The Night of Power is revered as a sacred night in Islam. Taking place during Ramadan, it’s a time when devoted Muslims pray, study the Qur’an and ask for forgiveness from Allah. And, as with any religion, it has been weaponized by some extremists for their own agendas. My husband, an Apache pilot, had recently arrived in Afghanistan, and his unit was briefed that Islamic extremists would likely attack that night, wanting to claim an enormous reward from Allah. At sunrise, 150 insurgents dressed in stolen American uniforms surrounded two bases in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, my husband had just landed on one of those bases from his nighttime mission and was caught in the crosshairs.
As the enemy began cutting through the wire, my husband and his co-pilot lifted off again to defend the base. That’s when 15 bullets pierced his aircraft, and a rocket-propelled grenade missed the nose of his aircraft by one foot. He and his co-pilot survived the attack and were unharmed physically, but there are deeper layers that become injured in ways we cannot see.
What we weren’t prepared for as a new military couple was that the effects of a traumatic combat deployment often come home and seep into your marriage. The events on the Night of Power attempted to divide my husband and me as we struggled to process what was happening and how to bring healing. Before my husband went to war, I idolized him, but that began to change when he returned home. He’s an impressive human being with a long list of achievements, so putting him on a pedestal was easy. The thing is, military life is shakey, and you can get the pedestal knocked out from underneath you pretty quickly.
When my husband came home from Afghanistan, the military quickly sent us to Ft. Novosel, home of Army Aviation. Why not move two weeks after a traumatic deployment? If you haven’t been there, Enterprise, Alabama, is a tiny southern town where everyone knows you and calls you sweetie. There’s nowhere to run in a town like that but the local church. So, that’s exactly what I did. Thankfully, that move helped save my marriage.
As I navigated the difficulties of a new city, a lack of friends, a strained marriage and unemployment, something interesting was about to happen. God began to teach me the unhappiness I was experiencing was a good thing. But how can that be? I thought marriage was about happiness, and mostly mine! However, that belief misses the mark and contributes to our devastatingly high divorce rates. In fact, the military has the highest divorce rate of any profession, double that of civilians. And for those service members who develop PTSD, their divorce rates skyrocket to 60%.
The military lifestyle is one of perpetual trials, so we won’t always be happy. So, how do we stay married if we find ourselves unhappy? In my 15 years as a military spouse, I’ve realized that since God created marriage, we must follow His model if we’re going to get it right. I tried to make my marriage work for over a decade using my ideas and trying to push my agenda. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work well. When I finally got sick of feeling constant resentment and bitterness toward my husband, the military, and all the sacrifices I’d endured at the hand of Uncle Sam, I decided to try marriage God’s way.
It’s counterintuitive, but God tells us to love each other extravagantly and selflessly. He wants us to continuously put the other person first (even when we don’t feel like it). So, longing for joy to return to my marriage, I tried it. I created a 40-day challenge to love my husband. And wouldn’t you know, even though I was the one loving and serving him, we had the best 40 days of our marriage? It changed our hearts. So much so that my husband decided he didn’t want it to end, creating a 40-day challenge for me.
Unfortunately, it took me 10 years to learn to love that way because I was so stuck in the challenges of military life. I was not equipped for multiple deployments, 12 moves, regular solo parenting, financial challenges, and combat trauma. If only someone would have handed me a military marriage manual and said, “Here’s how you do this well.”
Thankfully, that exists now! As a writer, I recognized the need for an all-encompassing guide to prepare military spouses from brand new to seasoned. Born out of our military marriage challenges and a desire for others to feel equipped to live out military life, I wrote the book Mission-Ready Marriage: A Christian Guide to Discovering Hope and Purpose as a Military Wife.
I believe this book contains exactly what our community needs to begin to feel prepared, seen, and even celebrated! Military spouses make up a mere .0128% of the world’s population. We are finely selected to live out this calling. God has assigned us an incredibly significant purpose in this role, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it!