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
EP 19: We Killed the Angel and Saved Christmas
The quiet moments matter most when life won’t slow down. We gather around the tree with scripture from Isaiah 9 and Matthew 1 to center on Emmanuel—God with us—and then get real about Christmas in military life: deployments, duty, distance, and the tug-of-war between family expectations and a soul that longs for rest. You’ll hear the stories that shaped us: the frantic trip with a newborn during a wartime tour, the ceramic angel that shattered and became a turning point, and the surprising peace we found when we stopped chasing “home” and started guarding a holy, simple Christmas right where we live.
We also share small, sticky traditions that carry big meaning: reading Luke 2 before gifts, slow mornings with cocoa, and nighttime drives to see lights that preach hope into dark streets. Hospitality becomes a mission as we open our door to Marines and young families who can’t travel, keeping the morning for our nucleus and the afternoon for anyone who needs a table. Along the way we name the roots beneath holiday stress—loneliness, expectations, fantasy—and offer a counterpractice that works in any zip code: be here now. Presence over perfection. Gratitude over comparison. Real life over curated feeds.
If duty has you standing post or separated by oceans, this conversation offers both comfort and a plan. Carve small pockets of quiet into a packed schedule. Trade obligation travel for intentional time, even if it’s just an hour behind a closed door to read, pray, and breathe. And if you’re catching up, revisit our recent episodes on loneliness and dating your spouse; they thread directly into a healthier, happier holiday. Subscribe, share this with a military friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review to help others find the show. What expectation will you release to make room for presence this Christmas?
SHOW NOTES:
Shoot us an email at Hello@militarywellnesscollective.com
We would LOVE to hear your thoughts and take questions you would like us to answer about on future episodes of the podcast.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, from our families to yours!
http://instagram.com/militarywellnesscollective
All right, guys. Merry Christmas from the Military Wellness Collective podcast. I am Brian O'Day. I'm joined by my wife, Kelly O'Day.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, hey.
SPEAKER_03:Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_01:Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_03:And our good friends Joshua and Britney Brown. Felice Navidad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_03:Merry Christmas, listeners. Thank you all for joining us. Who knows? Maybe more people, maybe less people because of the holidays. Merry Christmas to those who have some time off this year for the holidays. And maybe they're together. Merry Christmas to those who cannot go back and join, you know, mom, dad, siblings. Merry Christmas to those who are marriages that are separated right now because of military life. Merry Christmas to those who are deployed. Yes. Right now. And for those wives or husbands who are home and their spouse is deployed. Merry Christmas to those who are standing post on Christmas Day.
SPEAKER_01:I know there's always someone doing that on Christmas Day.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. You know, just we love you.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:You're here. God sees you. God knows you. He sees what you're doing. It's so easy to like just lament all of that, but just we want you to know we we know you, we see you. But more importantly, God, God knows you, God sees you. We might not even know you, but we we see you and recognize you. I wanted to start with some Christmas passages. There's so many about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. That's what we're really talking about. But Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 6 says, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. That's a prophecy about Christmas. What we celebrate is the birth of Jesus. It's a prophecy, it's looking forward to it. And I imagine the first hearers of that are like, What are you talking about? A child is gonna be born, but he's also wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Healing. Like, how is all this gonna fit into one person? And then later on, we see he is the person Jesus Christ. Anybody got a New Testament passage they want to read?
SPEAKER_00:I do. I'm gonna read Matthew one. So Matthew one, eighteen through twenty-three, and I'm gonna be reading from the English Standard Version, so the ESV. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
SPEAKER_03:So good. If you missed it a couple weeks ago, we talked about keeping keeping Jesus as the center of our holiday traditions and passing down the faith and everything else. Like Jesus is the savior of the world, and he is that word Emmanuel. Like there's quite a few Christmas songs that are Emmanuel. He is God with us. There's so many opportunities to just turn our thoughts back to Jesus if we allow, if we recognize those things and see those things. But what we wanted to talk about this week was just this what can we do? What are some of our just favorite memories of Christmas season when we were on active duty? So let's focus on that. And let's also think about what some of the challenges were of celebrating the Christmas season, the holiday season with our with our families and in the midst of active duty military life. So, what are some of your best Christmas memories during active duty life? Everyone just looked at me.
