FamilyLife Today®

Beth Runkle: It's so easy to fall into this selfishness and worry about me and be self-consumed with, oh, I have it so hard. But when we get in God's word and we let him tell us the way we're supposed to treat our spouse and the way we're supposed to be, then the Holy Spirit has a lot more to work with.

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

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann Wilson: Okay, this is going to be a great day.

Dave Wilson: Okay, why?

Ann Wilson: It's going to be a relevant day because we have a new friend in the studio. She's really kind of an old friend, but Beth Runkle is with us, and she's written this book. The title is *Another Move, God?* It's a question mark. *Another Move, God?*

Dave Wilson: But then you see *Military Wife* and you're like, I think maybe she's moved a few times.

Ann Wilson: *Thirty Encouragements to Embrace Your Life as a Military Wife*. Beth, how many times have you moved?

Beth Runkle: We moved 14 times while my husband was on active duty.

Ann Wilson: And you moved how many times in your first year of marriage?

Beth Runkle: We moved three times our first year of marriage. We showed up to that third base, we unpacked boxes again, and then he would deploy to the Middle East. So I really found myself wondering what in the world have I gotten myself into.

Dave Wilson: At that time, honestly, I know we just started, but were you happy or were you mad or were you sad or all the above?

Beth Runkle: To be honest, I wasn't happy at all. I wasn't a Christ-follower. I had been very into my career.

Dave Wilson: And what were you doing? Give us a little taste of your background.

Beth Runkle: I worked in the business world, and I had a lot of different clients. I worked for a large international company. I had been traveling around the world doing training and projects for them. So yeah, I move, unpack boxes, and then I'm alone.

To my husband's defense, he did change careers. He went to pilot training while we were engaged. All of our dating was long distance. So I had actually never seen him in his uniform prior to when we got married. He didn't tell me what to expect, but he really didn't quite know. And I'm thankful for that because I don't think I would have married him.

Dave Wilson: Really?

Beth Runkle: Yeah, and he's a great guy. We're happily married, but I liked control too much. That first year of marriage, I became bitter, reluctant, selfish, and often said, "The military is ruining my life."

Dave Wilson: Is that common for a lot of military wives?

Beth Runkle: At some point for sure. Most people don't move as drastically as I did that first year of marriage. It was unusual. But I think there is a lot of resentment. You move frequently, your spouse is deployed often, you often don't live near family, and your career usually does have to make sacrifices.

If the service member is deployed, somebody needs to be around and be available. And then you're moving states, and if you have a license, you've got to get relicensed. Sometimes people just get super frustrated. And I get it. Thankfully, I think I saw that there were seasons for my life, and I'm very thankful for the years that I supported my man. But that is not the way I went into it.

Ann Wilson: Well, let me ask this too, and let me say this right off the top. If you're listening to this and you're not someone in the military or a military wife, this is still for you. As you're talking about all those things at the beginning—your frustrations—I'm like, yep, yep, yep, check, check, check.

Dave Wilson: I didn't even move anywhere near that much, but you still felt it.

Ann Wilson: You were traveling a lot, though. But we did move, and I think a lot of us are married to men—or maybe our jobs are moving us all over the place. We come to this realization like, "Wait, did you trick me? I thought you were going to be home all the time," or "I thought you were going to be super nice like when we first started dating."

Dave Wilson: I was super nice, honey.

Ann Wilson: You were—every once in a while.

Dave Wilson: You were way nicer than I was. That's for sure.

Ann Wilson: There we both had our moments. But everybody does, and so I think this applies to all of us because we all get into marriages like, "Wait a minute, I didn't know that this was what it was going to look like."

Dave Wilson: Why did you marry this guy? Tell us how you met.

Beth Runkle: We met at a wedding. I was a bridesmaid, he was a groomsman. Yes, it does happen.

Dave Wilson: That's how it happens! Sounds like a movie.

Beth Runkle: We dated long distance for two years. He is an absolutely great guy, and I'm thankful that God didn't give me all the information up front.

Ann Wilson: So when he says, "Hey, I think I'm being called into the military," was he a believer at the time?

Beth Runkle: No, neither one of us were believers, and he was already in the military. He just switched jobs. He got picked up to be a pilot, went to pilot training, and we got married after the first training. He went to several more trainings and then his permanent assignment in a fighter.

Ann Wilson: Oh, he was a fighter pilot!

Beth Runkle: Yes.

Dave Wilson: How many times have you watched *Top Gun*?

Beth Runkle: Too many times to count, especially the new one. My husband really likes it. There was a period of time where every night he would watch 10 minutes of it before bed just to get his little adrenaline rush.

