A note from Jocelyn Green: The following is reposted by permission from ExcellentorPraisworthy.org, the online devotional Web site of Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry. Linda Montgomery, the Web site’s editor and co-author of Making Your Marriage Deployment Ready, recently asked Diana Juergens, author of Wife of a Soldier, A Journey of Faith, to share her thoughts on parenting during deployment. Rich and Diana are the parents of eight daughters and have just completed their sixth (or is it seventh?) deployment.

So with no further ado, here’s what Diana has to share with us:

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”  —John 7:38

Parenting well during a deployment begins with our faith—which begins with belief in the truth of Scripture. Being “plugged in” to our source of faith, the Lord Jesus, allows us to be full of “living water” (the Holy Spirit) which will then flow through us to our children. To put it another way—as Jesus tells us in John 15:5—we are to “abide in the vine.” “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” God is making it very clear when He describes Himself as the vine and His people as the branches that the branches must abide (remain in, stay) in the vine to bear fruit. Without the vine, the branch is nothing. Both of these verses quoted point to the most important source for parenting—Jesus Christ. He is the provider of our strength, joy, wisdom, and discernment (the fruit of abiding) to care for and train up our children while our husbands are gone. Read More→