Focus on the Family

John Fuller: This is John Fuller, and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs: on a podcast, app, or website.

Beth Runkel: I think it's important for people to realize that our freedom is not free. There are sacrifices made by their families. So, I really want to speak to that spouse that is left at home, either man or woman.

I think they often feel unseen and unrecognized. They're desperate for adult conversation and just someone to know that they care.

John Fuller: Beth Runkel is our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, military life can be incredibly challenging for families. We've had a number of guests on from time to time, and they've talked about that and they've written some great resources. We want to touch this again today. When we get to deployments, I was not in the military. My brother Mike was in the Navy and did that four-year stint. He'd be out at sea for six months. We'd say goodbye in Long Beach, and then he'd be out in the Pacific for six months and come home, and we'd all go down to the pier to greet him.

He wasn't married at the time, and I think that served him well. But there are many, many married people in the military, and we want to honor you by talking about how to overcome some of these challenges so that you can do it in a God-honoring way. Serve the country, which is amazing, and we thank you for that service, and then to keep your family together as you do it.

John Fuller: Beth Runkel is a military spouse. Her husband served in the Air Force for 25 years. Beth has experienced all the realities you were just touching on, Jim: the deployments, the moves, and seasons of being a solo parent. She's captured her insights and experiences in a great little book called *Another Move, God? 30 Encouragements to Embrace Your Life as a Military Wife*.

Jim Daly: Beth, welcome to Focus on the Family. It's good to have you.

Beth Runkel: Thanks. It's an honor to be on here, and especially to speak encouragement to our military families, who we know go through a lot of challenges.

Jim Daly: They do. You think of the past 20 years. There's been a lot of stress on military families, and that's why we want to talk about it today. So, first of all, thank you and your husband for that service. He was a pilot, correct? In the Air Force? Good. And he's out now. You did 25 years. How are you guys right now? You made it!

Beth Runkel: Well, it's been quite a journey. I didn't really like the military in the beginning. I was not a fan. We moved three times our first year of marriage, and then we showed up to my husband's operational base, and he deployed to the Middle East.

Jim Daly: So you're overcoming things pretty early. It wasn't like you had a honeymoon, a military honeymoon.

Beth Runkel: No. And honestly, I thank God for His sovereignty in not allowing me to know what I was signing up for. My husband really hadn't told me much what to expect. He had changed careers and become a pilot while we were engaged, so life really changed. He wasn't being deceitful on purpose, but things changed, and he didn't really know what to expect either.

I believe I wouldn't want to have married him if I would have known what kind of control I would be giving up over my life. My husband's a great man. I'm super happily married. But God knew that I couldn't know what I was getting into.

Jim Daly: You would have said no. That's what I'm hearing you say. That is refreshingly honest. But that is quite amazing. So those early years, painting that picture, you talked about the first year of all that movement, plus this underlying resentment that you're feeling. How did that not trickle into your relationship?

Beth Runkel: Well, absolutely it did trickle into our relationship.

Jim Daly: What did that look like? Just bitterness? Like, "Oh, you're gone again. Okay, bye"?

Beth Runkel: It was bitterness mainly towards the military, just all the inconveniences they were causing in our life: vacations canceled, trips canceled. We don't live near family. We keep moving. I had been very career-oriented, and this was obviously hard to stay in a career moving three times. Anytime there was a hurricane, he would bravely fly away in the fighter jet and leave me to deal with no electricity and flooding.

Jim Daly: Wow. That's not typically what the man of the house does, but he has to protect the million-dollar aircraft. I get it. My Toyota isn't quite worth that, but...

Beth Runkel: Yeah, so they have to get them out of there. But I also wasn't a believer, so I had a very worldly perspective: What about me? What about what I want to do? What about my goals?

Jim Daly: Well, that's important to know. Thank you, because I was thinking somebody's got to be pushing me to ask the question: "Well, you guys signed up for this. Why didn't you know this would be what you lived with?"

