Military Wellness Collective
Military Wellness Collective is made up of four friends — two retired Marines (Joshua and Brian) turned church planters and their wives (Brittany and Kelli)— who have lived life both in uniform and on the home front. Together, we share real stories, hard-earned wisdom, and practical, biblical encouragement to help military members, and their families thrive in every season. Whether you’re navigating deployments, adjusting to life in a new town, or simply seeking hope in the middle of your military journey, our mission is to equip you with truth from God’s Word and tools for a healthy, resilient life.
Military Wellness Collective
Military Life: Thriving Not Just Surviving
Ever find yourself just counting down the days until the next deployment ends, the next PCS is over, or this whole season of military life is behind you? You're not alone.
The Military Wellness Collective podcast launches with hosts Joshua and Brittany Brown alongside Brian and Kelly O'Day - two couples with over 40 years of combined military experience between them. Together they unpack what true wellness looks like amid the unique challenges of military life.
Drawing from their experiences as both active duty service members and military spouses, the hosts address the dangerous "just get through it" mentality that leaves many military members and families merely surviving rather than thriving. Joshua warns against becoming "crusty" - that bitter, entitled person who emerges after years of resenting military life rather than embracing its purpose. Kelly vulnerably shares how she battled intense loneliness during early deployments, while Brian reflects on how neglecting spiritual disciplines made his first deployment far more difficult than later ones.
The conversation weaves through biblical wisdom, particularly focusing on Jeremiah 29, where God instructed exiled Israelites to build meaningful lives even while living in foreign territory under foreign rule. This powerful parallel challenges listeners to stop putting life on pause during difficult military seasons.
From work-life balance struggles to finding authentic community, the hosts offer practical insights for maintaining spiritual, emotional, and relational health through military challenges. They emphasize the importance of local church involvement and finding trusted mentors who can speak truth when needed.
Whether you're active duty, a military spouse, or someone who loves a service member from afar, this podcast offers wisdom for transforming your military journey from survival mode to purposeful living. Subscribe now and join us as we explore what it means to experience true wellness in every aspect of military life.
http://instagram.com/militarywellnesscollective
I will be your host today. I'm Brittany Brown and I'm joined by Kelly and Brian O'Day and my amazing husband, joshua, and we just want to welcome you, and today we're going to chat.
Speaker 2:We're doing it.
Speaker 1:What is the Military Wellness Collective? So we're just going to kind of go around and introduce each of ourselves. So I'm going to ask I'll start with Joshua Can you introduce yourself real quick?
Speaker 3:Sure, my name is Joshua Brown and I'm one of the pastors at Pillar Church of Topsoul, but then I also served in the Marine Corps for 20 years and have been eldering at churches, pastoring at churches and church planting. And my wife and I have been married for over 20 years and our entire time in the military has been as believers and as we've been moving around and working through our Christian walk and our military walk, we've seen these things collide quite a bit, and so we're excited about talking about them.
Speaker 1:Very cool, Brian. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Very good, and where is Topsil? Sorry, I had a question for Joshua.
Speaker 3:Great question we are at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, All right right outside of North Carolina.
Speaker 2:There you go, I love it. Yeah, I'm Brian O'Day. I'm one of the pastors of Pillar Church of Jacksonville, North Carolina, just up the road from Topsel. Served 10 years on active duty in the Marine Corps, was married for virtually all of that. We got married about six months into my time on active duty. So 10 years active duty in the Marine Corps. Got out of the Marine Corps, started a church and served another eight years in the reserves and somehow in reserve. Math 10 plus eight is 20. And so I retired from the reserves a couple of years ago. We've been married for 21 amazing years but, yeah, married through the time in the military and deployments and everything else.
