Table Of ContentDRAWING CLOSER TO GOD AND SPOUSE:
REDEEMING THE SEPARATION OF MILITARY DEPLOYMENTS
A THESIS-PROJECT
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF
GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
DOCTOR OF MINISTRY
BY
DAVID K. BEAVERS
MAY 2021
Copyright © 2021 by David K. Beavers. All Rights Reserved.
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ iv
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... v
Chapter
1. DEPLOYMENT SEPARATION CHALLENGES AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO REDEEM
THIS SEPARATION ......................................................................................................... 1
2. BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS ......................................................... 20
3. LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................................. 53
4. PROJECT ................................................................................................................. 83
5. OUTCOMES........................................................................................................... 102
Appendix
A. Developmental Survey ......................................................................................... 113
B. Developmental Survey Results Data .................................................................... 114
C. Course Survey Questions ..................................................................................... 115
D. Course Survey Results .......................................................................................... 117
E. Information Handout for Lesson 1 ....................................................................... 118
F. Lesson Worksheets/Handouts ............................................................................. 119
G. Video Scripts ........................................................................................................ 127
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 164
VITA ....................................................................................................................................... 168
iii
FIGURES
1. “Assuming the Best” handouts for husband and wife ............................................ 89
iv
ABSTRACT
Military marriages are challenged by separations known as deployments. These range
from periods of training to being temporarily stationed in another country. Support modules
exist for couples preparing for separation and training for their reintegration. While separated,
there are programs available to help the deployed service member and programs to help the
spouse at home, but not to assist them as a couple during the deployment. This four week
spiritual formation course is designed to assist couples simultaneously during a deployment.
This project addresses the areas of connection, communication, safety, and peace through
presentation, prayer, and joint activities.
v
CHAPTER 1
DEPLOYMENT SEPARATION CHALLENGES
AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO REDEEM THIS SEPARATION
When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any
other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he
has taken.
—Deuteronomy 24:4, ESV
Needless to say, this is not the policy of the United States military. In fact, during the 15
years between 2001 and 2015, “some 2.77 million service members have served on more than
5.4 million deployments."1 Out of these, ‘at the time of deployment, about 57 percent of
[these] service members were married.”2 In the 20 years I have been an Army Chaplain I have
spent 77 months away from my family due to deployments. During these periods of
separation, I have experienced and witnessed the immense stress and pressure placed on
couples.
“Strictly speaking, ‘deployment’ refers to activities required to move military personnel
and materials from a home installation to a specified destination.”3 While my personal
experience is within the Army, I also have knowledge of, and shared deployments with,
members of the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. A chaplain supports everyone in
1. Jennie Wenger, Caolionn O’Connell, and Linda Cottrell, “Examination of Recent Deployment Experience
Across the Services and Components,” www.rand.org, last modified 2018, accessed March 5, 2020,
http://www.rand.org/t/RR1928.
2. Wenger, O’Connell, and Cottrell, “Examination of Recent Deployment Experience.”
3. Military.com, “Deployment: An Overview,” accessed March 6, 2020,
https://www.military.com/deployment/deployment-overview.html.
1
his or her area; hence, through supporting these diverse service members, I became intimately
familiar with their deployment patterns.
The United States’ naval forces spend considerable amounts of time deployed on their
ships or to other locations in support of their maritime mission. It is common for sailors to be
at sea for six months at a time. Regardless of any conflict in the world, those in the Navy are
perpetually away from family due to the nature of their job. Air Force personnel will find
themselves separated either due to a long mission or on their prominent three-month to six-
month overseas mission. Over the course of ongoing conflicts, Marine forces are commonly on
nine-month deployments into warzones. In the Army, deployments have gone from one year
to 15 months and now 9 months in support of combat missions or the program of Regionally
Aligned Forces (RAF). While not engaged in combat, these RAF missions deploy soldiers for a
nine-month period to work with the armed forces of other nations in support of global
partnerships.
These numbers do little to reflect the “human cost” of deployments with their
associated challenges, concerns, and issues. As Gary Chapman remarks, “What happens in the
heart, mind, and behavior of the husband and wife during deployment often creates emotional
distance.”4 The fact that husband and wife are physically separated provides a major challenge
to military personnel. As Chapman further notes, “Isolation is devastating to the human
4. Gary D. Chapman and Jocelyn Green, The 5 Love Languages: Military Edition (Chicago: Northfield
Publishing, 2017), 14.