Dave Wilson: Did he have a call sign? Is that what they call it?

Beth Runkle: He had a call sign, yes. He went by Spunk Ronk.

Dave Wilson: Spunk Ronk! That makes sense. Do you call him that when you get mad or do you call him that when you're wanting to get romantic? He probably likes you to call him that.

Beth Runkle: I don't call him that. No, that's just his call sign. They don't mix. They don't carry over.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, that's like work and at home. Tell us what happened spiritually. How did that journey go?

Beth Runkle: I think part of the Lord's softening me was taking my life completely out of my control. We moved 14 times, and I think that's because God was like, "This is what she's going to need to realize that I am the only thing that she can hold onto."

But after those three moves, the deployments—he would actually deploy four times during that first assignment, and then we moved again.

Ann Wilson: How long were his deployments?

Beth Runkle: They were like three to four months at a time. But we'd be home a few months and gone again. Home a few months and gone again.

Ann Wilson: Were you worried about him?

Beth Runkle: Yeah, of course. He was over in the Middle East in war zones. And back then, you didn't get to communicate like you do now. It's a lot easier now with Skype and FaceTime and Marco Polo, but back then we didn't get to communicate that much.

We began emailing each other, and that's where some of the spiritual journey discussions began. But we also faced infertility. I had always been raised going to church, but I knew nothing about having a relationship with Jesus, really did not understand the significance of Christ's death on the cross. I started going to church when he was deployed, and then he would go to the tent where the chaplain was located and begin asking questions.

But it wasn't until I got into my first Bible study. I went headfirst, not knowing that, into a Precept Ministries Bible study on Sarah and Abraham. So here you are struggling with infertility. And that is where I understood the plan of salvation revealed through the scriptures with Kay on the video.

Kay Arthur? Yes! She was on video. I gave my life to Christ, and my husband also did the videos, and it was through that Bible study that we both surrendered our lives to Christ. So I really believe that God saved us on parallel paths but brought us together at the end when we both surrendered our lives to Christ.

When we met Kay a couple of years later, she saw my husband with his short haircut, and she came up to us and said, "Hey, are you guys in the military?" And we said, "Yes, ma'am." She said, "I just want you to know you are not just in the military. You are a missionary sent by God, and you are to be about the kingdom and making believers wherever you go."

And we were brand new believers, and we were like, "Okay, yes, ma'am." And we literally—God used that prophetically in our life, and that's what we did, beginning with marriage studies, which is partly because of you and Dave and your ministry with FamilyLife. The good news of Jesus had saved our marriage, and we wanted to share it with others.

And then I began leading Bible studies in my home because after that one Bible study, I was like, "I've got to get more of this. This is what I need to survive the military life." So I began opening my base home—women sitting on the floor of my base house, not very fancy—just opening the scriptures together and talking about how this relates to the unique challenges, the chaos, and the uncertainty of our lives.

Dave Wilson: How soon after you came to Christ are you doing that—leading women in your own home?

Beth Runkle: I began leading Bible study within a year. That wasn't the original plan. I had done these Precept studies on my own with my husband. I worked through all of Genesis and Exodus, but I also joined a women's Bible study group. I was in that group—there were 12 women—and the group grew to 24.

The other woman said, "Hey, we're going to need another group, and you're very comfortable talking to people. I'm going to separate this group, and I'd like for you to be a facilitator." And I said, "Okay, well you know I don't know a lot about the Bible. I'm just learning all this. I'm comfortable speaking, though. I'll be a facilitator. But please give me a group of mature Christian women."

And she said, "Okay, yeah, we can make that happen." That is not at all what happened. In that Bible study, I ended up having the opportunity to lead two women to Christ. I had an older woman who was more mature who would often try to bring scripture if I didn't know. But she said to me, "You're leading this group. You're going to do it."

I brought up the second week that if anybody didn't have a relationship with Jesus and didn't know what that meant, that I had recently come to understand that, and if anybody wanted to talk to me about it, let me know, expecting nothing to happen. But I really did feel the Lord tell me to say that.

Well, two of the women came up to me. One of them happened to be my husband's commander's wife. And I actually used Campus Crusade material to disciple those women for 12 weeks after. I was terrified to share the gospel with them, and to be honest, it was probably a terrible gospel presentation. But the Lord can use anything. And kind of after that experience, I wasn't so scared to open the word with people because I'd already had a pretty scary experience and I thought it can't get worse.

Ann Wilson: You were a baby Christian! Let me ask you this, because what Kay Arthur said to you guys, it is a big deal. As women are listening to this right now, is their calling any different than yours? What would you say to them? Would you say the same thing that Kay said to you?