Speaker 4:Very cool All right, kelly, you want to go ahead? Yep, so my name's Kelly and, like Brian said, we've been married 21 years. So my name's Kelly and, like Brian said, we've been married 21 years and I am currently a public high school teacher. I teach math Jacksonville High School and, yeah, we've been moving around. I'm sure we'll talk about it, but we've done a lot in the Marine Corps and church planning and stuff Very cool.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess I'll introduce myself. So I'm Brittany. Joshua mentioned we've been married over 20 years it's 22 to be exact. We got saved during our military journey, so our whole Christian life has been in the military Trying to think what else. We have three kids. I have homeschooled all of them. We have one year left. I teach ballet. I don't know lots of cool things.
Speaker 3:We love the military and doing ministry with them and yeah, so can we do a quick collective discussion here, because there's like some very unique aspects of each one of us that kind of makes this podcast a little unique go. I'm looking around the table and I'm going okay, we have two couples that are married for quite some time, have been married through deployments, through separations, through trainings, through combat tours.
Speaker 3:We also have couples that are coming from the enlisted side, the officer side, that are coming from the enlisted side, the officer side, we also have wives back here on the home front doing different activities back here with kids all over the place and doing church life as well. There's a lot going on here in these four people coming together. I probably didn't touch them all, though Did.
Speaker 2:I miss anything. Yeah, we may bring other people in and hear from them as well, and so, yeah, we want to collaborate. We've been doing this as friends for several years now of just talking about life in the military, what it looks like to live as a Christian in the military, and we thought we'd record some of the conversations, so I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. All of us do ministry together in military communities. We're all part of a church network that ministers in military communities and so our lives, even though we're retired from the military, is still heavily entwined with the military. Well, as we kick off today, I just have a scripture passage that I want to read from 1 John, or sorry, 3 John, 2. This is Beloved.
Speaker 1:I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. So in this first episode we're just going to kind of define what the Military Wellness Collective is, what our mission is and our goal here. So I'm going to have a few questions for my friends and just make it very clear like this is not just about physical fitness. We want to talk about spiritual health in the military, how we can thrive instead of just survive and choose joy, like as we kind of do, life in the midst of hard the table here. Like how would you define wellness from a military standpoint, whether you've been one of the guys who've served in uniform or kelly as a wife, like what does that look like to live well in military life? Does that make sense, y'all?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think when things get really difficult, we have this temptation to just go into survival mode and sometimes press a big pause button on actually really important things in life, like our marriage or parenting our children or our spiritual disciplines, whatever those things are, and so we get into survival mode. We're like we're going to put all that on pause and then we're going to pick it up later and what we're talking about is no, no, no. Thriving spiritually, our physical health, our mental health and our spiritual health, thriving through the difficult is one of the big things that I think we're talking about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that the Lord's taught me is he has purpose in exactly where we are and he is enough for me. I think early on in military life and marriage, brian deployed on a combat deployment right away and I remember thinking this is not good. We're supposed to be one together and I had to work through all of that. No, actually, god has really good things for me to learn, both of us to learn, and he is sovereign through our physical separation. And yeah, it's just been so good for me to learn that it's really good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me it's kind of hard to describe because it's all-encompassing, and for all of us around this table it's been.
Speaker 3:Most of our lives have been in the military, raising families and doing all the things that a military family does, and so it's hard to describe because it is so all-encompassing. And the aspect that hasn't been touched on yet is I'm just thinking through extended family as well, family as well. So there's probably people out there who have, you know, a cousin or a nephew or a niece or a brother or some, or a son or a daughter who's gone into the military and doesn't really know how to interact with them because they don't really they don't know how to communicate it well. I also just think this would be helpful for them to hear how they can be going through those things well, because the way that we communicate with one another from afar or in extended family as well, is a part that really doesn't get touched on very much or discussed very much. So I'm looking forward to talking about that as well, because the people who are afar, who love their military service members, that are all over the place, they don't really know how to handle that well either.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I think a lot of times, you know, when we go through something difficult in life, our brain wants to get out of that right and our flesh wants to get out of the difficult thing. And there's sometimes a lot of voices in our lives that say, well, yeah, that's hard and I love you and I don't want you to go through hard things either. You should get out of that thing, and we want to be here saying no, no, God's hard and I love you and I don't want you to go through hard things either. You should get out of that thing and we wanna be here saying no, no, no, God has purposes in this. God is doing something in you. God can use you in this and we wanna encourage you to look for those things. Look for what God is doing in you, Look for what God is doing through you. Look for God's purposes in this, not run away from it, because it's difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great, because a lot of people who find themselves in the military wives especially start to think if I could just get through this. And as believers, we're not supposed to live like that. We're supposed to live with intention and purpose and see that everything that we're walking through is part of the path or journey that God has placed us on. And so I fell into that trap, like Kelly. Shortly after our marriage, we entered a combat tour and I remember thinking like, oh, if I could just get through these nine months. I just got to get through these nine months. And then the second combat tour comes and I found myself thinking that. But it wasn't until that second tour that I found myself realizing wait a minute, I've just had a baby during this deployment and if I look at this time span, she's going to be around six months old when my husband comes home. If I keep living that way, I'm going to miss these first six months.