SPEAKER_02:It looks like your face was gonna say something.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man, do I go first? I can go first. No, go ahead. Um well as I was thinking about this question. I it's really hard to pick one. I love the season, and I love just something about it makes me want to just like shut out all other things that are gonna like distract me from. I mean, Jesus has changed my life and continues to. And I think I just like to that's a time that I want to not plan a lot of stuff, even though it gets really crowded with stuff, but just have that space of like family time and time in the word and time like reflecting on the Christmas story in the Bible and what God is has done, is doing and will do, you know. And um, but I think there's just because of that, there's so many good little things, I guess you would call them, little memories in active duty of just like our Christmas time, like creating traditions as a family together when we couldn't be with like our parents and siblings, right? Creating our own things together and ways to celebrate and point to Jesus and Yeah, so it hundreds of little things.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but that's good.
SPEAKER_01:Just so many good things.
SPEAKER_03:Fencing off some time. Now we're kind of late in December at this point to fix that. But if you realize, like, man, we overbooked ourselves for the holiday season, like make some commitments to change that. Yeah, that's good. Cool. What else? Good, good, good Christmas memories.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna start with a good Christmas memory that actually is being fed from a bad one. Well, not a bad one, just like a difficult time.
SPEAKER_00:So like that's where a lot of movements from the bad. True, true.
SPEAKER_02:So when we were early on in our marriage, young kids living in Southern California.
SPEAKER_00:We were young kids.
SPEAKER_02:We were young and also had little babies.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02:So we like wanted to get back to where quote unquote home is in Minnesota.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So, but we didn't have a lot of money. We were earlier on in our marriage, we had small children, but there was this like looming expectation to go back to Minnesota and visit all of our family because we're the ones that left to go into the military and do a different thing. So we like packed up the kids, drove to Minnesota, bounced around from thing to thing to thing, which was great to see family and everything, but it was hectic. It was crazy. We were bouncing around all over the place. There's people listening to this in the house.
SPEAKER_00:Take a deep breath. So bring us to the good. Yeah, it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_02:So then driving back like we got home from our vacation and needed a vacation. And it over the years, as we kind of freed ourselves from that expectation and started actually doing some things in our own home with our kids as they grew, it was so restful. It was such a time of focus on what it was actually about rather than running to and fro. And it just those years where we were able to just rest and be at home and everything shuts down and closes, and like just being able to just free ourselves from all expectations and just worshipfully love each other well in our home was just so peaceful and wonderful to us. That's my favorite memories, is those years when we just stayed home and we're just together.
SPEAKER_00:And traveled at a different time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And that's good. Like, so again, if you're kind of in the throes of all that and you're like, I don't want to do this next year. Like, hey, we'll stay tuned. We're gonna talk about goals next week, I think. Like, set this stuff, like, all right, we're and maybe start to communicate that to your family. Hey, just so you know, next year we're probably gonna travel like off the holiday a little bit so we can have some some of our own holiday time. And I I'll also say, like, make the best of it, make the best of that time in the car, make the best of that time with your like just try to redeem it the best way you can. We get that it's very hectic. It can be, you know, just a lot sometimes. So just just doing that kind of stuff. So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I before I share my favorite, I just want to piggyback off that a bit. Um, if you are in the throes of that right now, since it is Christmas week, it's not over yet and you can still thrive going through it. Like sit down with your spouse, look at what y'all have going on. And if you're in the midst of running to and fro with family, like where are some pockets of time where you can just have with your family? Because that's one of the things Joshua and I started to realize was he had two weeks off, but we were barely seeing him, right? Because everybody else wanted to see y'all. And so we had to look at, okay, well, if we're going to see family, where are the pockets of time we're gonna have where our kids can actually spend time with you because you're home and here? So there's still time, like whether that's an hour in a bedroom in the morning with you and your spouse, and you read the story together before you go out and see family, like you you can do it. Just take some deep breaths in and it's not too late. Like you can still enjoy it. I just want to encourage you that. I think I have so many like Kelly. I love this season. Jesus has radically changed my life, and I just I love the focus, I love the reflection on the year that's gone past. Like what God has done in my life over the past 21 years, 22 years, and what he's done in my life over the past year. But my favorite traditions and memories are just very simple going and looking at lights, whether we pay to do a car drive-through at some farm or we walk around somewhere that has lights. No, I just love the light of the season breaking through the darkness. It is such a reminder of what God has done in my own soul. And it really speaks to me. I know that sounds woo-woo, but I don't care. No, no, the Lord speaks to me through lights. That's great.
SPEAKER_03:Kelly does not like it getting dark really early this time of year.