Beth Runkle: I think at the time I thought, "Oh yeah, because we move a lot, we're going to have opportunities to interact with more people," and we did. But it also can look exactly the same if you're not moving because you've got kids and families on your kids' sports team. You have neighbors. You have people in your kids' school.

There are people around us everywhere we go—at the grocery store, the waiters at your restaurants. People desperately need to hear the hope and healing found in Jesus. And you can be the person right where you are. I did a lot of that as we moved, but also it just meant I opened my home and invited—sometimes it started with me and one other woman.

This is the way I cultivated community in all the places I lived, but you don't have to be moving to do that. You just have to be willing to say to at least one other person, "Hey, I'm going to do this Bible study. Do you want to come?" And to be honest, I didn't even make it that fancy.

I could run around, be crazy, and be mad with the people in my home trying to make it look perfect like I didn't live there. I really realized that hospitality is about connection, not perfection.

Dave Wilson: And how'd you get involved with FamilyLife? How'd you connect?

Beth Runkle: I mentioned my husband and I came to Christ, and about a year later, we were stationed in Columbus, Mississippi. We drove to Birmingham, Alabama, and we went to a Weekend to Remember®. And at that conference, we heard for the first time the biblical blueprint for marriage—the drift towards isolation, communication, conflict management, intimacy.

At the conference, the closing session, they stood up on the stage with these small group guides and said, "Hey, if you've gotten something out of this weekend, you can take these small group guides and you can go back and you can start these small groups." And my husband and I turned and looked at each other and we said, "We're going to do that."

So we did. My husband says that we know how to open our home and tell time and read. That's all we did because we didn't know the scriptures. So we were investing usually in military marriages, making an impact, because divorce is not good in the culture, but it's a little bit worse in military marriages.

Especially when you get into the veteran years, that's usually when people tend to completely give up. They've been shoving problems under the rug for a long time that they've really not been dealing with because they've either been moving or they've been on deployment. They've been separated a lot, and so also they haven't really learned how to be a couple or forgot how to be a couple.

In those veteran years, they're coming back home, they're in each other's space for the first time. And then all the issues that they've been shoving under the carpet, there's eventually this mountain they need to climb over, and it needs to be dealt with. And then on top of that, unfortunately, a lot of our veterans have combat trauma or other invisible wounds of war.

Those problems have been shoved under the carpet—addiction usually, substance abuse and porn, unfortunately. Then they're not moving all the time, and they try to work on their marriage, but they end up giving up because honestly, in a lot of times they waited too long.

But we wanted to invest in military marriages as we knew it was hard and we wanted to make an impact of those around us. And so we were pouring in again—we just knew how to read and tell time. But what was doing is we were giving them stuff but making deposits in our own marriage. Because we all need to be reminded.

Dave Wilson: It's so easy to fall into the selfishness and worry about me and be self-consumed with, oh, I have it so hard. But when we get in God's word and we let him tell us the way we're supposed to treat our spouse and the way we're supposed to be, then the Holy Spirit has a lot more to work with.

Ann Wilson: We say that same thing. The thing that's changed our marriage so much besides Jesus is we've led together. And those truths, whether anybody else gets them or not, I don't know, but we get it. We keep saying it over and over again.

Beth Runkle: Sometimes I'll be sitting there and go, "Oh, that was for me."

Dave Wilson: I mean, I think we all know Jesus said if you want to find your life, lose it. And it's so paradoxical. It's like, "What? If I want to find my life, I've got to go grab it." And a lot of people, that's what they try to do and they're empty. It doesn't make sense, but when you empty yourself out helping others, sharing with others, like you said, I think couples, we leave our home and we'd be like, "I have no idea if anything hit." But for us, it transformed our marriage and our legacy and our kids.

Ann Wilson: So if you've heard nothing else so far, one, give your life to Jesus. Go to a marriage conference. If you've been thinking, "Should we go?" the answer is yes. And then maybe you've been on the fence with this.

Dave Wilson: Get *The Art of Marriage*®, get *Vertical Marriage*, get a tool. We have a whole bunch of them for you here at FamilyLife, just go to familylifetoday.com.

Beth Runkle: And we've used all of them. We've used all of them. So we would do small groups in our home, we used *Art of Marriage*, *Vertical Marriage*, all those things just to continue to invest in others. Also, when the Lord saved both my husband and I, early on—it was actually when we were stationed in Korea—I studied the tabernacle and the concept of worship.

In Romans 12:1-2, it tells us to, in view of God's mercy, to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. And that really grabbed me as I saw worship is not just what I do in church on Sunday. Worship is my life. It's a daily living for him. I began to want to live for him where God had ordained for me to be.