Speaker 1:And God really used that to bring perspective of I need to change my thinking, like this is all good for me, for God's glory. Like how can we live with intention in this? And like Brian was saying, not just, oh, this is hard. Maybe I need to quit it. James would teach us very much. Otherwise, we're going to go through various trials in our lives and we're to count it all joy. So if we can look at military life with deep intention and purpose, then we can walk out to be in good health in our mind, body, soul and with our emotions. And so, like everybody has said, that's really what we just want to be here to provide truth from the word of God, to help you thrive. Things that God has taught us and how we've tried to walk it out, how we've walked it out imperfectly, how we have learned things walking alongside others too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, can I mention on side others too? Yeah, yeah, can I mention on? There's this after effect that comes from people who just want to get through it, and I think they end up getting crusty does that make sense?
Speaker 3:nobody wants to define crusty. I would love to define crusty. So I think what it looks like is we end up if somebody just constantly like year after year is just like okay, I just have to get through this deployment, oh, I just have to get through this, oh, I just have to get through this. They wake up one day and they look back on all this time spent and they're bitter, they get angry about it. They missed it. Yes, they lost it yeah.
Speaker 3:Then there can also be this little bit of a complex of well, I sacrificed so much, so now I deserve.
Speaker 3:And it turns into this entitlement and it turns into this like weird crustiness about them, and you know there's just a lot of different after effects that come from not doing military life well effects that come from not doing military life well and so it's going to be great to talk through a lot of those so that we don't fall into some of those traps and wake up one day and become one of those crusty individuals.
Speaker 1:At 40.
Speaker 3:Because if you're listening to this and you're young.
Speaker 4:You're under 40.
Speaker 1:I mean honestly, we're all early 40s here.
Speaker 2:So the stat is something like 85% of the active duty service is under the age of 40. Something like 65% is under the age of 30. And so we understand, you guys listening to this, you don't want to be an old, crusty soul at 35. You just don't, and so we want to help you not do that. That was good. So, brittany, you mentioned James, james 1, I believe it's my favorite.
Speaker 1:Was it James 1? Okay.
Speaker 2:So you're right, this topic is literally all over the Bible, like all over. The one that came to my mind this morning is just preparing, for this was in Jeremiah 21. Morning is just preparing, for this was in Jeremiah 21. Probably one of the most difficult experiences in all of Old Testament Israel. They have been taken into exile and they are living in this foreign land under this foreign government, and the Lord, through the prophet Jeremiah, has instructions for them and one of the things he says is in Jeremiah 21, build, or sorry, 29,. Build houses, live in them, plant gardens, eat their produce, take wives, have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage. This is all like normal stuff.
Speaker 2:So you're in exile, you're in this immensely difficult situation and God's telling them do normal stuff, be married, be given into marriage. And he's even thinking about so, have some. And he's thinking this is going to be a long time and for them it is going to be a long time and so, okay, how can we do this? So maybe don't think nine months, let me get through this nine month deployment. Let me get through this six month deployment. Let me get through this enlistment, let me like. No, you're here. You went through a lot of effort to join the military. It's not easy to join the military. It's not easy to get through entry-level training. You've done all that. You should stay in until God calls you out to something else he's saying, like build a life.
