Thriving Through the Holidays: 5 Days of Hope for the Military Wife This ChristmasSample

Waiting With Anticipation

It had been a long, hard seven months when we got word that my husband was coming home for Christmas. Mid-tour leave was the only good thing about a yearlong deployment, and my heart was overjoyed.

I imagined how wonderful it would be to have him join us as we drove through our neighborhood, admiring the twinkling lights while listening to our favorite Christmas tunes and sipping peppermint hot cocoa.

Those last-minute stocking stuffers would be covered because Dad always knows the best last-minute additions.

And on Christmas morning, we would be together as a family. Our hearts, which felt incomplete, would finally be whole.

His arrival couldn’t come fast enough as I waited in anticipation for what would surely be a Christmas like no other.

My husband made it home for Christmas that year, but it wasn’t as magical as I hoped it would be. Woven between the sweet holiday traditions lay angst about the ticking clock that would soon take him away. Our boys fought over new toys, and big emotions that had been suppressed over the past several months came to the surface.

My expectations were crushed yet again by the realities of this military life.

But when I think back to the very first Christmas, I can imagine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, felt her own angst as she prepared to deliver away from home and the comforts of the familiar.

Her plans shattered, and her heart was likely overwhelmed.

Yet, in the seemingly hard and ordinary, God did the extraordinary.

He brought Heaven down to Earth and came to dwell among us.

On that dark, starry night, the long-awaited Savior was born.

Generations had been waiting in anticipation, looking heavenward for the promised Son of God.

I can imagine a baby boy born in a manger wasn’t what they expected. Imperfect. Surely a story not fit for royalty... Yet, Jesus Came.

He came, born in a lowly manger. He came for you and me to connect with a personal God. A God that understands our pain and sorrows and longs to know us intimately.

He came so that through his life, death, and resurrection, we could live eternally in Heaven with Him.

He came so that we wouldn’t have to walk this life alone.

This Christmas season, we may find that our reality doesn’t always match the expectations of what we hoped for, but if we look, we can see our stories are written by a perfect God.

Sweet military wife, as we journey through the holidays, it’s my greatest prayer that you wait in anticipation, looking heavenward for God to reveal his faithfulness to you.

These are gifts beyond possession yet intimately perfect and desperately needed as we walk through this military wife's life.