2
psyche. That’s why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments. At the
heart of humankind’s existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another.”5
A “positive” out of the “negative” of all these deployments is the amount of data, data
analysis, and subsequent identification of the many challenges faced by soldiers and their
families. This data has allowed numerous military and support agencies to identify and create
training to address these unique issues. The human factor of deployments is recognized as the
“Deployment Cycle” which consists of the Pre-deployment phase, the Deployment phase, the
Post-deployment phase, and the Reintegration phase.6
During Pre-deployment, units and/or individuals, depending on the nature of a
deployment which may be as a group or alone, analyze their upcoming mission, determine
specific needs, undergo military training, acquire appropriate validations, ship supplies and
equipment that will be needed, and spend many long hours accomplishing all these required
tasks. In the midst of this preparation, they are also expected to “get their house in order,”
meaning they must find time to deal with the emotions, thoughts, and feelings of their family
members as well as their own.
Emotional factors exhibited during the phase include “Anticipation of Departure [and]
Detachment and Withdrawal.”7 These phases feature heightened anxiety over the pending
separation and the subsequent emotional responses which can range from “impatience to
5. Chapman and Green, The 5 Love Languages, 28.
6. Military.com, “Deployment: An Overview.”
7. Coping with Separation: The Emotional Cycle of Deployment (Sterling, IL: Channing Bete Company,
2013), 4.
3
anger to numbness.”8 Common events during this period include Units holding information
sessions for deploying personnel and families and chaplains conducting retreats to help address
some of these concerns. Sadly, numbers on these retreats are often limited. Due to the
financial costs of these events and the limited number of spaces available for participants, only
a small fraction of a Unit’s personnel are able to attend. Moreover, those in leadership
positions within these Units do not have the flexibility of schedule to attend these events.
Despite these difficulties, this is one area in which the military does perform well. The
amount of literature in print and online as well as the number of experienced leaders and
support personnel are able to prepare military members for what is to come. Additionally, the
family support organizations, often leveraging Facebook to get information to those reticent to
attend meetings, do a very good job of sharing what to expect and how to deal with the
challenges of separation. These steps will range from the emotional to the practical, such as
“be sure to discuss how money will be managed.”9
The Deployment phase contains the emotional dimensions of “Emotional
Disorganization, Recovery and Stabilization, and Anticipation of Return.”10 The common
emotions and reactions identified under this phase include: “anxiety, fear, anger, loneliness,
feel[ing] overwhelmed or abandoned,” and “worry and nervousness.” 11 These emotions are
felt by both the deployed spouse and the one who remains at home. As with all emotions,
8. Coping with Separation, 8.
9. Coping with Separation, 8.
10. Coping with Separation, 4.
11. Coping with Separation, 10, 20.
4
these are not bound by linear time; hence, even after dealing with anxiety it may later return.
Furthermore, these emotions and reactions will not necessarily rear their head at this point in a
separation. The additional hurdle placed on these families is the literal distance from their
spouse and the challenge to communicate these feelings.
As hard as it is to deal with challenges when couples are in close proximity and able to
communicate with one another directly, deployments place severe limits on the ability to
communicate. A sailor may or may not have the ability even to send an email to his or her
spouse let alone take the time to engage in a FaceTime or Skype call. The original post-9/11
battlefields were populated by AT&T call centers wherein military personnel wishing to make a
call would have to wait in a line, for up to an hour or more, to get into the trailer and only then
be able to call for 15 minutes. As the deployment missions changed, contact became more
possible so that by 2015 it was not uncommon for daily or more frequent contact through
personal internet hotspots and the like. This has now changed once again as, due to cyber
threats and the actions of our “adversaries,” those deploying are being restricted with regard to
communication technology. Of course, this does not even take into account that there is most
often a significant time change difference wherein the time that one spouse can actually
communicate is rarely a convenient time for the other.
For married Christian military personnel, the obstacles placed before them are quite
daunting. These range from the numerous stressors shared by all to our society’s current
devaluing of marriage. “In addition to the many stressors we’ve already discussed, military
families are dealing with a modern American culture where deployments complicate
5
