Sara Horn, a Navy Reservist wife, is the author of God Strong: The Military Wife’s Spiritual Survival Guide, and contributor to Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives. She is also the founder of Wives of Faith and a frequent contributor to military spouse magazines and Web sites. Here she shares great insights with us from her military wife life.
What are some unique challenges that you face as the wife of a Navy Reservist?
I would say the first challenge that comes to mind is location. My husband drills almost four hours from where we live in Nashville, so I’ve never been able to develop close relationships with some of the wives in our det (detachment) the way my husband has developed friendships with those he serves with. The area where we live in Nashville is not what I would consider a military community though we do have pockets of National Guard and Reserve scattered around the Middle TN area. Most people in our area associate anything military with Fort Campbell, which is an hour and a half north of us.
Another challenge we’ve experienced has been learning how to navigate the dual role of the citizen-soldier, or in my husband’s case, as a citizen-Seabee. It’s tough juggling military responsibilities along with the responsibilities of a civilian job and there is always schedule shuffling that has to happen and work to be done in between weekend drills and trainings.
Of course, the biggest challenge for us personally happened six months after my husband came back from his first deployment to Iraq. His civilian marketing job at a non-profit radio station was eliminated and he’s struggled to find full-time work since then. We believe in this tight economy that his reserve status has been part of the reason. He knows several other reservists who have experienced the same thing.
You made two visits to the Middle East for your first book, A Greater Freedom, written with Oliver North. What did you learn on those travels which proved to be helpful when your own husband deployed later?
I have to say those two trips were absolutely life-changing for me. For a few reasons. I spent time on both the USS Harry S. Truman (an aircraft carrier) during the first week of the war and then on the ground in Baghdad about eight months later. I interviewed both sailors and soldiers, many of whom were believers. I had the opportunity to visit an Iraqi family in their home in downtown Baghdad and talk to Iraqis after I attended their Christian church service in an old Anglican church building. While I was there, Iraqi women shared pictures of their children with me and I showed them pictures of my own little boy back home. There might have been a language barrier but I saw we all shared similar hopes and dreams. A better future for our children. Safety. Peace. One Iraqi woman even told me, “We were hoping what happened in Afghanistan would happen here.” When my husband deployed, I thought often about those Iraqi women and their children. I was grateful for the experience of having been there because I was not as fearful as I could have been. To me, Iraqis were not simply scary insurgents who wanted to harm my husband and the men and women he was serving with. Iraqis were those women I’d met – families who wanted what we already have here in America: freedom. And my husband was part of helping ensure that happened.
When I came home from those trips, I interviewed the wives of some of the soldiers and sailors I’d met. They shared their experiences with me which was also something that helped me prepare, though I didn’t know it at the time, for when we went through my husband’s deployment.
How did you prepare yourself for his first deployment?
We found out he was deploying the first day of a 2-week AT (annual training). He called from California to tell me and then I didn’t hear from him for a week because they were out in the field training. So I ordered every book I could find on deployment and read them cover to cover before he’d even made it home. I got on message boards for military spouses and started connecting with other Reserve and National Guard wives. As much as I loved connecting with those ladies, I found myself desiring something more. I wanted to be able to meet with other wives in my area because I believed God was showing me I needed to be able to connect with other women who understood the military life as well as shared my faith. It was then I got an email from an Army wife who was staying at her parents in Nashville with her two small children while her husband was on his second deployment to Iraq and we decided to meet for lunch one day. We had such a great time connecting, we wondered if other wives in the area might enjoy connecting too. And that’s how Wives of Faith got started.
What surprises you most about what God is doing with Wives of Faith today?
Well, personally, I never ever saw myself capable of doing women’s ministry, or really wanting to do it – and I do mean ever! J But if there has been one thing God has taught me over the years is that His plan is always so much better than my own, and since starting Wives of Faith, I absolutely LOVE doing women’s ministry, and specifically, ministering to military wives. The first surprise I ever got through Wives of Faith was realizing that women outside our region were interested in being part of what we were doing. And that active military wives living on posts and bases also were looking for that support. I guess I am surprised every day – by the women who come, by the stories I hear from wives who are encouraged by something on the website, the ministry moments we get to see on Facebook, and by the women who answer God’s call to share their own experiences with other wives for His glory. You don’t have to have a degree in theology to share God’s hope with someone else; you just have to be willing to be available. To listen. To relate. To show compassion. And though I’ve often struggled with feeling like I’m inadequate to do the job, God shows me over and over that He has me exactly where He wants me. Because when I do feel unable to do the job, that’s when I trust and depend on Him the most. And that’s what I want for all wives who are part of Wives of Faith – to lean on Him for His strength and be willing to step out and be available to do whatever it is He wants them to do, whether that’s walking through a deployment, or reaching out to another military wife to encourage.