Speaker 2:Build a life there, yeah.
Speaker 1:One word that comes up through the Bible multiple times and you just said it is the word through. Like we talk about trials or hardship, hardship, and we're like, how am I going to get through? Sorry, I'm air quoting here how am I going to get through this? Well, friends, you have to go through it.
Speaker 4:You can't go around it you can't circumvent it.
Speaker 1:So you have a choice to make how you're going to go through that. Like Joshua said, you don't want to be crusty Collagen is not going to go through that. Like Joshua said, you don't want to be crusty Collagen is not going to help. A crusty spirit might help your skin, girlfriends, but not that right. Like, you have to make a choice and how you're going to walk through that and nobody else can make that choice for you.
Speaker 1:So if you right now are listening and you feel like that root of anxiety or bitterness or just like I hate this life, I can't wait till it's finished. I would get out a journal or something and lay that before the Lord and wrestle through that, because I think in the military community we can justify each other in that and we have to be careful of that. Like we know, this is hard. It really does stink. Just get through it Like it's fine and we almost can create a culture that thrives in the unwell and we justify it for each other.
Speaker 1:And as Christians that should not be the case. We should be encouraging each other like hey, that's really not the greatest spirit to have. So as we walk through this journey with y'all, we want to see you live well and, like Brian just read from Jeremiah the building, the doing things, having families. Like you can do that wherever you're at. How have you seen an instance in your own lives where maybe you weren't doing it very well, or maybe back at the beginning? Can you share a practical example of maybe how that wasn't going well, maybe if you were confronted or something, and how you've learned to flip that, like what process God used in your life to help you take a mindset of unwell and turn it into well? That's a long question, trying to word that around.
Speaker 4:I think you know, early on in our marriage and just military life, brian deployed and was gone most of the time. I had come out of college right into marriage and had just a lot of—a big social life, I guess, and I was all of a sudden in a new town not knowing anybody. My husband left and I experienced extreme loneliness and I did start wishing away, like you know just well, when he gets back from deployment. I just kind of wanted to like I remember telling my mom I just want to live in a hole until he gets back and my mom was good to encourage me like you can't do that, get out and live and work and.
Speaker 4:I think I took that to the Lord. And one thing I'm excited about with this podcast is just sharing the hope that we have in Christ of in our loneliness, in our bitterness and when we want to blame the Marine Corps or whatever, like we have hope that God's going to use it for good. And I remember just taking it to the Lord.
Speaker 4:My loneliness and I remember thinking like you're going to have to be enough for me, lord, because I feel like I can't do this without Him here or I can't do this by myself in this town alone, in this house. I feel like I'm not going to make it and I I'm not like I'm just going to live in a hole and not do anything and I just that, where I was, I feel like God met me there and he did so much in me and taught me so much through the hard and that just like kept going on in our marriage and different hard experiences where I just brought it to the Lord exactly where I was the hard, the loneliness, the fear, whatever it was. And yeah, I'm just excited to encourage people and like we have hope in the Lord. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Brittany, you were talking about like really practical things. And then Kelly just talked like reading your Bible, prayer, journaling, thinking through, like this is really simple stuff. It's the simple becomes difficult when life gets, when life gets challenging For me in my first deployment I did not regularly read my Bible and pray. I just did not have that spiritual discipline. And when I came back Kelly had, she had worked through it and I hadn't.
Speaker 2:And I felt that like I did not thrive spiritually on my first deployment in any way, shape or form, have those spiritual disciplines. My second deployment did a little bit better with that. Third deployment was way better at that. And just those basic spiritual disciplines read the Bible, pray, journal out my thoughts, process what in the world's going on all those types of things really helped me thrive way more on my third deployment than I did on my first deployment. And I don't think it was just because I got older, it's not just because I had a little bit more experience. It was literally returning to those spiritual disciplines. I was a very new Christian when I joined the military. I knew the spiritual disciplines because I'd grown up in a Christian home. I knew them. I just wasn't walking in them when life got hard on that first deployment.