Beth Runkel: Well, I don't know that a military spouse ever really knows what they signed up for, to be honest. The military member did. And part of what caused my trajectory on this to change was that initially, I thought it's just your job and my job, and why do I have to live in your shadow? And why does it all have to be what the military says?

Jim Daly: Fair question, but I think I got a military answer for you, which is, "Yeah, that's what you signed up for."

Beth Runkel: Well, and my husband actually looked at me. I said pretty much that same comment to him one time, and he looked at me, he put his hands up, and he said, "I don't know what you want me to do. I'm in the military."

But what I didn't understand that God taught me through getting saved and then sanctifying me is that when a man or woman serves in uniform, it is a calling, not really unlike a clergy calling. It's something that they feel is a special duty or obligation that they have to perform. And so when I began to see that, then knowing the sovereignty of God and that I'm married to this man, which I didn't know what I was getting into, but God knew.

Jim Daly: Beth, let me interrupt because this applies beyond the military. What you're saying has cultural implications here: being a Christian married woman and that need to be in your man's corner and what that does to you as one flesh, being made in His image, male and female, the two becoming one flesh. You are together in this.

And so much today, and you said your career-mindedness and how much you kicked against the goads here when you got in the military. Speak to that need, though, for complementary approaches that a wife has a role, a husband has a role in the design God has given us. And it's not subjugation. We're talking about partnership in life together. And sometimes that requires you to sacrifice and sometimes him to sacrifice. Hit that.

Beth Runkel: First of all, I think I had to see that God had a calling on my life also to support my man in the military. I didn't carry the weapons, which is really good because that would be dangerous for everyone. I didn't wear the uniform. But I had a call to reach people in the military with the message of Jesus Christ.

But also to cheerlead him, and we began to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the troops that my husband supported and their families. There's brokenness in the military just like there is in the rest of the world. But the military cares for the families a little bit more than the civilian world. And so what a blessing for us that God took us out of our selfish nature and said, "I'm going to call you to serve these people in My name."

Originally, I didn't want to be a supportive command spouse. I wanted to do my own thing. But then God changed my perspective and said, "This is a calling for your whole family." My kids drove around in the car with me for hours every week, delivering meals to people in need. My kids helped me clean people's houses when they had surgery. They helped me unpack a lot of boxes for people. But what a blessing that we had to see that it's not about us.

I do think women, we are our husband's main cheerleader. That doesn't mean that we can't have things that we do. But we have to cheerlead them, support them. I think that we get the biblical role of submission wrong. It's not being a doormat, but I think it's expressing opinions and giving input, but not aggressively dominating our husbands. It's balance between those two. And I was a blessing to my husband as he served his nation and to the people in our midst.

I got to host Bible studies with women sitting on the floor of my base house, host marriage groups with my husband, open my home to people. It was a season. I'm doing really cool things now, and my husband, who was a colonel in the Air Force, is helping keep our house clean.

Jim Daly: The time has come, my man! But let me ask you this because you referenced it. I want to capture it. You had a before-Christ in the military. You had a confession of faith in Christ and then being a Christian in the military. Just quickly describe that. How long were you in the military? How did you come to faith in Christ? Was your husband in that situation with you? Describe it. I think there was an older mentoring couple that helped you, right?

Beth Runkel: Yes. So we moved three times, then he deployed. He would deploy four times during the two and a half years that we lived there. Marriage was hard because he wasn't home very much, and when he was, honestly, I wasn't very easy to be around. Our marriage was hard primarily because of me. I didn't realize how disrespectful that came across to him to hate this thing that he loves, that's a lifelong dream, that's a calling.

Jim Daly: And it probably oozed out of every pore of your body. I can imagine. It was like, "Yeah, I'm fed up with this." And then he probably didn't know what to do, like putting his hands up and saying, "What do you want me to do? I'm committed in the military." It would be illegal; they'd throw him in the brig if he left the military.

