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
What Does it Really Mean to Be Spiritually Prepared in Military Life?
Spiritual readiness might be a military term, but its implications run far deeper than most official definitions suggest. What does it truly mean to be spiritually prepared for the unique challenges of military service?
In this soul-stirring episode, veterans and military spouses share raw, powerful stories from both the battlefield and the home front. We explore how spiritual battles unfold in combat zones, where mortality isn't an abstract concept but a daily reality. One combat veteran describes witnessing 19-year-olds dying alongside him while wrestling with the eternal implications for those who didn't know Christ. These moments create unique openings for spiritual conversations that rarely happen in civilian contexts.
For military spouses, the spiritual battlefield looks different but proves equally challenging. The illusion of control crumbles when your loved one deploys, forcing profound questions about God's sovereignty. Can you surrender to divine will when your spouse's life hangs in the balance? Can you trust God's goodness even if the worst happens? Our guests share how they've navigated these questions through deployments, combat injuries, and the everyday stresses of military life.
The parallels between physical and spiritual preparation emerge as we discuss practical readiness. Just as service members train their bodies before deployment, spiritual readiness requires consistent discipline: developing a genuine relationship with God through Christ, immersing yourself in Scripture, maintaining a vibrant prayer life, and plugging into a supportive church community. Most importantly, this preparation must happen before crisis hits—not during it.
What makes this conversation particularly hopeful is hearing how military hardships, rather than destroying faith and families, can actually strengthen them. Through vulnerability and authenticity, our guests demonstrate how spiritual readiness transforms the military experience from merely surviving to genuinely thriving.
Whether you're currently serving, supporting someone who is, or simply interested in the intersection of faith and military life, this episode offers wisdom for navigating life's toughest battles with your spirit intact and your faith strengthened.
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I'm Brian O'Day. I'm going to host us this week. Welcome back to the Military Wellness Collective. What is spiritual readiness? That's the question we're going to tackle today. What is spiritual readiness? Where did we get that term spiritual readiness? Did we just make that up? Is that in the Bible? Where are we getting that term?
Speaker 2:I feel like it was from you. Oh Joshua, where are we getting that up? Is that in the Bible? Where are we getting that term? I feel like it was from you.
Speaker 1:Oh Joshua, where are we getting that term?
Speaker 2:I feel like this is a military thing. That's what I was going to say. It's a military thing.
Speaker 3:I believe it to be a military term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a military term.
Speaker 3:Because, while there's multiple pillars in readiness, and spiritual readiness is one of those pillars, at least for the Marine Corps and probably the Navy I'm not sure about the Army and the Air Force and Space Force- Coast Guard and Coast Guard friends. Yes, and first responders and all the other things that we can list on there, but I'm curious if law enforcement has it.
Speaker 1:There's probably something similar. Right, this is the chaplain corps, those types of things. There's a remnant of Christianity in our military. There's a rem interesting to read all of those on air of how they define spiritual readiness. And then I read them all this morning and I was unimpressed.
Speaker 3:And it's very vague.
Speaker 1:It sounds like a secular organization trying to describe what spiritual readiness is. And so if you've heard a chaplain stand up and say you need to be spiritually ready or we need to talk about spiritual readiness, and you've been underwhelmed by the response, we want to give a different answer. And so when you think about being ready spiritually, are there Bible passages and or Bible ideas that come to your mind?
Speaker 2:For sure. Mine is Ephesians 6, 11 through 18. Putting on the whole armor of God as a believer, making sure that I'm in the word, praying, remembering that the darkness around me, you know that it's not the people or the culture, that there's a war behind the scene that we can't see, and keeping that at the forefront of my mind. Ephesians 6 helps me to remember that when I think about spiritual readiness.
Speaker 1:Very interesting passage. Right, we wrestle not against flesh and blood In the military. What are we doing? We wrestle against flesh and blood.
Speaker 2:But there's something behind the veil there.
