Lauren Bretz holds her son Peter, 2, while she prays with a friend. Lauren says her faith has helped her handle the yearlong deployment of her husband, Army Capt. Nat Bretz.
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Vicki Bell gives insight into the unique challenges of military matrimony others" and her own.
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For Lauren Bretz, strength to handle her husband's yearlong deployment came from her faith.
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Cari Collins offers a glimpse into her life raising four daughters alone while her husband serves in Iraq, and what his return will mean.
SECOND OF FOUR PARTS
A young Army wife finds comfort in the Bible's words
Published: November 19, 2007
Last Modified: November 23, 2007 at 12:06 PM
Long before dawn, before her children stir, when darkness still fills the windows on Fort Richardson, Lauren Bretz wakes to pray:Protect the children, keep them healthy and cheerful. Make her a better mother and a better wife. Keep Nat safe in Iraq, bring him and his men home safe.
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Lauren Bretz
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It's been more than a year of this now, and Lauren, who is 23, has had plenty to pray about. Peter, the toddler, fell and broke his leg. And then Lillian was born after nine days of contractions.
There have been tires to put on and take off and put on again, and the move across the post, and the trash to the curb every Friday. All of it was harder back at the beginning.
After prayer, she showers, dresses and checks her e-mail. She hears the children fuss. In their room at the top of the stairs, she flips on the light. Peter reaches for her, his face puckered from sleep. Lillian stands in her crib, her fine ginger hair on end, fat tears on her cheeks.
Before breakfast, they read the Bible out loud. Peter, who is 2, leans sleepily into her chest. Lillian, who is 9 months, sucks on her finger. Then, it's time for cereal heated in the microwave.
The phone rings, but it isn't Nat. Phone calls from her captain in Iraq are programmed with a special ring.
Lauren's a small-town Florida girl, home-schooled and raised since she was 4 to rely on a personal relationship with Jesus. She and Nat met at a Christian youth conference when she was 17 and he was 19. She knew she wanted to marry him right away, but her parents insisted she go to college.
So she got her degree in two and half years, and organized the wedding a week after graduation. That was 2004. She estimates they've spent 11 or 12 months together since then, between the training and the deployment.
When people find out her husband is in Iraq, they always look concerned. "How are you?" they ask. "How's he?"
She's fine. She's more than fine. She's making the best of a difficult situation. And Nat's doing well too. People have died over there. Every time a soldier is killed or injured, she gets a call and that's hard, but he has a job to do.
Some people might think it's weird, but she doesn't worry about Nat. God's protecting him. She knows this because of the time he stepped on a hidden bomb and it didn't blow up. And because of the firefight where he was spared as bullets whizzed by, as if he'd been walking in a rainstorm without getting wet.
"The safest place to be is in God's hands," she always says.
At Lauren's house -- where the word "home" is spelled out in wooden letters over the couch -- everything has a place. She's written out the family schedule in a special pen and posted it on the refrigerator, between Bible verses and a list of tips for Christian parenting. Bible. Breakfast. Playtime. Nap.
Nap time's when she might do another page in the scrapbook -- a long love letter of a project for Nat. She's pasted in the sonogram of Lillian curled in her womb, the picture of Peter on the toilet in his cast, the one of herself, pregnant, standing in the yard of her old Army-issue house, mountains towering behind her.
Lauren dreamed once that two soldiers came to her door to tell her Nat was dead. In the dream, she made peace with it. Nat died protecting people, that was what he was meant to do. Almost every thought leads her to him. At the commissary, wandering the aisles, she wonders what he would buy. It's worse at night, after the children are asleep. Then it's so still.
"I just look up to him for everything, in the best kind of way," she says. "Not like I feel helpless without him. ... When he's home, I don't have to worry about anything because he takes care of it mostly."
The burden was heaviest when he first went away, when it seemed like everything happened at once. The car battery died, the basement flooded, Peter was always sick with what turned out to be a long list of food allergies.
"All these little things happened; I knew they were all just tests from God to see if I could handle it by myself: Was I going to freak out or was I going to chill out and deal?"
Now there's a routine for the hard things, too. Like when she locked her keys in the car at Home Depot and had to wait with children in the car for two hours. She made her mind up she was going to be positive. The Army dictates her family's life. Why let it dictate her mood?
On her favorite day of the week, she takes the Jeep and drives across town to see Mary Healy in South Anchorage. Mary's 45 and soft-spoken, the wife of a doctor. They go to the same church.
Mary home-schooled her own daughter and spent most every day with her until she grew up and went away to college last fall. In that way, the two women are a perfect match, an empty-nester and an Army wife, both trying to get used to too much quiet in the house.
Usually the conversation starts with knitting-- right now they're working on a sock -- and ends up somewhere else, like potty training or crawling or marriage. Mary's husband was deployed with the Canadian Air Force during the first Gulf War, so she knows something about the waiting.
After their talks, Lauren adds to the list of things to ask Nat about: Does he want them to change the family schedule, so that it more closely matches his? Does he want to be the one who disciplines Peter? What can she do to make him feel like the leader of the family when he gets home?
After the sock project, and snacks, and rolling what seems like a hundred green Play-Doh balls for Peter, Lauren and Mary hold the children, close their eyes, and focus their minds on Nat, thousands of miles away in Iraq, where it's night. Lauren's prayed already, but as Mary says, there's always more to pray about: Keep Nat focused. Give him success in his missions. Let the Bible comfort him. Bring him home to her.
Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
YESTERDAY: Cari Collins has five girls, two rabbits, a dog and a phone that never stops, but still you can feel something's missing.
TODAY: Lauren Bretz doesn't worry about her husband, Nat, in Iraq; she prays for him.
TUESDAY: For Vicki Bell, the million little everyday decisions are the loneliest.
WEDNESDAY: Colleen Mihalic had enough. What could she do, she wondered, to make her husband come home?
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