Beth Runkel: Right. And he had just finished pilot training, so he had a significant commitment. So while he was deployed, I really just found myself lonely, longing. And I turned to what had been a childhood comfort for me. I had been raised in a loving, churchgoing home, but I never really understood a personal relationship with Jesus.

At this church, I met some neighbors. They were my parents' age. They found out my husband was deployed and just took me under their wing: let me sit with them, would invite me over, invite me to their Bible studies. I realized in them that they had something that I didn't have, which was a thriving relationship with Jesus.

At the same time, my husband was deployed living in tents. On deployment, you are either flying, doing your mission, working out, or eating. He spent the rest of that time in the chapel tent asking the chaplain questions, learning. So we were on these parallel journeys. He had not been raised regularly going to church; they'd gone some. We were on these parallel journeys, and it wasn't until we moved again that God saw fit to intersect our journeys. It was in a Bible study on the book of Genesis, where we really finally understood the plan of salvation and surrendered our lives to Jesus.

Jim Daly: There is that difference. If you haven't recognized that difference, we want you to get in touch with us because we'll explain that to you. There is something about a commitment to Christ that's different than socially committing to Christ.

Beth Runkel: Yeah. You can go to church your whole life and not know Jesus because there is great freedom in following Him, especially for the military life. The only thing that you are certain of is uncertainty in the military life. But God remains control. He is steady. He is steadfast. He knows everything. I love to say He outranks even the generals.

Jim Daly: I love your honesty, though. I'm sure everybody watching and listening appreciates that, the battles that you had with your husband. "What do you want me to do?" This sounds like everybody's marriage. But that angst, you can almost be in any profession; there's going to be a certain kind of angst that you get: the person that has to travel a lot for their job, always on the road. That's that argument, not far different from the military.

In that context, many military spouses that are listening to us feel overwhelmed by deployments and uncertainty like you just talked about. Give us some of those practical steps that you mentioned in the book about how they can battle those feelings of uncertainty as they move through their service commitment.

Beth Runkel: I think that fear, overwhelming fear, is a big tool the enemy uses for the military spouse who's back at home. We do have to go to battle with our own weapons: our weapons of prayer and then using truth to overcome that. I have a story of when my husband was deployed to the Middle East. I was watching the news and I knew he was up in the air in the no-fly zone over northern or southern Iraq. I don't remember which one it was at the time.

But the news was covering that the anti-aircraft missiles were so prevalent that day that there was really no visibility. So the things that they send out to jam those to keep them from being able to hit the aircraft—there were just too many for them to effectively jam them all. And so it was a minefield. And I'm watching the news and they're telling me this, and I'm freaking out because I know my husband's up in the air somewhere.

I'm riddled with anxiety and I'm just learning about the Lord. I had been taught Philippians 4:6 and 7. And I'm like, "Hey, let me try to do this," which tells us to not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer with thanksgiving present your requests to the Lord, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guide your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so I did what it said to do. I turned off the news. I got off social media. I went and I got my Bible. It was telling me thanksgiving. And I'm like, "What can I be thankful for? How has God been faithful in my life?" And honestly, I was struggling. I just have anxiety.

So God says, "Go to My Word." And I'm new to the Bible at this point. But I come across the story of Exodus. God's like, "Remember what I did? I parted the Red Sea! I made water stand up! And I defeated the Pharaoh and all their chariots and all their army. Do you think I can't take care of this Iraqi anti-aircraft missile?"

But I have come to learn God is amazing. He is telling us what to do in our brain, in our body. There is now scientific evidence that tells us gratitude and anxiety and fear, they cannot coexist in our brain. If we turn on gratitude, it is going to push out those anxious thoughts.

I like to teach people why we have to do this, and I like the analogy of a bathtub. Most people have to put their kid in the bathtub at some point. Hopefully! When you put your kid in the bathtub, you notice the water level come up. That's the physics law of displacement that tells us we cannot be full of two things at the same time.