Speaker 1:But there is actually something else going on. There is a spiritual battle and you are in a spiritual battle and you need to be spiritually ready for the spiritual battle. You need to be physically, mentally ready everything else for the spiritual battle. You need to be physically mentally ready, everything else for the physical battle, but you also need to be spiritually ready for the spiritual battle.
Speaker 3:I think of Peter, because Peter is kind of a hot mess. He's kind of a hothead. He acts before he thinks that kind of a thing. But I'm thinking about when Jesus is in the garden and he's getting arrested and Peter whips out his sword, lops off a dude's ear, like he's ready for the physical battle. He's ready to protect Jesus, he's ready to fight him, the Romans, and just like, start an uprising and just do all the things physical all the things physical, not realizing that Jesus is after the hearts and minds rather than the physical location and the physical being, that is, people.
Speaker 3:He's after the hearts, and so, man, there's all sorts of scriptures we could go to for that, but that would probably fill about eight hours of podcast time of talking about all the spiritual going on instead of the physical.
Speaker 3:But that's where my mind goes, just because it's such a stark contrast of like Jesus going no, no, no. I'm going to heal this supposed enemy of ours and I'm going to allow them to bring me to the cross eventually, and I'm going to win the ultimate battle of the inner man rather than the outer man it's beautiful.
Speaker 4:I I mean, this is one of my favorite verses, so you probably know what I'm gonna say um second Corinthians 12, 9 and 10 Paul's talking about. He talks about a thorn in his side and just about he's going to boast in his weakness. And the power of God is made known through our weakness and I think for me, just realizing that I'm weak and I need God's power to help me is always a good place for me to be ready.
Speaker 1:That's good. That's good. Yeah, there's so much, there's so many. I wrote down several. Yeah, so you mentioned Peter, joshua and Peter. In 1, peter talks about preparing our minds for action and he's just talking about this readiness and it's really in the mind, is a lot of where these battles take place is in the mind. He says prepare your minds for action. The other thing that came to mind is several kind of what we would call eschatological conversations, so like end times, hey, how do we be ready when Christ returns? And it's talking about readiness there and there we get this. It's not like, hey, be ready, or be spiritually ready, it's stay awake.
Speaker 1:And he's talking about staying awake spiritually, and so Matthew 24, you see that idea. First, thessalonians 5, you see that idea. And so this concept of being ready. And when the Bible's talking about being ready, most of the time it's talking about being spiritually ready, spiritually awake, not physically ready, physically awake, and so that's what we're talking about. That's what the Bible's talking about. A spiritual readiness is being ready for the spiritual battle. So what are the spiritual battles that you have had to wage in the military context, as a service member or as the spouse of a service member?
Speaker 3:Wow, there's a lot that I could. That's a very huge question.
Speaker 1:We could have a podcast episode about it and that's what we're doing. So what are the battles you've had, like spiritual battles you have had to engage in?
Speaker 3:so there's so much I want to say as far as with the physical versus the spiritual in this.
Speaker 3:But the most stark contrast that I can think of is being deployed, being in a combat zone, being with a of I was with a group of men at the time, most of my career was in an all-male career, so it was just a group of dudes. And we're living in the dirt. We're living with meager means and we're just getting by essentially with meager means, and we're just getting by essentially. But we're also they're doing a mission and there's literally this physical evil that is present, that is desiring to kill those around us, and so it's a very stark, straightforward contrast because in that deployment me being a believer and only having maybe one or two other christians in the group of about 30 there's this also spiritual battle going on. There's also this worry like when, when we get together to pray and we're thinking through like hey, if tomorrow we lose another guy, if he doesn't know Christ, he's not just losing his life for the next, you know 60 years, he's losing his life for eternity in the second death.
