Grace Church of Southern Pines sponsors two groups for military-involved families.
Holding Up the Home Front ia a group for spouses of those serving in the U.S. military. Jennifer Bailey, whose husband serves in the Air Force, leads the group. The Baileys have two children.
“Holding up the Home Front is a network of spouses who support one another through the mountains and valleys of loving a member of the Armed Forces,” Bailey says. “We develop friendships that enable us to give/receive advice and provide prayer/support for each others’ needs.”
Group members also gather for Bible studies, she says.
“It’s our relationships with other believers and Christ that help us get through the deployments, single parenting, day-to-day trials, and having faith that the Lord will protect our spouses while they’re out serving their country,” Bailey says.
Bailey’s co-leader is Angela Pihlgren. Her husband is a 12-year Special Forces veteran. The Pihlgrens have two children.
“Young wives may not have experience in military life,” Pihlgren says. “We are here to lift them up in their times of need. When babies arrive, for example, we make meals for the families, so they can spend those precious times together.”
Pihlgren says her group likes to “lift up” their husbands with this saying: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take a stand against the devil's schemes . . . “ (Ephesians 6:10-20).
“We are a group of women who support each other like a FRG (Family Readiness Group) would in a unit in the military, but with Christ involved,” Pihlgren says.
A Family Readiness Group (FRG) is “a command-sponsored organization of family members, volunteers, soldiers and civilian employees associated with a particular unit,” according to Wikipedia.
Chris Wortham and her husband, a special forces career-soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, lead “Battle Ready,” a Grace Church-sponsored group for military families, including husbands, wives and children. The Worthams have three children.
“We’re investing in families, so that when spouses deploy, families will survive the pressures,” Wortham says. “We’ve seen too many of our friends get divorced.”
The Battle Ready group encourages family bonding before the active-duty parent in a military family deploys, she says.
“Children crave ‘alone-time’ with the active-duty parent, just as the spouse does,” Wortham says. “ ‘Battle Ready’ is about ‘families.’”
Wortham refers to the following statement found in “Healing on the homefront,” an article written by Jon R. Anderson and posted at www.armytimes.com on Feb. 28, 2012:
“While civilian divorce rates have been falling, military divorces are up 42 percent since 2001,” Anderson says. “If troops got a Purple Heart for every broken heart, those who have gone through a divorce during the past decade of war would eclipse those with physical wounds by 5-to-1. It would take more than 255,000 white grave markers to account for every military couple divorced since 9/11.”
“That’s why we are doing this group,” Wortham says. “Those statistics are not just numbers to us but represent friends who have become family. My husband and I have made a choice to seek God for what his plans are for our family, to begin to ask the hard questions of one another and to fight to keep our family together and strong. ‘Battle Ready’ came about because we were looking for folks who were willing to walk this out with us.”
She says members of Battle Ready recently talked about the “cord of three strands” referred to in Ecclesiastes 4:12.
“We defined the three strands as husband, wife and God,” Wortham says. “If these three are tightly woven, then they will not be easily separated when the stress of deployments, finances, child-rearing, etc. come along.”
To tighten the “cord,” the group sponsors date-nights.
“Couples are given one date-night a month where the cost for a baby-sitter is covered,” Wortham says. “We alternate those evenings with nights of fellowship and the study of God’s Word, as it relates to love, marriage, children and whatever else applies.”
The group encourages couples to invest time in their children.
“All children crave the attention of their parents; however, we believe this is even more evident in homes where a parent has to come and go, as in a military family,” Wortham says. “My husband recently said that the total number of years he has spent deployed to war zones – not counting training, schools and other short trips – equals one-third of our oldest child’s life, one-half of our middle child’s life and all of our youngest child’s life. When I heard that, I realized I want to make every moment count. I want to be ‘Battle Ready.’”
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