The same is true with our brain. We can't just tell ourselves not to be anxious. We have to push it out. Fill it with thanksgiving, with faith, with truth from God's Word. But then science is telling us that is how we get rid of the anxious thoughts: it's with gratitude, remembering that God has been faithful before, so He can be trusted to be faithful right now.

We just can't feed that anxiety. You can't have the news constantly on. You can't be checking because honestly, that doesn't do anything. You can't control what they're doing across the ocean. But God can, and He's on His throne and He is watching over. I love Psalm 46, which says God makes wars cease. He protects from our enemies' weapons.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and today our guest is Beth Runkel, and we're covering some of the content that she captured in her excellent devotional called *Another Move, God? 30 Encouragements to Embrace Your Life as a Military Wife*. Get a copy of the book from us here when you stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Beth, let me ask you. You do use a fascinating analogy about laser-guided or precision-guided missiles. Again, there's so much allegory or metaphor in the scripture about military engagement: spiritual warfare is just one. But talk about that idea of precision-guided weapons and how prayer becomes like that.

Beth Runkel: The US military is so superior because of the awesome training, but also the technological advancements of our weapons. All of our branches of military now are rolling out laser-guided weapon systems that they are using that give incredible accuracy.

Everybody when they join the military, whether they're Coast Guard, Air Force, Space Force, Army, Navy—they all are taught in basic training how to use a weapon. Most of them, it's the M4 assault rifle. But our special forces, when they go out, they are not taking that traditional firearm by itself to go do their operation. If they use an M4, they're going to smack on a night vision scope and a laser-guided system. The laser-guided system gives them incredible accuracy.

My husband used to fly the F-117 Stealth Fighter, and they dropped bombs. They flew very high because they had to be stealthy. So he would do his operations at 10,000 feet above the target. He would drop that laser on a particular window on a particular floor of a large building. Wherever that laser, one pane of that window, wherever it was pointed, the weapon would hit every single time.

Amazing accuracy. Prayer, that is our precision-guided laser weapon that we can use. But we have to pick it up. We can't leave it on the ground. Just like our troops would never leave their M4 on the ground to go to battle, we have to go to battle with that weapon. Only we are calling the greatest marksman to ever exist to go to battle for us. He is available, but we have to pray. And that is a much more powerful weapon than even our US forces have.

Jim Daly: One is spiritual and one is material, obviously. But that's a great analogy because it motivates you to think about how to pray and how to be specific. I'm going to turn a little bit of a corner here because most people, like my own family's experience, was my one brother out of five kids served in the military. That's probably pretty common in the US: you might have one of your siblings that went, maybe your dad or your grandfather was in the military.

The point being, fewer of us go into the military than don't. And so in that context, those of us that haven't been in the military, what are things we can do to honor them and to encourage them? We see them in public and, of course, if you go get a cup of coffee, I try to buy the guys that are there something or a restaurant tab I pick up from time to time if four guys are sitting around the table and they're always so very kind and very willing to allow us to do that. It's good. But what else can we do?

Beth Runkel: Well, I think that the person in uniform does get some recognition, but often the family doesn't as much. They don't have that billboard. I think it's important for people to realize that our freedom is not free. There are sacrifices made by their families. So, I really want to speak to that spouse that is left at home, either man or woman.

I think they often feel unseen and unrecognized. They're desperate for adult conversation and just someone to know that they care. It can be a pathway to the gospel, I believe, by showing them care by reaching out to them. You can let them sit with you at church. You don't know how lonely it is to sit by yourself. Most people at church, they're couples, and when your spouse isn't there, you feel very lonely.

Offer to bring them a meal. Offer to watch their kids so they get a break. That's a good one. Offer a playdate, because honestly, that might even be better for some people because they are desperate for adult conversation. Ask if they're comfortable; you could offer a hug because they haven't had adult touch.

