In the last pages of What Did You Expect?? Paul David Tripp summarizes his writing with this: “What has this book been about? It has been a detailed description of the daily work of love that must be done with commitment and joy when a flawed person is married to a flawed person and they are living in a fallen world." Did you catch that—“Daily work ..." So how do you do that under the challenge of deployment?

Several military wives, myself included, had crammed into an apartment living room for a book club meeting. As we chatted between bites of crackers and cheese, our conversation veered away from the book of the month when the hostess unleashed a bitter monologue concerning her husband’s frequent absences at sea and punctuated it with a booming, “I did not sign up to be a single parent!” With one toddler and another baby due soon, this woman was clearly frazzled. Unfortunately, her resentment over having to be solo spilled out of her like a toxin and threatened to poison the evening.

Have you ever been angry with the Army (insert your own service here) at some point? Is it because of back-to-back deployments, a tough duty station, dealing with PTSD, combat operational stress, an injured husband/wife, the death of a spouse or a friend’s spouse, children or dogs who act up because Daddy/Mommy has been away too long? If angry, are you perhaps serving in the wrong Army? The Lord wants us in His Army, not just in the U.S. Army.