FamilyLife Today®

Beth Runkle: I got out my Bible. I'm a new believer and I'm wondering where God has shown himself to be faithful. I see he had them cross the Red Sea. That was impossible. So God is faithful. I can trust him.

I began to recount the times he had been faithful in my life. I'm pushing out that fear with the truth that God is faithful and he can be relied on. These times that he's been faithful tell me he will be faithful in this situation now.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. We have Beth Runkle back with us today. Her book is called *Another Move, God*. She's a military wife and it's a devotional, but this book is going to apply to every single person and it's going to fire you up.

Dave Wilson: There's a lot we can learn from the military and we so appreciate all they do. But her applications and analogies will apply to your life, I guarantee it. So you're going to love today.

Beth Runkle: I learned to manage my expectations. My husband's an optimist, and he would come and tell me sometimes, "Hey, I know I've been working late. I know I haven't spent time with you and the kids. I'm going to be home every day this week."

What I started to realize is that's what he wants to do. That's his heart. That's where his priority is. But he works for the military. Duty calls, and sometimes your superior comes and says, "Hey, this needs to be done," and you have to stay.

I began to adjust my expectations and to say, "I know he wants to be home, but he might not be able to." So when he came home and we had eaten dinner and his food had gotten cold, I just made him a plate and put it in the refrigerator. I don't add to the disappointment of him not having been there by being angry with him, because it's outside of his control.

This didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen our first year of marriage, but I began to lower my expectations by understanding duty comes first. I think this can happen with any job. Yes, it's hard and I think we have to be honest, but I also had to say for myself that he wants to be here, but he's likely not going to be. Therefore, I'm not going to expect him to walk through the door.

Dave Wilson: What about the wife whose husband's not in the military but has an important and high-demanding job? That wife feels like, "I come first. I know your job's important, but you made a vow. I should come first." So somewhere in there, she should be getting priority over the job, but often that doesn't happen. What do you say to her?

Beth Runkle: One of the things that my husband did is that when he could give me priority, he did. For example, when he flew the F-117 stealth fighter, it was a night mission. He flew nights Monday through Friday. I did not see him Monday through Friday.

What he would do for me is on Saturday mornings, he would give me Saturday morning to rest because I had an infant and an 18-month-old. I was exhausted. Sundays were family day. We did spend some time on Saturday, but we also did things so I could get some help Monday through Friday. Once a week I got a babysitter. That was for adult conversation, because I wasn't getting any.

But one thing he would say to me very often when he would leave for a TDY or deployment or just working long hours, he would come to me face-to-face and he would say, "Hey, I have to do such and such. I want you to know I would prefer to be with you. You are my priority, but this time I have to go do this. But you are so loved by me and you mean so much to me." That went very far.

Some of the husbands I knew, when they were on mission, they would completely disconnect with family and not call them. My husband didn't do that, and I'm thankful he didn't. Even if it was just a short conversation, especially when they're deployed and it's dangerous, just to say, "Hey, I love you. I'm committed, and I sure do miss you."

Dave Wilson: Did you ever get to a point sometimes where you were exhausted? Or you were disrespectful? I saw a look. What does that mean?

Beth Runkle: That's definitely something as a strong woman I had to learn.

Ann Wilson: What's that look like? What happened?

Beth Runkle: I remember we had just moved from one location to the other. I homeschooled our children so that we could be with him, so we went with him to all of his trainings. I also prioritized him when he worked long hours. I would get up early to just have coffee with him so we would at least connect a little bit.

I really tried to flex as I could to prioritize him. But back to the disrespect. I remember I was trying to homeschool the kids while I'm packing boxes, and it was algebra. My husband happened to be home and he kept butting in. He kept coming and helping.

I thought, "This is my turf. Get off." We had a disagreement about it and there was some tension. He said to me that night, "You know, I've always been a good leader in my life. I led my senior class. I was the cadet corps commander of my ROTC detachment. In my flights, I've been a commander. I've been a squadron commander of 500 officers and a couple hundred enlisted people. But I can't lead you."

I was like, "Ouch." But it was so true. I was the problem. God really used that. He didn't raise his voice, he wasn't angry, but he was letting me know I wasn't letting him lead. I had some work to do. I had to repent.

Originally I thought that being a submissive wife and letting your husband be the head of household meant that I had to be a doormat. I'm not a doormat. I have opinions.

