Welcome to the first post of our brand new blog for Wives of Faith!

While our first official meeting was in December of last year, I am excited that we finally have a way of interacting with each other a little more frequently with this blog. The hopes behind this is that different contributors will offer their thoughts on marriage and faith and family and the military and we can create some good dialogue and discussion through comments. Incidentally – if you’d like to contribute to the blog, just email your contribution/post to info@wivesoffaith.org with a short bio and of course, a link to your own blog if that applies! (We do reserve the right to not post something if it doesn’t meet with our guidelines and standards and the same applies for comments which must be approved before posting.)

I firmly believe that we were created for connection. God wants us to be connected! And I’m not talking about the kind of connection where your cell phone stays glued to your hand and your laptop with wireless email is just a foot away! Just as God desires for us to be connected to Him in all we do, He also wants us to connect with others for encouragement and support.

Sometimes seeking out friendship is hard. It can be intimidating. It takes too much energy. This is how I’ve often viewed friendship in the past. Before my husband deployed, I was perfectly happy with just him and our little boy. I had my work to keep me busy. But it wasn’t everything I needed, and a couple of months before Cliff left, God showed me that I was going to need other relationships – other friendships with ladies who I could relate to.

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to talk to another military wife who “gets” something; who understands something that maybe I can’t even put into words. That, to me, is connection, and we’re seeing it in our Wives of Faith chapters and the events we’re holding. It’s one more way of helping a wife keep going; it’s one more way of cheering each other on as we go through the good times – and the bad.

Maybe, though, you still aren’t convinced that connection is important. After all, military wives are supposed to be strong, right? We can handle anything life, or the military, throws at us. Maybe you’re a lot like the Army wife I talked with on the phone this past spring who admitted she didn’t really have a support group she was part of. “We keep to ourselves,” she said. She had a brand new baby living in a brand new town and her husband was leaving in a month to deploy. She sounded strong and determined when she said she didn’t need anyone or any help, but in my mind I thought, “but why be by yourself if you don’t have to?”

It’s risky to connect. You open yourself up to possibly get hurt. I’ve heard stories of the back-biting and gossiping that can happen around a base or a post. Maybe you’ve been the victim of that yourself. But the good news is that Wives of Faith isn’t a group that is run by any military hierarchy and our husbands ranks aren’t a factor either – we are all wives supporting our husbands, and in turn, we support each other. Through our faith in Christ, a positive attitude and our hope that even when the hardest seasons of life comes our way, we can survive and get through it with God’s help and each other.

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