Interview with Wives of Faith Founder Sara Horn Pt. 1

During the latter half of my husband's deployment I stumbled across this blog through a website that an author friend of mine had some articles published with. Contributing author of A Greater Freedom, Sara Horn had started a group for Christian military wives. Suddenly, I found myself wishing I had known about this sooner. What Sara started grew from a small group of women to nation wide into what is known as Wives of Faith.

It's my pleasure to introduce you to a Naval Reservist wife, mother, author, and founder, Sara Horn.

Winter: Tell a little about yourself and how long you've been a military wife.

Sara: Let's see ... my husband and I have been married 11 years this summer and we got engaged the Christmas after he got back from boot camp for the Navy Reserves. So, I've technically been a military wife for more than 10 years, but to be honest, I never saw myself that way until Cliff's first deployment in 2007. We have one son who will be 8 this month. I work from home as a writer/author and I'm the founder of Wives of Faith, a faith-based military wives support organization. For background, my first real experience with the military wasn't with my husband's deployment but the two trips I took to Iraq in 2003. I was on-board an aircraft carrier covering stories of sailors on-board during the first week of the Iraq War, and then I went back to Baghdad in November of that year to cover additional stories for Baptist Press and these stories were later put into a book I did with Oliver North called: A Greater Freedom: Stories of Faith From Operation Iraqi Freedom (2004, B&H). I later started a faith-based news site called AGreaterFreedom.com which covers the positive stories not always seen in mainstream media. I had interviewed military spouses of the service members I met overseas, but had never really seen myself as a military spouse until my husband's first deployment was announced. My husband's unit is four hours away and I have been on the base probably a handful of times in the last eleven years he's been in.

Winter: How did Wives of Faith come about?

Sara: When we got notice that Cliff would be deploying to Iraq with his Seabee battalion in 2007, I knew that I would need to find other women I could lean on while he was gone. I've always been pretty independent, but I really felt God telling me that I would need to seek out friends during this time. Through what could only be described as something God could put together, I had an active Army wife contact me. She was living in Nashville with her children at her parent's house while her husband was in Iraq for his second deployment and we decided to get together for lunch. It was great for each of us to connect with another wife who understood at least a little of what the other was going through, that we wondered if there might be women who might want to connect. We found a location (my church), set a date, and spread the word and hoped other women would come. We ended up having almost ten ladies there that first meeting in December of 2006.

Winter: What has been the response from wives who've discovered and joined Wives of Faith either through the website/blog or Facebook?

Sara: It's been really great! We've had many "meet" over Facebook and find new friends, and just recently I heard a really neat story from two of our wives who live in California. They connected through our Facebook group and realized they were less than an hour away from each other and the older wife invited the younger one to come to a get-together at her sister's house and they both had a really great time. There is something about being with other military wives when you realize that you aren't alone in what you're feeling or what you're experiencing. You aren't crazy after all! Also, being able to connect with another military wife who shares your faith is huge--friends at church may know to pray for you, but a sister military wife in Christ knows how to pray for you.

We've also had wives contact us who were struggling in their marriages. This past fall, we had two different wives, one active military, one Guard, contact us in the same week. Both husbands had told them they wanted out of their marriages and both of these wives were young, with young children, and didn't know what to do. I asked my leadership team to help pray for them and we started doing that. I would check in with both of these women and gradually, each one started reporting that their marriages were getting better. Both of them came to our conference we had in November and received a lot of encouragement through the speakers that spoke. The active wife e-mailed me a few weeks ago with an awesome report that her husband was coming home from his deployment and they were moving to their next duty station and things were a lot better. She said she had grown closer to God, had started going back to church, and really appreciated the prayers that the Wives of Faith women had been praying for her and her family.

Winter: That is truly awesome!

More from Sara Horn in the next "She Wears Combat Boots Too" column.