Ann Wilson: You push back on that because you don't want to become that.

Beth Runkle: But what I came to realize is it's also not aggressively dominating your husband, shrieking, and being fierce. I think it is balance between the two. Brian and I have worked it out really well. He comes to me for everything. He really values my opinion. I give my opinion. But at the end of the day, he has so much more responsibility than me. I'm enjoying more and more resting in that and letting him take the lead.

Dave Wilson: Was that a long process? I mean, when it's similar to our story, but when I said to Ann, "I feel like the people out there sort of like me and think I'm good, and I feel like you think I'm bad and you don't like me." I'm booing you. It was similar to what Brian said. "I lead squadrons and they must think I'm pretty good because I do it. I can't lead you." Ann heard it too. I said mine a lot worse. Brian was much better and gentler.

Beth Runkle: He's pretty gracious.

Dave Wilson: But did you switch in a day or a month? How did that go?

Beth Runkle: No. I've been married 28 years now. I came to Christ three years in, so it's been a 25-year journey. I still have a lot to learn, but I am beginning to see these last 10 years the blessing of letting him lead and trusting him.

This is the realization that I came to. We were stationed in Montgomery, Alabama in 2005 and I was studying Sarah. We were looking at some of the decisions that Abraham made. "Come on, Sarah, there's a famine. Let's go to Egypt. While we're in Egypt, we're going to pretend that you're my sister because I really want to save my own neck. Then I'm going to go off and rescue my nephew Lot with my 318 house servants against four kings and all their armies."

I could go on. But there were some decisions that Abraham made where I thought that wasn't a very good decision. That doesn't seem very smart. As I was putting myself in Sarah's place, I wondered if she felt like Abraham had lost some marbles. None of these are good decisions.

But what I saw from 1 Peter is that Sarah did not give way to fear, but she called Abraham "lord." It wasn't an audible voice, but God very clearly spoke to me and said, "There may be times where you don't trust the decision your husband is making, but you trust me. I can work through even what may seem like a bad decision because I can be trusted." He said, "If you don't trust your husband, then you're really saying you don't trust me." Brian, if you're listening, I do trust you. But there are just certain situations.

Ann Wilson: And think about it. Abraham does the same thing again with Sarah. "She's my sister," with Abimelech. She's probably thinking, "Are you kidding me? We're going to do this again?" And again, God protects her. So I think that's a great point. We may not always agree.

Beth Runkle: That's a better word. Agree.

Ann Wilson: Agree with what our husbands are doing or saying. I think if we don't, we need to talk about that. It's not like you just suffer in silence. We talk about it, but our ultimate trust is in a Father who loves us and sees us.

Beth Runkle: There's been situations where Brian's listened to my counsel and agreed with me and we went forward with what he felt was the right decision. There's been times where he's like, "No, we're going with what I thought."

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Dave Wilson: One of the themes of your book is faith over fear. Abraham's making these really bad decisions because of fear. So how does he, or you as a wife, navigate that? There's fearful moments every day of our lives that we have to choose if we can trust God or not.

Beth Runkle: In the book, I talk about when Abraham went off to fight in that battle, there was fear. Sarah was at home in her tent. She didn't have a house like I did. But if you look at the Talmud and the Mishnah, Sarah is mentioned as having been a woman of great prayer. Those are not as authoritative as the Bible, but the Jews do really regard those sources.

Dave Wilson: Look at you going from a woman who didn't even know what a Bible was to going to the Mishnah and the Talmud. Most Christians don't even know those books exist.

Beth Runkle: Well, I'm secretly a Bible nerd. I love the Word of God and I love studying.

Dave Wilson: Good.

Beth Runkle: So I imagined Sarah may have been reeling with some of the fearful thoughts that I had. What I learned was, for example, when Brian was in the Middle East, I remember watching the news and hearing that the surface-to-air missiles were so many on this day that it was like there was fog. You couldn't see anything. I'm watching the news and knowing that my husband is over there flying.

I'm freaking out and saying I have to stop. I have to turn off this news. For the younger person, social media. Get off your phone. I learned I couldn't just tell myself not to have these anxious thoughts, because what ends up happening? I say don't have these anxious thoughts, and what happens the next second? Anxious thoughts.

I learned from physics. The displacement principle tells us that we cannot be full of two things at the same time. You may have seen this if you've ever gotten into a hot tub or if you put your kids in the bath. When you put your little kid in the bath, the water level goes up. That's the displacement principle.