Speaker 3:And so there's this. We weren't just ready to fight the good fight physically in a combat zone and day by day. Obviously we did, but we also had this spiritual battle going on, where we had individuals in the unit that were, that were like, they desired to know, because you know the old saying, there's no atheists in a fighting hole, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:People had questions and we had time to talk through those questions, to see the people that would try to take the conversation somewhere else or into areas that weren't helpful, to get people to be distracted from their spiritual condition, rather than pressing in to understand their spiritual condition, to answer the big questions of who is God and what does he want from us. And so in those deployment times when it was real heavy hey, it's very real like we lost several guys during it. It really opens up the conversations. For that and I just during those times it was a little bit more weighty because death was literally around the corner.
Speaker 3:And you were seeing it, and we were seeing the physical and the spiritual death.
Speaker 1:And it was. You weren't watching 90-year-olds die in a hospital bed. You were watching 20-year-olds, 19-year-olds Right, and so that's one of maybe the first. I'm glad you brought it up first. Joshua is like the spiritual battle of personally, especially in a combat zone. I could die today, I could die on this patrol, I could die in this next firefight.
Speaker 4:The guy next to me same thing. One was that you would have an affair and just meet another woman on ship and and or die, and I.
Speaker 4:It was such a good thing for me to wrestle with and I'm so glad that, even though it was hard, I had to walk through that and just be like okay, what if? Like, do I believe what I say? I believe, do I trust the Lord, no matter what Cause? Those were two things that I had no control over, and I think that's what the real wrestling was was like I don't have control. This could be the deployment where my husband is killed.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 4:I have no like I can't. Worrying is not going to change anything.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that was one of the big ones, Brittany. What's it look like on the home front for you?
Speaker 2:I agree with Kelly Sovereignty of God and control. Always been a planner to the T, probably OCD and very control-natured, and wrestling with the sovereignty of God and surrender. One thing that I had to learn through that deployment was not just I surrender, Lord, but I also will receive what you give. I think a lot of time we talk about surrendering but we don't want to talk about, we have to receive as well. What he says is good for us Also just anger, the spiritual battle, fighting against emotions and feelings that I had, realizing that my feelings aren't fact and having to surrender those to the Lord consistently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just things that are spoken about in Colossians 3, I think of, like you know, what we're told to put off. I think there's a lot of spiritual battle there on the home front, you know. Do we want to gossip and slander the command?
Speaker 4:Do we?
Speaker 1:want to talk about how terrible they are Terrible with those spouse social media pages. The comment threads there get awful.
Speaker 2:Idolatry, like I had to learn very much. Spiritual battle for me was that Joshua is not my Jesus and that he needs to come off the pedestal. I placed him on and trust the Lord to be the Lord of my life and not my husband. There's a lot of things that I have spiritually wrestled with.
Speaker 1:Is God God things that I have spiritually. Is God God like that? That question is something we wrestle with in such a clear way. On control Like I, I don't control when deployments happen. I don't control what's going to happen on deployment. I don't control what's going to happen to my spouse on deployment. I don't. I don't have control of any of those things, but God does. And so we're wrestling through like is God God or am I trying to be God? That is a massive battle we're in. Joshua. What were?
Speaker 3:you saying yeah, I was just going to say yeah, that is very difficult and you don't know when it's going to happen. You don't know how it's going to happen. So being ready has this in the military I hear it all the time we have we have all these guys who are they're they're they're anxious and worried, but also frustrated that they're not like doing stuff okay, and they're a lot of guys nowadays like want to go and do certain combat things, they want to go forward and do certain deployments and they want to do the cool training and they just want to be you know.
Speaker 1:GI Joe or whatever the case is.
Speaker 3:And then when they join and they end up, there's a lot of waiting and there's a lot of like downtime. Sitting around, sitting around just waiting for the thing to happen and to realize that it. What would be helpful for a lot of them to fully comprehend is that, no, you're being ready to go. Your job is to wait and be ready to leave at any moment.
Speaker 3:Us, as believers, we are to be ready in those moments when there's someone to witness to, when there's a theological discussion to be had, when there's someone that needs physical help and we get to be the hands and feet of jesus when we get to go forward and go and check on the bomb emplacement instead of the other guy, because you know, if it goes off you're going to be with Jesus and he's not those kinds of things that we need to be ready for.
