April Cao, one of the newest members of the Faith Deployed blog team, has been a Navy wife for nearly 12 years. She and her husband have a seven-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. She has already shared with us a very powerful series on “Striving for Perfection in Marriage.” Here, she shares a little more about her military wife life, including Sept. 11, 2001, RPG attacks, military marriage, infertility, adoption, and the role faith plays in it all.
What has being a military wife taught you about yourself?
If you would have told me 12 years ago that I could juggle family, faith and friendships all within the confines of a hectic military lifestyle I would have told you that you must be talking about the wrong person! I didn’t know that I had it in me to endure eight moves in eleven years and all of the challenges that come with being a military family. But I’ve surprised myself and have learned to find joy during the hard times and laugh that much harder during the good times. Being a military wife has shaped the woman I am today. I have learned to be a friend worth having, to give without expectation and that community begins in the home. I don’t sweat the small stuff and cherish the time that we have together as a family.
What is your biggest challenge or struggle as a military wife (either during or between deployments)? How do you cope?
During the past two deployments I am surprised to find myself struggling with physical loneliness. I am counting down the days until I can feel my husband’s arms wrapped around me again. It’s the little things that I miss the most; holding hands, a wink across the room, a kiss to start the day, a reassuring touch. I am reminded that it is important to guard my heart during this season, to hold my thoughts captive and to use this time for spiritual growth. Instead of focusing on what is missing, I devote my time to strengthening intimacy with my husband in other ways. I figure seven months is plenty of time to refine the art of sappy love letters and heartfelt emails.
I understand that your husband’s base is continually under RPG attacks, which have already claimed at least one life. How do you manage your fears and concern for his safety?
I’m so happy that you have asked this question because I love sharing how God has given me peace in regards to my husband’s physical safety, deployed or otherwise. In 2000 we moved to Florida so Hung could attend the Navy’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal School. For one year he studied nuclear, improvised, underwater and air ordinances and somewhere in those 52 weeks I had to make the decision to give any fear that I had for his safety over to God.
Our world changed, however, days prior to Hung’s graduation from EOD School. The packers were just beginning to wrap and box, leaving me the luxury of the sofa and television to keep me occupied. I began every morning as usual with “Good Morning America” on in the background but on this particular day the bold red news alert immediately caught my attention. One of the Twin Towers was on fire in New York and as they speculated on the cause of that fire, with the camera trained directly on the burning building, a low-flying plane came out of the corner of the TV screen and slammed into the second Tower. I remember that at the same time I gasped one of the packers said “Oh my God! Oh my God!” and on September 11, 2001, I knew that giving my husband over to God had just taken on a whole new meaning.
I understand that fear will not keep Hung safe and by the grace of God He has blessed me with a peace that is truly an answer to prayer. Last year as we began our fourth deployment, his first on the ground in Iraq, I prayed Philippians 4:6-7 daily, sometimes hourly for the first few weeks. Over time I experienced a calming reassurance that could only come from the Father and as I watched my husband leave again for Iraq this spring, I felt just as worry-free as I had the previous year. It is hard sometimes even for me to believe that I have no anxiety or fear for my husband’s physical safety, even when I hear news about RPG attacks or that he has been handling explosives. I can only use this supernatural peace as a testimony to God’s promise in His Word. I love how Hung often quotes Stonewall Jackson to explain his faith in the sovereignty of God, “…I’m just as safe on the battlefield as I am in my bed. The Lord has already appointed the day of my death so I need not worry about that.”
Every day I pray for my husband’s safety but I take care to pray for his heart as well. A stressful environment can be a hindrance or a help to spiritual growth so I pray often that he seeks God in the few quiet moments he has to himself.
Your daughter is adopted. Do you have any specific advice for other military couples considering adoption?
I could talk about adoption all day long! For any military family looking to adopt I would first suggest going to the Lord in prayer and asking His guidance. Adoption is NOT for the faint of heart. Whether you are adopting locally or internationally, the process is time-consuming and often financially difficult. But just as labor pains are forgotten, so are the hurdles we go through to adopt our children. It is worth it a thousand times over.
Finding an adoption agency that meets the needs of your family and has a reputation beyond reproach is an important first step in the process. We adopted internationally but know many families that have gone through their state for private domestic adoption or foster-adoption. Regardless of which kind of adoption experience is right for your family, I would encourage utilizing the resources available from your agency, social workers, other adoptive parents and on the web. I got involved immediately with our agency’s online support forum and have stayed in close contact with one group of women for almost four years.