Our mind works the same way. We have to push out these fearful thoughts, and we do it with replacing them with truth, with faith. I think we get this from Philippians. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer with thanksgiving, present your requests to the Lord and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.

I got out my Bible. I'm a new believer and I'm asking, where is God shown himself to be faithful? I see he had them cross the Red Sea. That was impossible. So God is faithful. I can trust him. Then I began to recount the times he'd been faithful in my life. So I'm pushing out that fear with the truth that God is faithful, that he can be relied on. These times that he's been faithful tell me he will be faithful in this situation now.

Dave Wilson: And you're able in those evenings, because I can't imagine, you've displaced it and you've chosen faith over fear. But even as you're going to sleep, I can't imagine knowing there's bullets flying and your husband's in the middle of that.

Beth Runkle: It's hard. I'm not going to lie, but I get out my Bible, I read my Bible, and I fall asleep praying. We have to take those thoughts captive to make them obedient to Christ. I think God can also handle that I'm really struggling with this, Lord, can you help me? But I couldn't just sit there and do nothing. I had to fill it with the truth of God's faithfulness in my own life. I would recount the times that God has proven in the past where I just thought it was an impossible situation.

Dave Wilson: And I'm guessing there's people listening watching right now that are in something like that. It might be their son or daughter or their spouse.

Ann Wilson: Or you just look at the chaos of the world.

Beth Runkle: Whatever we focus on grows. If you are focused on your difficult circumstance, it's going to grow. I have to focus on the Lord and what he says to be true. Look up instead of looking down.

Ann Wilson: That's vertical. I love that you've memorized Scripture. I love that Scripture in Philippians that says he'll guard our hearts and our minds, both in Christ Jesus. So it is learning that displacement. Here's the Scripture. I'm going to say it over and over and then you fall asleep.

Beth Runkle: I do have things memorized that I use during those times. It's our sword. It's our weapon. That's where we go to fight with. They might fight with big weapons, but we fight with the Word.

Dave Wilson: All right, tent dweller. What's that idea?

Beth Runkle: Sarah and Abraham were constantly on the move. I really related to that because my life was a life of transition. I actually calculated one time and I had spent 30% of my life unpacking from a move or preparing for the next move.

Dave Wilson: One third of your life!

Beth Runkle: At that particular time, yes. But looking at Sarah and all the different moving that she was doing, and as I was studying this, the account in Scripture that is right before Sarah and Abraham is the Tower of Babel. At the Tower of Babel, the people there were seeking to build something permanent for themselves for their own glory.

Dave Wilson: To make their name great.

Beth Runkle: Yes. And God comes and says, "No, I'm not going to let you do that." The next story is Sarah and Abraham, who are tent dwellers, who are constantly on the move. Only they're moving on the backs of camels and donkeys. I at least had moving trucks. It actually kind of made me feel not quite so sorry for myself.

Then when they get to Canaan, the first thing that Sarah and Abraham do is they build a permanent altar for the Lord. I think what may have been happening there is Abraham may have been saying, "God is the permanent thing." He did not want them at Babel to make something permanent for themselves, but God is the permanent thing that we can depend on. He is the stable thing. He is our rock. Nothing else is. If we think about it, even if you're not military, whatever you do, everything in this world is temporary. This is not our home. God is the only permanent thing. So that's what I really learned from them.

Ann Wilson: When I think about that whole story, in fact, I'm going through year 20 of reading through the Bible in a year. Just started year 20. So I've read that story a lot in Genesis. It is an amazing book. But I also started this year marking all the times when Abraham built a memorial. And I've started doing that over the years. It's a reminder of God's faithfulness.

As you're talking, Beth, so often you're talking about God's Word, you're talking about his faithfulness, and you can tell that you're in the Word. I can tell that that has changed you. It's your rock. When I read the Bible and it's when God gives instruction for the kings of Israel, they're to be in the Word every day to be reminded. What does that look like for you and how have you made that a habit?

Beth Runkle: I am in ministry now, so I disciple cadets at the Air Force Academy. I've been doing that for eight and a half years. Even though I open the Word with them every day, I learned my first year of ministry that I have to also open it for myself, because if I'm opening to feed them, it might not be feeding me.