For me, that meant on military bases all over the world. And that caused me to really change my perspective on my husband's job. I mentioned in the beginning, he had this job flying fighter airplanes—very exciting, gets to go to a lot of cool places, I stay at home.

Dave Wilson: You don't sound very excited. "Fighter jets, I've got to do that."

Beth Runkle: So I put this in your book—it's a 30-day devotional. Yes, and I talk about Sarah and Abraham's story and explain the parallels between Sarah and Abraham's life, which is a lot of the reasons why I got saved. In Genesis, it's because I saw how tender and caring God was.

The very first time that I would study the Bible, he put me in a story where the person had many parallels to my life. So when God called Sarah and Abraham to go to a land I will show you, that's what we in the military call a Permanent Change of Station or PCS. Abraham went off and fought in combat when he went to rescue his nephew Lot from the 318 men. I also believe Sarah dealt with loneliness. Hagar dealt with solo parenting, infertility—yes, infertility. So all of that was my story.

Ron Deal: Hey friends, Ron Deal here, Director of FamilyLife Blended®. Did you know Blended and Blessed®, the only worldwide livestream designed for couples in blended families, is free this year? Saturday, April 18th, we're going to be live in Oklahoma City. If you show up there, we're going to charge you for lunch, but other than that, it is free.

Free to livestream. Churches can bring a group of couples together and enjoy the day absolutely free. Gayla Grace is going to be with us, David and Christy Blackburn, Cheryl Shumake's going to be with us, Kathy Lipp and Brian Goins, our MC. It's going to be a wonderful day. I hope you can join us. Learn more and get the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

Dave Wilson: Okay, Beth, tell us what part prayer has played in your life, because I'm assuming it's pretty big.

Beth Runkle: I think so. Stormie Omartian, who's written a lot of books on prayer, she says that she believes a wife's prayers have more potent power than anyone else's. I mentioned earlier that I think Sarah was a woman of prayer. And Psalm 91 is often known as the soldier's prayer.

Dave Wilson: I didn't know that until I read that in your book.

Ann Wilson: I've never heard that either.

Beth Runkle: A lot of people have used it, and there's a lot of really cool stories about people having that prayer in their uniform and how it protected an entire group at a war in World War II. But Psalm 91 speaks of God's faithfulness being a shield and bulwark.

A bulwark is a military term that is a wall built for defense. And I believe prayer can serve to create that defense upon our service members. Now, I mentioned earlier that my husband flew an F-117 Stealth Fighter. Now, I think you would agree with me that the US military force is something to be reckoned with.

We have incredible training and our weapons are just amazing. But all of our branches of our military now are now using laser-focused weapons. And these have just completely changed the trajectory of war. My husband flew F-117 Stealth Fighters. He would be up there and he would practice dropping the laser in a specific spot.

For example, he flew his missions at 10,000 feet. From 10,000 feet, he would place the laser on a specific window on a third-story building. Where that laser was, when he pressed to fire the weapon, it would hit from 10,000 feet every single time.

Dave Wilson: That's insane. The pane of a window. Not the window, the pane, from 10,000 feet.

Beth Runkle: And this is all over our military now. I believe prayer is that laser-guided weapon for that spouse who is at home. We can pray the protection of God, but we actually have to use the weapon. We would never expect our military to go off to the battlefield and leave their weapon on the ground.

They would be defenseless without it. But we try to do that to try to protect someone who is off at war, or really anybody who has a spouse or children that you're praying for. We have to pick up that weapon, and we are calling down the force of God to go to battle for us and protect our loved ones.

But prayer is a gift, and it is a gift that has to be used, and the pleasure and joy of talking with the God of the universe. And Psalms tells us God is near to those who call on him in prayer. So pick up your weapon and go to war.

Dave Wilson: I'm pumped up about that! I'm in. Yeah! That's good. It's really a good one, I love it. That Beth Runkle is a soldier. She fires me up just listening to her. I'm excited.

Ann Wilson: She's fierce and she's a leader. This is good stuff.

Dave Wilson: You can get her book, *Another Move, God?* Just go to familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes. And she's going to be back with us tomorrow, and let me tell you, tomorrow's going to be fire as well. You don't want to miss it.

Before we're done today, I just want to remind our listeners: we know life is full of challenges, and FamilyLife Today needs biblical truth more than ever. And as a FamilyLife partner, your monthly gift helps bring the truth into homes every single day through podcasts, events, and resources. So let's make a lasting difference together. Become a partner today. Just go to familylifetoday.com and click the donate button.

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