you. After receiving His blessing, that peace that passes all human understanding comes cascading over you. You walk away from Him never to be the same, changed forever.

Have you ever been sick and tired of being sick and tired? I can only imagine that this is the place she was in and was very desperate for some relief. Are you desperate for some relief? You may not need relief in your body, but maybe your mind or your soul needs relief.

I think we can all agree that the military lifestyle can wreak havoc on our body, mind and soul if we allow it to. You may be doing just fine and that is great, but do you know someone that is desperate for a healing? Do you know someone that is desperate enough to push through a crowd just to touch the hem of His garment? If so, tell them about Wives of Faith, tell them this is a safe place and they are more than welcome to come as they are. This is a place where Jesus is introduced to some and shared more intimately with others. It is the cry of all of us at Wives of Faith that military wives from all walks of life will hear about Jesus from you, they will come to Wives of Faith to receive from Him and we will all go on our journey of life carrying His peace.

Dear Lord, I am desperate for some relief in my life. I do believe that you are the Great Physician and You will bring healing to my life and other lives. I long to hear You say to me, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.” Help me share with other daughters the healing that You so graciously give. Amen.

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Nine-Eleven

Posted by Pattie on Saturday, September 11th, 2010 in Faith | Comments (1)

Nine years ago today was September 11, 2001, a day that dawned bright and full of promise, as all new days do.

By the end of the day, we as a nation had drawn together in unity of heart, of purpose, and in prayer for those who were lost in New York, in the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania; their loved ones left behind; and every hero who worked so tirelessly to search and find and rescue those who miraculously survived, and those who sadly did not.

In a way, it’s quite difficult to believe that nine years have passed. Sometimes it seems like less time, and sometimes it feels like much, much more.

As military wives we’re well aware of the changes within our nation’s military. Our military forces have been tasked more and more as the war has progressed. Active duty military have a higher deployment tempo, and our Reserve and National Guard forces are being tasked again and again with nearly the same regularity as their active duty counterparts. Many of you have worked through three, four, and in some cases five deployments now, with no end in the foreseeable future.

Yet our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He was with us nine years ago, He is with us today, and He will be with us nine years from now.

On a whim, I looked up Psalm 9:11, and I wanted to share it with you:

Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion;
proclaim among the nations what he has done.

Let’s do this today. Let’s proclaim among the nations what the Lord God has done for us.

We all have a story about 9-11-01. Where were you? How did you feel? What did you do? How did you feel the Lord’s presence on that day? Please share with us –proclaim with us, if you will–what the Lord has done. Feel free to share your story or link to your blog, in the comments.

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