Speaker 1:It's pretty weighty and difficult, but we we need to be steady in that you just stumbled into something, then I want to hear the ladies respond to that thought.
Speaker 1:But a lot of times when we who are not going into harm's way which now I'm one of those when we pray for those who are going into harm's way, we are praying primarily for physical safety.
Speaker 1:But, joshua, what you just said is actually sometimes the right thing to do is to do the right thing, and sometimes that's really complex, and often that is actually not concerning yourself for your physical safety. It is doing the right thing for the right reasons, and so there's a classic prayer that I've read a few times to some of our folks who are deploying and was very helpful to me, and it's this prayer from a father to a son, and all of his prayers have nothing to do with his physical safety. It is for the spiritual battle, and so, yeah, that's really good. How do you guys wrestle through that? Like even the fact that somebody raises their right hand and joins the military is saying, as General Mattis says, like you're signing a check to the American people, up to and including your life, and you guys marry into that right, right, when you got married, joshua was already intending to join or had joined, or did he spring this on you after I got married in our first year in the military?
Speaker 2:We were dating through boot camp and all those things. So you're dating.
Speaker 1:Am I going to marry this guy? He's joining the Marine Corps Right.
Speaker 4:Corps right.
Speaker 1:Similar to us we met. I had literally just signed up to join the Marine Corps when we met and then we started dating, knowing this guy's joining the Marine Corps. So how do you wrestle with that? On the wise front of this, I'm married to a guy who is choosing to go into harm's way. This isn't just it's happening. He is choosing to, as we would say in the military, run to the sound of the guns. Like, how do you wrestle through that? Spiritually?
Speaker 4:I think surrender Okay, just in our story, like when I was in college, I had a growing relationship with the Lord at the time that we started dating. I had a growing relationship with the Lord at the time that we started dating and that was something that the Lord was teaching me was just surrender, because I had all these plans for my life and my major and what I was going to do, and that all started changing. But I had to surrender to it and I feel not that I did it perfectly, because I didn't at all, but even like in the early on in military life and throughout it, god was continually teaching me to surrender. There's more than just what we see on this earth, you know, and it's. There's just so much more.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, that's the word, and that's a dangerous word for folks in the military. And in the physical battle, as we defend innocent people, surrender is a really bad word. And in the physical battle, surrender is a bad word. If we're genuinely fighting evil and we're genuinely protecting the innocent, surrender is a bad word. But in the spiritual battle, surrendering to God's will for our life, surrendering to God's plan for our life, surrendering to God's way of living life, is instrumental.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my experience was a little bit different because we were not believers when Joshua was going through bootcamp and even when we first got married we became believers. Well, I did a few months after we were married, which is another podcast episode probably. So I would say, as I came to know the Lord, I was learning the difference between reacting and responding, and so I realized reacting is just kind of like oh, this came at me, what am I going to do? Responding is I'm prepared.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about readiness, I often think of the word prepared, because Merriam-Webster defines ready as prepared mentally or physically for some experience or action. So we don't have to let just military life happen to us. Part of the readiness as a spouse is to be prepared. I need to be in my Bible, praying not just when my husband's deployed but before the deployment comes, praying not just when my husband's deployed but before the deployment comes. I need to be doing those things, having a thriving spiritual life with the Lord, trusting he's enough, so that when deployment comes or those field ops, I know and can recall and remember the promises of God and also His faithfulness, through the stories I'm reading, through His character and scripture, through the stories I'm reading, through his character and scripture. So I think, as a spouse, when you say, ask the question, brian, how is that for you, knowing this man has enlisted and is willing to go into harm's way, I have to be prepared, knowing that God's plans are greater than my plans and that his plans are not to harm me or destroy me. So, whatever comes from this deployment or combat tour, whatever it's for our good, which I say that from a deep place of truth, knowing that we've had to walk through that.