So daily quiet time, time in the Word. But I also realized I need a group of women to come together to study the Bible that are more peers and not people I'm pouring into, although I do lead a study. I love to be in a study with other women because you just get so much of interacting over the Scriptures and encouraging each other. Some days you're having a bad day and you can go and sometimes you can just borrow faith from some of your sisters in Christ as you open the Word together. So that's essential for me. I love the Word of God. I love teaching it to women and interacting with them. Anytime I'm having a discipleship moment, we're constantly in the Word. They'll ask me a question and I'll say, "Well, let's go to James." This is life-giving.

This changes your world. I'm a dramatically different person because I love God's Word and I allow it to teach me. This book is living active, sharper than a double-edged sword. There is no other book I believe that we can pick up and read time and time again and God continues to give us new things or exactly what we need for that exact day.

Ann Wilson: It's miraculous. I would never read another book every single year for 20 years. But when I pick up the Bible, Dave knows this, I'll be in the car reading it to him. I'm like, "Listen to this!" Like I've never heard it before.

Dave Wilson: I've even said to her, "You've read this like 18 times. Act like you've never heard this before." But it's just alive. Like you said. It's interesting as I listen to you, I hear you have peers beside you, you have disciples behind you. Who's ahead of you? Who do you follow? Who's mentoring you? Besides FamilyLife Today, of course.

Beth Runkle: Of course. When we were in the military, it was constantly changing. I realized that I had to be assertive to seek that out and ask women to pour into me and invest in me. Usually it was a year or two at a time. But now since we are settled, I have an older group of women that I pray with from my church and meet with them. They are prayer warriors. They are such a blessing to me. I think we all need someone ahead of us and behind us and at our level that we allow to speak into our lives, the good and the bad, and correct us at times.

Ann Wilson: I think, too, let me just address women that aren't in a group like that with other women. I just had dinner with Dave last week and I said, "I feel like I'm just in a funky place." I don't know if it's sad, loss, and I was trying to figure out with him what it was.

Dave Wilson: Of course, I thought it was me.

Ann Wilson: No, it's not you.

Dave Wilson: Husbands will own it. We really will.

Ann Wilson: No, it's not you. And I realized I'm not in a group right now. Because I'm the same, there's nothing that lights my fire than giving Jesus away or being in the Word with other women and having peers that are encouraging me or somebody that's challenging me. That feeds my soul. So if you're a woman and you're not in a group, can I just tell you, go after that. Find a group or start one. You did it and you were a baby!

Beth Runkle: I did it lots of times. Pretty much everywhere we moved, I started a group.

Ann Wilson: You did. Because you knew you needed community. Maybe you get Beth's book. There's a leader's guide to go with it that makes it a seven-week small group study. It's free on my website. I found too, often it just started with one woman, but word spread and more people came and more people came. The study that I'm leading right now, I have two women that are brand new Christians, don't know anything about the Bible. They were really anxious and I said, "Hey, come. I want you to be there. You're going to learn from others." No pressure if you're not able to do your homework. But I assure you, they get in there and they see the excitement of the other women and they do their homework.

I've also gotten really interested in historical cultural contextualization. It is making the Bible come alive. When we understand their original culture, it makes so much more of what's written have so much more depth to it and we understand.

Dave Wilson: Have you jumped into Kristi McLelland yet?

Beth Runkle: Yes, I have. I've done all her studies. And I also just went to Turkey and Greece with a cultural contextualization study group. It was amazing.

Dave Wilson: I want to do that. Take me with you the next time. I haven't met Brian, but I think you're as much a cadet as he is. You're a soldier girl. Way to go.

Ann Wilson: Or she's a general. Aren't we? We are all in the Lord's army. Yes, we are. It's all about building the kingdom.

Dave Wilson: But I love your fire and your impact. Seriously, way to go.

Beth Runkle: The Lord has definitely done this in me. I was scary before I knew Jesus.

Dave Wilson: Now you're scary for Jesus. Thank you. This is awesome.

Ann Wilson: It's been so good, Beth.

Dave Wilson: Go to familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes and get *Another Move, God*. Beth Runkle, thank you for being with us.

Beth Runkle: Thanks so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

Dave Wilson: Before we're done today, let me just say this. We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most. And that's what being a FamilyLife partner is all about, helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you've found right here.

Ann Wilson: And we'd love for you to join us. So click the donate button at familylifetoday.com and become a partner today.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.