What are your favorite ideas for helping children through deployments?
My son is almost 9 but he was 6 when his dad left for the first deployment. One of my most favorite ideas we did that year is the marble jar. It was a variation of an idea I’d heard using chocolate, and since I really didn’t want him eating candy every single day, we used marbles. I bought two identical glass jars and filled one jar with enough marbles to cover all the days my husband would be away (plus 30 more, just in case). Each day, Caleb would transfer a marble from the first jar to the second. It was a great visual for him (and me) and it was exciting when we started seeing the marbles in the second jar outnumber the marbles in the first. (Here is a blog I wrote about this). For younger children, I think doing videos of your deployed service member before he or she loves is also a great thing because you can play those over and over and they can see and hear their parent. My husband did a great job making little videos for special moments he would miss: birthday, last day of kindergarten, first day of first grade, those kinds of things. Here’s an article I wrote a while back that might offer some additional ideas for moms.
Your book God Strong: The Military Wife’s Spiritual Survival Guide was released last month. When you find yourself leaning on your own strength instead of God’s, what happens? How do you give up trying to do it all on your own and rely on God instead?
I think when you lean on your own strength instead of God’s, life is a lot tougher. You convince yourself you can do everything, and for awhile, you may in fact be able to do it all. But eventually you will run out of steam. You will run out of strength. That’s where I found myself seven months into my husband’s first deployment. And I realized I’d been doing it wrong. That it wasn’t about how strong I could be, but it was about how strong God was. And that His strength was what I needed, and that deployment didn’t have to be something for me to get over or sleep through, but it could be an opportunity for me to really seek out what God wanted to teach me. I had to learn to not ask “Why?” but “What?” And that is how I think you learn to rely on God. We learn to rely on God as we learn to keep Him as our focus each day. I think deployments are so emotional for spouses, and we can fall into the trap of looking at everything through the “Me” perspective instead of God’s perspective. If we can learn to change our perspective, that’s when we can find joy regardless of our circumstances. That means being deliberate with making time for prayer, making time for reading the Bible and making time to connect with other believers who will encourage us when we’re having bad days.
What do you hope readers will take-away from God Strong once they’ve read it and put it back on the shelf?
I hope they will have a new sense of what it means to rely on God instead of themselves. We have been conditioned in so many ways to be strong, and I want women to know God has a better way, that we aren’t meant to do everything on our own. I hope they will see the importance of seeking God out before hard times come; not just turning to Him when they feel like they can’t go on, the way we might go to a doctor after we’ve tried every home remedy possible. I want them to take the steps to build that relationship with Him today before a deployment or any other major life experience happens so they will be ready and so that He can be glorified. That’s one reason I wrote the free Bible study for both groups and individuals they can download off my website (godstrongbook.com). How awesome would it be for wives who are believers to be able to show God’s strength in their own situations to other wives around them who may not know God? Don’t you think those wives who aren’t believers might want to know where those wives get their strength? Get their peace and endurance? And that, I guess, is my ultimate desire for the book – that it will point readers to God and strengthen their relationships with Him, or begin brand new ones!
What moment or trial has been the biggest stretch of your faith so far? What helped you get through it?
We are just a few months short of two years of living through civilian unemployment and it has definitely required stretching! A lot more than I would have preferred, probably! Twenty months is a long time to go without a full-time job but I can tell you that it’s been amazing to see God provide. Yes, it’s been tough and there have been hard days and days I just wanted to roll over and throw my hands in the air, but I’ve found that the truths I write about in GOD Strong cover unemployment too! That worship and worry really do not mix and our fears can be traded for faith that God will see us through; that God is in control and sees the bigger picture even when we do not. And that when we grow weary and tired and are ready to give up, that’s when He steps in and asks us to lean on Him and He does indeed carry us. And I think what has helped us get through it is because my husband and I can look back at other times in our lives and see God’s hand there, and so we can hope and trust that He will move in this situation as well. It may not be our timing, but we continue to try and ask more “Whats” and less “Whys” and God has grown our marriage, our faith, and our family.
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What a great interview!