A military marriage is difficult to begin with, but having a spouse come home wounded from active duty adds incomprehensible strain. Operation Heal Our Patriots, a ministry of the Franklin-Graham-led Samaritan’s Purse, will be the first program in the country to offer support for couples in such marriages.
The marriage enrichment program, featuring weeklong retreats to a remote, refurbished fishing camp in Alaska, begins next month with its first set of ten couples, each having a spouse with battle injuries – either visible or invisible.
“It’s important that we are doing this now when the nation starts to focus on the winding down of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These injuries that people are left with, whether they are visible injuries or the invisible injuries such as the PTSD or post-traumatic brain injury, these are going to continue for a long time,” retired Marines Brigadier General Jim Walker told The Christian Post.
“That’s a need we are going to want to keep meeting even though the active combat may be lessening to a degree, the needs are still going to be there and we want to help by strengthening these marriages.”
Coping with a wound or injury can be incredibly difficult for military service members and the stress of this new reality can be detrimental to a marriage, officials at OHOP said.
In 2011, approximately 30,000 military personnel marriages ended in divorce, according to the U.S. Department of Defense (USA Today, December 2011). Through Operation Heal Our Patriots, Samaritan’s Purse is working to help strengthen and preserve the marriages of those injured or wounded while serving the U.S., the group states.
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SOURCE: Christian Post
Alex Murashko