Speaker 2:When Joshua talks about you know, hey, let me be the one that literally happened during an IED explosion. And I remember when we had the conversation, when he came home, like him telling me I was four weeks from having our second daughter, when he was in an accident in his second combat tour, and I remember him saying I just remember praying as I saw the light flash like Lord, take me. And I remember feeling so much anger at first inside, like how could you say that we have a one-year-old daughter and I'm about ready to have this other baby? But then, like an overwhelming peace because we had prepared, like knowing and also seeing God's goodness, like was that what saved all those other men Like because it wasn't time for Joshua. So I think having that prepared heart before I don't think I truly believe in no Like you will not make it through. If you think you're going to start praying and reading your Bible as soon as the deployment happens, you better start before that.
Speaker 1:It's too late. Okay, this is good. How do we prepare? So readiness is about preparation and it's about ongoing preparation, even in the even in the thing. So, like physically, we understand that we need like physical endurance to do the physical battle. And so we run and we do pushups and we do pull-ups and we do all that stuff right. And so that's how we prepare physically. How do we prepare and fight? It's interesting we do the same things to prepare and to fight in the spiritual battle.
Speaker 3:So what do we?
Speaker 3:do Well, military life is a fast track to maturity in this, because the events that we go through are so big that it forces some of that preparedness to just happen upon us, or it creates an extra urgency in order to do it. And I would say, first of all, relationship with God, being a believer in Christ, then diving into God's word and learning about who he is, prayer in that relationship with him and a relationship with the local church those main things would be the hallmarks of being prepared for anything when it comes to a spiritual battle.
Speaker 2:The local church for sure. I want to hit on that because even when we walked through your accident, the local church back home came alongside of me. I mean they brought meals. I had six women in my delivery room. They were checking in on me. I mean, they brought meals. I had six women in my delivery room. They were checking in on me. The pastor, you know, was just him, and his wife were very much there. So, connecting to that community, you won't be able to do it by yourself. Obviously you need to have that relationship with the Lord personally, but making sure you're connected into local community so that you're not like a lone ranger out there by yourself.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, and all those things are intertwined, right. Like, if you're reading your Bible, you're going to be commanded to pray. If you're praying and reading your Bible and you're part of your local church, the people in the church are going to encourage you to do all of those things, and it's just going to be this circular effect that's going on.
Speaker 3:And then, if you're specifically serving or living in a military community, you're going to have trials upon trials upon trials that you then have to work through and you're really going to have to dig in, not just in prayer but in your Bible reading and in your local church. So those things just strengthen and strengthen and strengthen. So fast, so quick, comparatively speaking.
Speaker 1:Let us not skip over one thing. You said, joshua, you must have a relationship with God to be spiritually ready. So I hear, as we were driving over here this morning, I turned on a Christian radio station and they were talking about everyone listening to that radio as though they had a relationship with God. And the reality is, if you have not surrendered to use Kelly's word again if you have not surrendered to the lordship of Jesus Christ, you do not have a relationship with God. And so and I think a lot of times, and I'll just I'll pick on the Marine Corps Joshua and I are Marines. The third verse of the Marine's hymn says that there are Marines guarding the streets of heaven. Just so you know, that's propaganda. That's not true.
Speaker 1:Evan just so you know that's propaganda. That's not true. You're not saved, you do not have a relationship with God just because you're a United States Marine. You only have a relationship with God if you have submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and so that is the most important thing of spiritual readiness. We know Jesus through the Bible, we can pray to Jesus through prayer, which you've said, and we commune with the people of God in the local church. So you know, here we are again. What do we do practically? Know God, read your Bible, pray, join a local church. I think we're just going to be saying that a lot in this podcast, but it's true, and this is how we fight and this is how we we battle.
Speaker 4:But I do think you have to be careful with that list of like cause. It can be like workspace. Like I'm going to pray, I'm going to read another Bible.