SPEAKER_01:But if I can sit in my car and just sip hot cocoa or something like that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, sip hot cocoa with the head. No, that's good.
SPEAKER_02:Lights.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, I'm sorry, one more quick tradition that we've started doing in recent years is Christmas Day. We have people over. We started this conversation with like thanking those in the military, thanking those that are working, thinking those are on post.
SPEAKER_00:This is my favorite thing to do.
SPEAKER_02:And this is what I'm about to say.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you're about to say, I think, I hope. So I'm we're reading others.
SPEAKER_02:Tell us what you're thinking. So Christmas a day. Our morning is is just our core nucleus family. So we're we do the whole Christmas tree, read Luke 2, do the whole that that thing, right? And then we start cooking in the middle of the day, and then towards the afternoon, we invite anyone who's in the area who because we live near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, a bunch of young Marines around here who haven't gone home, or young families that just also want to be around other people. The guy has duty or they choose to stick around. But so a lot of those that weren't able to go home with quote unquote home, but they're around this area. Like we bring them in and we have a we usually do like a white elephant gift, a gift exchange thing. We have a meal together, we hang out together, and just share stories and play games. Yeah. And we just have a wonderful celebration time in the cool. It's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_04:I like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And man, I hope no one's listening to this that's gonna hear this and go, oh, they're talking about me. But we've even seen like people come together during those times. We there's a young couple that's married right now because they got together at one of those events in our church. Y'all are matchmakers, man. Multiple people.
SPEAKER_03:So if you're single, reach out to the browns and wake up.
SPEAKER_00:Come to Christmas. And that is what I thought you were gonna say. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, good. Yeah, Christmas dinner. Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm like, oh, do you want to come?
SPEAKER_03:You should come. Yeah. No, we should have one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's a great idea.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, we've done that for years, Thanksgiving, but Christmas, we haven't. We've done it once. Yeah, we did.
SPEAKER_01:We did do Thanksgiving games. Maybe you guys came to that one. I can't remember. I think we did came to the gym. That was fun. All right.
SPEAKER_03:We digressed.
SPEAKER_01:I know.
SPEAKER_03:What are what are the challenges? We've we've touched on a few already.
SPEAKER_00:I have a terrible Christmas memory if that's where you're.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, do that. Is that a challenge? Yes, tell that story. Is that one time? I'll get to the source of I'll get to the challenge underneath it. So you share the memory of the channel. Okay, and you counsel me.
SPEAKER_00:I'll tell you maybe. So I don't I was having a really hard time thinking of a terrible Christmas memory. And then this one came to me. Joshua was in Iraq. It was his second tour. So he had been injured. We had talked about that on previous podcasts. And Elissa was four weeks old, five weeks old, and I had a one-year-old. And last minute I decided I was gonna fly to Minnesota. I don't even know if you could do that. Do they even recommend that now? So if you're hearing this, I was not trying to be a terrible mother and fly with an infant under six weeks. I don't even know. That was advised. Yeah. So maybe they know new things.
SPEAKER_03:Four week old and a one-year-old and a one-year-old. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So almost four weeks. And I bought a last-minute plane ticket, and I thought this would be a fantastic idea. And it was horrible. I mean, once I got there, like being with family at Christmas was sweet, but I decided I was gonna stay four weeks with this brand new baby. Like I just had a baby and I have a one-year-old. I don't know what I was thinking. I probably wasn't. But the worst experience was going through security at the airport. They decided I looked like a threat, I guess. And this is post-9-11. Stuff was not flowing like it does now. And I'll never forget like the TSA agent being so mean to me. I have my military ID. There's a family traveling with seven kids behind me. They have to hold Tatum. I give my child to a stranger while this guy's searching me and I'm crying, and the whole crowd behind me is like mad because they realize I'm a military wife and my husband is in Iraq. And this eruption happens of like cheering for my husband, but also like anger at TSA. And it was a moment in my life when I said, I will never do this again, and trying to get a double jogger through. Then once I got back there, I imagined Christmas would look a certain way. My husband's in Iraq and I had expectations of how our family would be to me. And all I longed for was to be with my military family that understood what I was going through. And it was just really hard. So, but good came from that. I learned like, hey, sometimes it's better to be with those that see and truly know what you're going through and aren't adding to the stress of your husband being gone. But yeah, I don't know why. That is just something that's used up and so horrible when experience.