What I wish someone would have said to me is that adoption is not always easy, in fact there are challenges that I could not have anticipated and would not have believed if I hadn’t gone through them myself. Our daughter suffered tremendous grief that lasted the better part of a year and even three years later we find that there are still adoption-related issues that creep into her daily life. Having an adopted child with a parent that is deployed or gone for weeks at a time can often magnify feelings of grief, anxiety and abandonment and being the parent left behind to pick up the emotional pieces can be a very lonely place. If you are in the process of adoption, seek out support before your child comes home. Talk to other mothers and don’t be afraid to ask about the good, the bad and the ugly. Our adopted children come to us with a history and the faster that reality is accepted the easier it is for them to move forward with the healing process. If you are already home and find yourself in need of support, look for an adoption group that meets weekly or find an adoption counselor or therapist that can guide you and become a sounding board for concerns and challenges. James 1:27 says Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Adoption is a gift and not just for the children we bring home, but for ourselves. My daughter helped me become the mother God always intended.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard or given related to military wife life?
We were so blessed to have Christian mentors in Monterey, California, and their godly wisdom and direction helped strengthen us as a couple. All too often I allowed my emotions to direct my actions, which eventually led to periods of disharmony and unbalance in our marriage. Of course it takes two to tango but I recognized my role in being a part of the problem and not the solution. I believed all too strongly that if I felt a certain way that it validated my actions towards my spouse. If I felt I had been abandoned than I showed anger even though God asks me to respect my husband unconditionally. I felt (there’s that word again) that after having a baby on my own, dealing with deployments and learning to be both mom and dad that I had earned the right to behave in a way that was not honoring to my husband and to God. Thanks goodness we had mentors that offered loving and biblical counsel and advice about how emotions can lead us astray and it was a life changing moment for me.
Have you made any mistakes as a military wife that you have learned from which you can share?
Being a military wife can be particularly challenging because we are often in the position to be mother, father and spiritual head of our home while our husbands are deployed or underway. Unfortunately, as a product of the “I can do it all!!” generation I squeezed my husband out of his role as head of the house. It happened so slowly and over such a long period of time that I wasn’t even aware I had done it. Listening to our pastor speak on Ephesians 5:22-26 woke me from my independent stupor. As he recited verse 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her… I remember looking at my husband and thinking, my goodness; I’ve never even given him the chance to love me as Christ loved the Church and right then and there I prayerfully submitted to my husband’s authority as the head of our family. No longer did I need to make every decision in order to experience satisfaction and trusting him to choose wisely for our family was incredibly freeing.
What moment or trial has been the biggest stretch of your faith so far? What helped you get through it?
For 12 years I have struggled with infertility and I can honestly say that although we have been blessed immeasurably with two beautiful children, my heart still aches with loss. I took for granted that as a young woman, newly married, that my body would do naturally what it was created for and that was not the case. During our fifth year of marriage our son was conceived with the help of fertility treatments and when we decided to have baby number two our second IUI attempt failed. A year later, during our overseas tour, we decided to focus on building our family rather than becoming pregnant and started the adoption process. This year we began fertility treatments again, which I continued despite Hung being deployed, and we were unsuccessful. We hope to resume once he is home but I acknowledge that this is a chapter in my life that is still being written and my feelings ebb and flow from day to day. I try to stay focused on what God has given us (which is not difficult when I look into the faces of my precious children!) while praying with confidence that we are acting in accordance with His will.
How does your faith help you in this unique lifestyle of the hero at home?
Living by faith and not by sight encourages me to see past my circumstances. I am so proud of the dedication that my husband has to our country and although we are faced with challenges that many families will never experience, through faith I believe that we have been called to live a military life so I plan on enjoying it.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
April, thank you for this powerful testimony of faith in action! It has blessed me today!
Your Daddy is very proud of you!
I am so proud of how well you express yourself. So many of the questions you answered I have heard women talk about. Wonderfully done, dear one…….Love, Char
April – I’d love to talk to you about your adoption experience as a military family. I am working with a group of adoption professionals on how they can do a better job of reaching out to military families and facilitating adoptions, especially through the foster care system (which I realize is different than what you experienced). But your experiences of integration and navigating the military system before, during and after the adoption would be very enlightening. Please shoot me an email and we could set up a time to chat. I am Government Relations Director of the National Military Family Association.
Hi April,
I enjoyed reading your bio. I noticed you said you had christian mentors while in Monterey, CA. We are currently here while my husband attends DLI. Where did you get plugged in (besides the church) with other christians and christian military wives?