Speaker 4:That's good, do you have?
Speaker 3:anything babe. Yeah, I'll touch on something that probably affects most service members, especially those in their first four to six years. I would say putting the job above family. I got a lot of examples so I'm not going to touch on any one in particular. But if you're waking up at you know zero, dark, 30, had enough to do your physical training at work, having breakfast there, then working all day and then having things come up at the end of the day to where you don't get home until after dark, your family only knows you as somebody that sleeps while they're sleeping and they don't even know you're sleeping because they're already asleep.
Speaker 3:We've gone through many seasons where that was the case and, looking back on it, some of I altered some of those things throughout my career. But the desire would be for people to realize that sooner and to have a work-life balance. That is achievable in the military, and there's a lot of different mentalities that go into that. There's a lot of pride that goes into that. There's a lot of desire to just look good to other people, and then there's a lot of there's a lot of this like well, if I'm working longer than I'm working harder, than everybody else and I'm like doing the right thing and that's that couldn't be further from the truth in most cases.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that's definitely something that I think we all need to hear.
Speaker 1:So going from unwell to well, that's good. I think that something in the wives culture and military communities is this probably I don't know if this is appropriate for a podcast, but you know you're told like put on your big girl panties and just suck it up. And in the Christian realm we need to be okay, asking for help and leaning on one another, and I still am not always the best at doing that. God has always grown me. I've gotten a lot better, but in the beginning my family was the military family.
Speaker 1:My dad was in the Marine Corps, so I have a history in the military and I have watched many older wives and I think that that is a part of the unwell in the military wife culture, Like everybody, thinks you're okay on the outside because you're keeping it together until you're not and it will come crumbling down. It doesn't mean you have to ask for help for every single thing, but we need to be together and let people know you know, hey, this is hard. Can you speak some truth to me? I know the truth, but can you just remind me? I think we need to do a good job at reminding each other the truth of God's word.
Speaker 2:And we need wisdom in who we invite into that conversation.
Speaker 1:Yes, very true. I was at a women's retreat. I think Kelly might have been there adorned a few years ago and I sat in a biblical counseling seminar and she mentioned something about that. Brian, like we need to be authentic with everyone, transparent with a few. So, if you're hearing this, pick those few maybe two, three at most, older women that you know, love the Lord and have your best interests and are going to speak hard truths to you and then give them access to that, even if you're a married couple. Find an older couple that you trust, that has a thriving marriage, that you can see, and ask them to speak into that, and then don't be upset when they do. Like, don't be prideful, like we have it all together. Let them speak those truths to you and come alongside and walk that with you. I know that was very helpful in our first five years of marriage. Thankful for that.
Speaker 4:And if you're not part of a local church, I would just encourage you. I know we're going to talk about that on another podcast, but next episode. I know I think sometimes it's like well, where do I find that older, more mature couple, further in the faith, you know, and that's going to be in the local church.
Speaker 2:I wrote down two practical tips for this episode and it was join a local church. Join a local church I know it's hard. Join a local church and self-promoting. Listen to this podcast. We're going to try to help you walk through this life. We've, you know, we've walked it. We can't walk it for you, but hopefully we can walk it with you in your ear as you're walking or driving to work or whatever you're doing, as you listen to stuff like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I love it.
Speaker 3:A wise person does not just learn from his own mistakes. A wise person also learns from other people's mistakes.
Speaker 2:You're saying we may share some of our mistakes.
Speaker 3:We're probably going to share a lot of our mistakes Plenty.
Speaker 1:Well, friends, it's about that time to wrap it up. As Brian mentioned, we are going to be talking about local church and community Kelly mentioned that as well in the next episode and we just want to invite you guys. Follow along If you have questions or want some topics discussed. We'd love for you guys to follow us on Instagram, send us a message or comment on one of the posts. You can find us at the Military Wellness Collective on Instagram and we hope you'll join us back here soon.