SPEAKER_03:Let's stay on that theme. What other like just bad I should not have done this realizations you've had in the Christmas season?
SPEAKER_00:Let's just air out all our laundry right here.
SPEAKER_03:I actually thought you were gonna tell a different story.
SPEAKER_00:So that's funny.
SPEAKER_02:The angel. Tell us about the angel.
SPEAKER_00:That was recruiting duty. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02:Tell us about the angel, Josh. Let's hear it. I actually don't know the story very well because I wasn't there.
SPEAKER_00:She wasn't there.
SPEAKER_03:Because you were recruiting.
SPEAKER_02:I was I was you were recruiting on Christmas Day. For most of the stories. Let me go ahead, babe. Go ahead. I'm not gonna tell the story. I'm gonna let you tell the story. But what I'm gonna say is difficulties were always because I wasn't there. So my struggles was and the biggest challenges were when I was away. And there was there was many of them. And so when I was gone, so the the silver lining though is when you're away and you're sitting in some barracks room or dorm or hut or wherever you are around the world, and you're just longing to be at home and be sitting in your living room with your kids or or with you know the Christmas lights on or the fire going or wherever you imagine yourself being. That longing helps you so much so appreciate it when you do and you're able to get back. So we've mentioned this before, but like being in the military is a fast pass to maturity in so many different ways. And there's a lot of couples.
SPEAKER_00:You just said it.
SPEAKER_03:I've just said it again. Yes, wow. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:There are people that go decades, like so many, so many years taking for granted their marriage, their family time, those kinds of things. And they just get caught up in the mundane.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But being in the military and being pulled away from those things and then you longing them, you quickly go, I'm not always gonna have this. I'm gonna appreciate it when I have it, and this is awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Hopefully that's where you go instead of like bitterness. Yes, yes, good job, telling us.
SPEAKER_03:Our goal is to get you there. Get you the gratitude. That's great.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. Great point. Like, don't turn it into bitterness and be like, oh, looking back on all the times you missed, take those and then appreciate the times that you have, and then just soak it all in. It's great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Are we gonna hear that?
SPEAKER_03:We have we we are on pins and needles just waiting for those just one of the times that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_00:It's not so great. So Josh is a recruiting in Fargo, North Dakota. We call it our tundra tour. That's what we love in the room. For to it. I had three children, three and under.
SPEAKER_03:And it's cold in Faraday. It's breezing. It's not just cold.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was the coldest place. It was bitterly cold. It was the coldest place. To breathe. I don't know what it's that cold.
SPEAKER_00:Coldest place on planet Earth, but I'm sure. Three days while we lived there on planet Earth. Okay. Antarctica's got nothing.
SPEAKER_02:It's a big earth for us.
SPEAKER_00:It's a big earth. Um, anyway, so it's Christmas time, and we have this beautiful ceramic angel that went on top of our tree. Those of you who don't know me, and those of you who do know me, you'll understand this. I used to have two Christmas trees. One was like a pottery barn style. It wasn't pottery barn because I couldn't afford that, but it looked like pottery barn. And the children did not touch that tree. Then I had a children's tree. That was their tree. And I had pulled out all the decorations and I thought, we're gonna have this beautiful decorating thing. And I have three children, three and under. And their hands are in the bins. And this is where I realized like my tipping point. Josh has been gone. I'm trying to decorate. And it all came to a head. And in a moment of anger, which praise God, He has sanctified me from an angry spirit. I took the angel and I chunked it real hard. Well, the carpet met the dining room. Okay. I was like, out of the pen. And I chunked the Christmas angel, and it met where the carpet met the tile in our dining room, and the head exploded. Okay. And then I have three children looking at me. And like, what's happening?
SPEAKER_02:And I'm quiet for once from my angel slave. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And at you know, at this point, it might have been the second Christmas either because Tatum remembers she might have been four. So it might have been one, two, and four, or one, three, four. I don't remember. And I started crying and I fell on my knees and just started praying and repenting. Like, Lord, is this what it's about? And that was the year I gave up the formal Christmas tree and realized like, what do I want our kids to remember? And so for a couple of years after that, we didn't have an angel anymore. I felt we needed a star to remind me what Christmas was really about. And for a few years after that, the kids would be like, You do you remember when you killed the angel?
