Ask Kathryn: How do I Prepare to be a Military Wife?

I am so excited to have the “Ask Kathryn” feature starting up again! It’s been a few months, but I am ready to start again and looking forward to answering all your questions! Today’s letter is from a young woman is wondering how she can prepare to be a military wife. I hope it helps others who may be wondering the same thing.

Hi Kathryn,

I recently just started following your blog and reading all your old posts!!! And I am currently in a long term and long distance relationship with an officer cadet in the Canadian military. James and I have been together for 18 months, and are hoping to get married in three years once he has finished his education and his 4 phases of training.

Recently, I have found that more and more we are talking about the serious things, the what-if’s with him being in the military and it scares me. Because I know that I love him more then anything else in this world, and I know that God has brought him into my life and that I want to marry him because I can’t even begin to imagine my life without him. That being said, he continuously asks me if I can handle deployments. How am I going to handle not knowing where he is all the time or when and if I will see him again? If I’m ok with raising our children alone? And many more! I answer them as best as I can, but I know that none of my answers are reality because I honestly don’t know. I like to think that I will be able to handle it all, but what happens if I can’t?

I guess, I was just wondering if you have any advice for how to prepare for this? If you have any suggestions for how we should prepare ourselves for the married military life?

Thank you so much for you blog! It has truly been a blessing to me in the last few days! God Bless you and your family!

Laura

Hi Laura,
Thank you so much for messaging me!

It sounds to me like you have a very smart man who is preparing you and wants you to be prepared for every single aspect of military life. He is asking you these questions to make you think and because, I think, he wants you to be sure this is what YOU want.

The reality is there really is no real way to prepare yourself for the rigors of military life and what to expect. BUT I think you can prepare mentally for the fact that military life is hard. You can prepare your mind to know that no matter what you will stand by him, that you both will get through this together and that no matter how hard it is you will pray for each other and be there for each other.

I did a lot of research before I became a military wife. I had a little of an idea of what life was going to be like – or so I thought. In all honesty, military life has been far better than I thought and deployment far more difficult than I thought. We are blessed to be enjoying our lives as a military family and even though we have been through some tough times during deployment and other things we have stuck together through it and it has made us stronger. I would never have picked a different path.

So to summarize: you can’t really prepare yourself for deployment and what’s to come, but you can prepare your mind and know that this may be hard but you will both overcome through Jesus Christ. Pray lots together and alone and keep Christ at the center of your marriage and relationship. You will get through this if you go into it knowing that this will be hard, but that you will get through it together. There will be many rewards to this life as well and I think you will be pleased to see how many!

I don’t know if you saw this post or not yet, but it’s called “Dear Future Military Wife” and perfect for what you are going through!

To my readers: What about YOU? Did you have a way you prepared to be a military wife? What is some advice you would give to her?