1. Supply free childcare. With one half of the two-man parenting team down for the count for 12 to 15 months, the stress of raising children alone can sometimes become overwhelming. Offering free childcare is one of the greatest gifts you can give to a military mom on the home front. It allows her time to herself -- something she doesn't get without a spouse at home to help out -- and time to bring down the Super Mom wall front that she sometimes has to put on for her children so that they know that everything will be okay. Offer childcare in a group setting (ask volunteers at your church, in a Rotary or other club or at a community center to donate a few hours per month to watch military children in a public setting) or on an individual basis (kidnap the neighbor's kids and take them to the pool for a few hours so military mom can take a nap). It will do wonders for the home front spouse's sanity, strength and morale.
2. Prepare free food. There’s nothing worse than cooking for one on the home front. Offer church potlucks, organize social get togethers and provide appetizers, meals or desserts. Drop a lasagna by a military friend’s house one day, or invite a military family you know over for dinner. There’s no faster way to attract spouses living on macaroni and cheese on the home front.
3. Mow the lawn. For many of us, mowing the lawn is the task of our soldier. When he’s gone, there’s nothing we dread more than taking over the yard chores. You can help out a military family tremendously by offering to pick up this chore for free or cheap throughout deployment.
4. Shovel the driveway. In posts like Fort Wainwright, Alaska, mowing services aren’t as in demand as sidewalk and driveway shoveling services. In areas where temperatures reach negative temperatures, like in Alaska, most families don’t want their children outside in the cold. This means that spouses on the home front have to find a time when their children are sleeping or elsewhere to shovel their drives. Taking care of this trivial (but labor-heavy) task is a HUGE blessing for these families.
5. Offer mechanical or fix-it-job services. Where we served our first deployment in Alaska, one local church offered a Rent-a-Husband program. The church compiled a list of all the people, men and women, in the church who had various skills, from plumbing to electrical to handy-man to electronical. When something broken and a home front spouse didn’t know whether to call a professional, she could first call one of the volunteers from this list to have him/her check out the problem first. Groups or individuals can offer such services to spouses who perhaps aren’t as mechanically inclined as their soldier counterparts.
6. Provide encouragement. When all is said and done, the house will get taken care of. But not every home front spouse will. Home front spouses need to know that someone cares about their situation, someone cares about their feelings, someone cares that they are serving our country, too. Taking time to love on, encourage and emotionally support these spouses through cards, get togethers, phone calls, e-mails, late-night talks and small packages and gifts is absolutely the best present you can offer. When these home front heroes feel emotionally supported, they can then support their families. When they support their families, they can then better support their soldiers by remaining stable on the home front. And when they support their soldiers, their soldiers can do their jobs confidently and safely.
7. Throw inspirational events. Collaborate with a local organization like a church, sports league, community club or non-profit to set up a free inspirational event for the spouses of the local deployed unit. In Fairbanks, the VFW once offered a Spouses Day Out where the veterans of the association offered great food, free childcare, free limo rides and pedicures and manicures to the women who attended the event. Another Fairbanks church hired a motivational speaker to travel to Fairbanks and address all the spouses in the deployed unit. Volunteers from the church set up a tea party with desserts, decorations and door prizes, and the guest speaker encouraged the audience throughout various afternoon events. The event doesn’t have to be expensive. It just needs to offer spouses a place to be encouraged.
8. Adopt a home front family. Throughout our first deployment, many of the local businesses and churches in Fairbanks ran an Adopt a Family program. Volunteers from the designated business or organization adopted one home front family in the deployed brigade. Throughout deployment, this adopting family prayed for the military family, invited the military family over to dinner, offered services to the military family and simply loved on them throughout 12 and 15 months of deployment. It was an amazing way for civilians and military families to connect on a very personal basis. If you aren’t part of an organization, adopt a family individually. Commit to serving that family in some way at least once every other week for the entire length of the deployment. It will make a huge difference for that family on the home front.
9. Send Deployment Survival kits. Most civilians agree that sending packages to deployed soldiers is a normal practice, but many people forget about the families of those soldiers on the home front. This package, which costs anywhere between $20 and $50 and will fit in one flat-rate box, depending on how fancy you want to make it, is sure to encourage your home front military friend. Include the following contents with a letter explaining the purpose of each:
a. A funny movie or tickets to a comedian’s show – because you need something to laugh at when there doesn’t seem to be a lot else to laugh about. When everything in life seems so serious during deployment, laughing can be very therapeutic and a great release. Until you do it, you don’t realize how long it’s been since the last time you did.
b. A box of brownie (or cake) mix – because brownies are one of life’s greatest coping mechanisms.
c. A super-sized Hershey’s kiss (like the kind found in stores on Valentine’s Day) – so that a kiss is never too far away.
d. A journal – to write down all those every-day exciting things that you forget to tell your soldier when you only get to talk for 15 minutes every two weeks. When he returns, you can share your journal with him. Or, you can mail him pages in your journal so he feels caught up on your life.
e. A gift certificate to a pizza or other carry-out type restaurant – because on those bad deployment days, you deserve to not cook.
f. Paper plates – because no spouse should have to cook and wash dishes every night for 12 months straight.
g. A Bible – because ultimately, the best and most enduring encouragement and peace comes from knowing that God is in control.
h. An inspirational military, marriage or deployment book – because reading positive, inspirational books keeps a spouse’s mind on the positive, productive things she can do during deployment instead of the crappy, crummy parts of being separated from her soldier for 12 months at a time.
i. A coupon for free babysitting – is any explanation needed?
j. A loving and affirming card – because positive, loving, encouraging words make all the difference during the trial of deployment.
10. Pray. Ultimately, there is no better way to bless, encourage, support and give peace to families challenged by the trials of war.