SPEAKER_01:I'll never forget.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I remember when I killed the angel. And then, of course, Josh came home really late at night and I cried about murdering the Christmas angel. But so it's probably not as good as you thought it was gonna be, but it's a moment of truth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but it's so good. It was a huge turning point in the sanctification of realizing that it's not about having the perfect tree. It's not about having these things set out beautifully and like what do I want my kids to remember? Right, right. Like you gotta have priorities in order.
SPEAKER_03:Like you paid attention to it, right? Like that was, you know, you didn't want to share it. I felt that. I think everybody felt that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You didn't want to share it because you it was a fit of anger in that moment, is what it sounds like. But you listened to that, you paid attention to it and said, I don't want to do that anymore. And so that's good. So I've been jotting, I've been listening to y'all, and uh I there's there are some root things here that I think everybody, you know, we're everybody's gonna struggle with it a little differently, but there's some common threads that I think uh everybody or almost everybody struggles with in the military. And and the Christmas season seems to just like bring them all to the surface, right? They're there, yeah, but it just kind of forces them all to the surface in no particular order. The order I wrote them down in loneliness. I'm lonely, right? I want to get on the plane and go see people I know because I'm lonely. Yeah. Expectations. Joshua, you talked about it. Like people had expectations, and Britney probably felt that a little bit with the plane story. Like, we have these expectations. People have expectations on us. Oh, we haven't seen you in so long, you need to come here. Like, there's expectations, other people's expectations. Sometimes expectations for ourselves. Like, I should be able to do everything. I should be able to do everything. I should be able to say yes to every event. Kelly was talking about our calendar and trying to like say no to more things. So, like, expectations, ourselves and others. Good ideas, right? Brittany's like, I had this great idea. Turned out to not be a great idea.
SPEAKER_00:Like, just demon, pray about it.
SPEAKER_03:We have so many good ideas. People are like, hey, I've got a good idea, you should do it. And I'm like, I have at least 50 good ideas a day. I can't do all of them. So good ideas. Fantasies.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Like, we just have these like fantasies about that. That's your tree. Yeah. You're like your perfect magazine tree. This is the perfect tree that, you know, goes on my Instagram feed or whatever the case is. And then here's the one with all the kids, like, you know, crafts from preschool or whatever the case is. So we we sometimes have fantasies. Here's another one. This it's probably a subset of loneliness, but this not there feeling. Yeah. I'm not there. And that robs us from I'm here.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_03:And so we need to be here. So wherever you are this Christmas season, wherever you are as you listen to this, wherever you're on your way going, listening to this in the car, be committed to be there. Yeah, be in that place, in that time. My dad has this thing he talks about. I think he got it from C. S. Lewis or somebody else, but it's my dad talking about it, so I hear his voice. But the only place you can interact with God is now. You can't interact with them in the past, right? Like, because like you're not there. God is in the past and God is in the future. God is not limited by time, but you can only interact with God now, right? And so we've got to be present, we've got to be here, we've got to be now. And so we're really like all of those are an invitation to press into the Lord, every single one of those challenges. That's good.
SPEAKER_04:That's really good, Brain.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. If somebody's out there that wasn't really following along with that, what he's saying is be present. Be present. Be present wherever you're at. Don't live in the future, don't live in the past. Don't live in this, like, oh, I wish I was in this place with these people during this time. Wherever you are, be where you're at. And make that be the best place to be.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And grateful and thankful and content. All sorts of good biblical things. Yeah. It's good. All right, friends. Merry Christmas to y'all. Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_05:It's a sweet time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:This podcasting journey has been pretty cool. And here we are. We started back in August. And here we are. And we're in December. It's it's you know Christmas week, and we've done it. We kind of committed to do this every week and publish every week, and we've successfully done that. And so it's been a cool journey with you guys. Praise God. Thankful for y'all's friendship and doing this together. For those who are listening, let me encourage you a couple things. If you're kind of catching up, maybe the holiday season's a good time to catch up on some old episodes. And so go listen to an old episode. We actually did one on loneliness not too long ago, so go grab that one. We talked about dating one another last episode. So plan a date together.
SPEAKER_01:Even if you have to plan it into the new year. Yeah, even if you're planning.
SPEAKER_03:There's a lot of 96s or four days coming up. So you've got Christmas, you've got New Year's, you've got Martin Luther King holiday, and then you've got like President's Day. So just like think through that. And if you've been like quietly listening to this by yourself and haven't told your spouse about it, maybe on one of those car rides or one of those opportunities, invite your spouse into this journey with you.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We're so thankful for you guys and Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_05:Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_03:Merry Christmas, y'all.