Speaker 1:I'm going to.
Speaker 4:But the relational part with God, like it feels hard but it's actually like God in His goodness, like he knows us more than anyone else. He made us and so he can handle our big—I think. A lot of times we think, well, I need to clean myself up or I need to get rid of this sin before I go to the Lord or whatever. And God knows it all, he knows everything that's in your thoughts and I just think that is. I just want to encourage people that may not have a relationship with the Lord or have kind of strayed, that he knows where you are and he will meet you where you are. You can take all of it to the Lord, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Quickly say how has God grown you through this? Maybe just a phrase or two.
Speaker 3:Through this podcast.
Speaker 1:No, through the spiritual battles that the military experience has brought you through. How has God used it to grow you? I think everybody. There's a narrative right now that the military breaks us and it broke your back, it broke my back in several ways but like and it breaks marriages and there's truth behind all of that. But how can God use this to grow you? How has he done it in your life?
Speaker 3:I'll go first because, yeah, we've gone through a lot and the common thread here is that there's hard things that you go through in the military. But those hard things can either, like you said, break you or they can make you stronger, can either, like you said, break you or they can make you stronger. And my wife and I have been through so many difficulties, so many hardships, so many missed times together, but we've grown together through them and it has only strengthened our relationship. And so, coming out of the military, after 20 years, I look back on our marriage and it hasn't been getting broken down, it's been getting strengthened with every hardship in different ways.
Speaker 3:So our marriage, our family, has grown stronger through our time and it's been wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would second that, Joshua. I think James has been a precious book to our family. At one point the kids and I were memorizing all of chapter one and the header in the ESV says the testing of your faith and I think, the military gives plenty of opportunities to test your faith, and one of my favorite passages is to count it all.
Speaker 2:Joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, and that steadfastness, or other versions, say endurance. We've often talked in our home, like you, to endure something is to mean there's something against you, and so I think, like we've talked about being prepared, ready, purposeful, we've learned to count it all, joy through those various trials, so I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I feel like mine's gonna be very similar. Just the way you know, when hard times come, my flesh wants to just run and get out of it, like, oh well, he can get out of the military. We talked about that on each deployment.
Speaker 4:I feel like we had a conversation like oh yeah, just get out, that'll fix it, but really learn it. Like God has used it to teach me, like no, I have you here in this season for a purpose to teach you and sanctify and make you more like me. And I didn't realize that's what I needed, and now I've grown to like want that you know. So it's just been really cool to see.
Speaker 1:Spiritual readiness is you engaging in, fighting in and preparing for the spiritual battle that you are in? And what I want you guys to hear is that the four of us, through multiple deployments, through a couple decades in the military experience, to include combat deployments, the military experience to include combat deployments, god has used it to grow us spiritually and to Joshua alluded to it grow our marriage, and so I just want you guys to know that. Engage in it, fight in it, be intentional. For this Spiritual readiness matters. All right, that's about it for this episode. I do want to highlight one thing Brittany, you have an event coming up, as we can hear in this episode and other episodes. You have experience for Military Wives and you are an excellent teacher of God's word to military spouses specifically, women generally, but military spouses specifically. You've got an event coming up. If somebody's in, like the North Carolina area, yeah, but military spouses specifically. You've got an event coming up If somebody's in, like the North Carolina area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe even South Carolina. Yes, november 14th through the 16th, north Carolina, there's an organization called the WMU. They are hosting a military wives and moms camp. So if you go to the WMUNC, I believe, We'll put the link. Yeah, we'll put the link down in the show notes. It's a three-day event. There's going to be teaching that is geared towards military spouses and moms Right military wives and spouses Good deal.
Speaker 1:So ladies that are in the North Carolina area, sign up for that. Go see Brittany and subscribe to this podcast, follow whatever it's called, and you can hit us up on the Military Wellness Collective on Instagram. Send us a message, send us comment, ask your questions that you think we should be talking about on this podcast. I love you guys.