And then practical things, especially over the holidays. Help them do some of the things that you need to do to feel like it's a normal Christmas holiday. For example, help put up their tree or their Christmas lights. Some people, that might be really hard, and not having that makes their emptiness or their absence that much more prevalent.

So you can offer to do that. And I also think the weekends are the hardest parts because people tend to hang out with their family on the weekends. But if your significant other isn't there, you feel the loneliness. So you could just invite them, "Hey, we're having a game night," or "Come have a meal with us." You don't have to not be with your family. Invite them to be a part of yours.

Jim Daly: It feels so much like adopt a family. Adopt a military family. And it's a good thing. Churches should do that. I hadn't thought of that, but if you're a pastor, why not encourage your folks to do that, especially if you're near a base, a military base where hopefully that would be encouraged. I think right now, I've had the privilege of visiting the Pentagon and meeting some of the key leaders there, and I'm really encouraged how open they are about faith initiatives and faith things.

And do we not need faith orientation in the military? These are people that are going to lay their lives down and may not come back. And do we not want to encourage them in something spiritual and true? Christianity. So I'm encouraged. And I'm hoping, Beth, that I'd like to pursue this, and I'm going to do that with those contacts to see if we can get your book in there and get it to more military families. And we'll do that as a gift, hopefully. That's the plan right now. But thank you so much for being with us.

Beth Runkel: Thank you. It's been great to be here and just thanks for giving a voice to the military families.

Jim Daly: It's so good. Thank you again. And for all the service of your husband and your family.

Beth Runkel: Oh, it was our joy and pleasure.

Jim Daly: Are your kids doing well?

Beth Runkel: Our kids are doing great. Military life does not come without challenges for military kids. Our kids moved nine and ten times in their school years. But yeah, they're doing great. They both have recently graduated from Liberty University. And our daughter is a Christian music artist and doing really well and really has a great ministry to Gen Z talking about the freedom found in Christ.

Jim Daly: That's so good. Well, your other child, the son—don't leave him out!

Beth Runkel: Yes. Yeah, our son is married. Our son is adopted. We struggled with infertility; that's a part of our journey. He's married and happy living in Dallas. And we have lots of other spiritual children that we get to do life with through the ministry we do.

Jim Daly: I'm sure. Well, that leadership that you and your husband provided in the military was so good. Thank you for that. And let me turn to the listener. Focus on the Family is here for you. And if this is touching a need in your heart, if you're in the military, get in touch with us. We want to help you get a copy of this. And we'll send it to you; just let us know you're there, and we'll trust others will cover the cost of that.

If you can make a gift to Focus on the Family, we'll say thank you by sending a copy of Beth's book, *Another Move, God? 30 Encouragements to Embrace Your Life as a Military Wife*. And perhaps you can pass that on to a friend in the military, a family member, or maybe you want to keep it and read up. The application is broader than just military; these are attitudes of people under stress. That's probably just about each and every one of us.

When you give to Focus on the Family, there is fruit. And sometimes we hold back; we should share more often. But I want to give you an idea: Lexie, who was touched by the ministry and what she wrote and said to us. She said, "Thank you for the many encouraging programs and resources you provide. After my husband returned from a deployment to Afghanistan with PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, the past two years have been incredibly difficult for our family as we navigate marriage, parenting, and healing. Recently, one of your episodes reminded me that my identity is not defined by these struggles but by who I am in Christ." And man, that is awesome.

John Fuller: Yeah, what a terrible thing to go through. But I'm so glad that we could reach out and help.

Jim Daly: Yeah, and unfortunately, those are the byproducts of war. And these are just the prices that our military members give to protect our freedom. So you can provide much-needed support for folks like Lexie by doing your ministry through Focus on the Family. Be the person supplying that ministry through the conduit of Focus on the Family.

John Fuller: Donate today and get your copy of *Another Move, God?* when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY or online at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And on behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.