God Be With Our Military Families

​My soldier came home. My heart fills with thankfulness today, Memorial Day. My soldier came home. My husband came home after his last tour of Iraq. My brother returned home from Iraq as well.

Thank God.
Thank God for soldiers.
​Thank God for their families.

​Today we celebrated Memorial Day. We remembered those that died while in active military service. They sacrificed themselves for our country and what our country stands for. Something inside me shakes, realizing that countless families out there remember loved ones they have lost on this day. What incredible strength those families have.

​Military families amaze me. It takes love and fortitude to keep a family healthy physically, emotionally, and mentally through many of the struggles that military families face.

​Fathers and mothers must leave behind children, even babies, and travel to the other side of the world. Sometimes they don't come home for months and in the meantime pray that their child still can smile at them when they return. Wives and husbands have to keep marriages strong without physical touch and feeling detached from each other's daily lives. Beyond their immediate family, service men and woman and their spouses must move far from family. They have to uproot multiple times and find support within each other and the friends they will make along the way. And, when it is all over, when they are honorably discharged and packed back into boxes, they must begin their lives again. Some have to start college as forty year-olds. Some have to find where they belong in this civilian world.

​This is not an easy life. But I know one thing.
God keeps them close.
He hears their prayers.
​He hears their cries.
​He smiles with every success.
​He takes joy in the tight embraces with every departure and return.
​He holds hands when some are lost.
​He shelters families who look up to him for protection.
​He honors the sacrifices of those who serve and those that stand behind them.

​I just wanted to ask my readers today to pray for these men and women that serve our country and for their precious families.  
​May God continue to keep them close.

​Above photo was used with permission from the Murray family.

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