Another Move, God? Hope for Military WivesMuestra

Lingering Loneliness

After long-distance dating my husband for two years, he swept me off my feet, but I felt dropped with a thud as we moved three times that first year of marriage. My husband needed to undergo military training en route to his next assignment. As a newlywed, I had no idea the turmoil being an armed forces wife would add to life nor the extent of loneliness that I would feel. Upon arriving at the operational assignment, my husband deployed for the Middle East within two months. I drowned in emptiness, misery, and sorrow.

At that time, I didn’t know that I would be able to find myself in the pages of the Bible. Genesis 11-12 includes God’s call to Abraham and Sarah’s life to “go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” Through Abraham, God led Sarah to leave her home and her family and travel to a new land where God reestablished her. Sarah’s journey sounds quite similar to a military spouse’s journey. Can you imagine her feeling some trepidation?

When it comes to a big move, Sarah may have physically faced even more challenges than a military spouse. Sarah’s journey from Haran to Canaan was more than 400 miles, wound along the edge of a barren desert wilderness, traveled along rivers, and would have taken at least three full weeks of constant travel. Sarah would have had to wait many months to begin reestablishing connections in Canaan.

As a military spouse, have you also felt the pain of loneliness when you've had to move to a new location, or when your spouse was away on deployment or temporary duty? Sarah understood loneliness and likely clung to her faith in God for comfort.

During the next few days, we’ll take a closer look at Sarah’s experience and her faith to find encouragement for our lives as military wives.

The name of God used here in Genesis in the original Hebrew language is “El Shaddai,” which translates as the “God Almighty” or “the God who is all-sufficient.” If God is mighty and all-sufficient, then he is enough. He can sustain you through periods of isolation. And as strange as it sounds, the Lord may even be ordaining a period of aloneness so you will rely on him and cling to him more.

Think about it: we all want proof that God is near, that God cares, that God will sustain us. But we often miss it because we spend all our energy looking at the people around us instead of upward toward him. Sometimes lonely seasons—seasons where there are not many people to look around at—force us to look up, where we can finally see God.