On Power in Community: Words of a Military Wife
When K’Lee Reynolds decided to marry her husband back in 2010, she was in for a life-changing journey. “I knew what was coming, but I also didn’t.” K’Lee has been living as an army wife for the past ten years. She lives in Kansas, now with her husband and four children. Her husband has been serving in the US Army for almost 14 years. “We’ve been together for 12 years, and married 10 years.” K’Lee is one of the founders of the Homefront Heroes Ministries. It is a support group whose main purpose is reaching out to young military wives, who face struggles and loneliness on their own. Plenty of challenges enter the life of a military family. There’s the moving: “You have a lot of different transitions,” she said, “you develop friends, just to find out you’re moving to a new duty station, where you know no one.” Other difficulties include the times K’Lee had to act as a single parent, or explain to her children ‘why Daddy has to go away’. “He is a combat engineer, so he would go out on long missions,” she recounted. His longest time away was a 16-month deployment in Iraq. Throughout these seasons, K’Lee’s strong community of fellow military families has kept her going. Kansas has long been her home. In late 2018, when her family was living off-post, there was large rainfall, and their whole area flooded. “We lost furniture,” she said, “everything in our house from the ground to 4 feet up.” Evacuating with her husband, each of them carrying a child, with the water up to her hip, K’Lee admitted it was very scary. That day, her military family came to their rescue. “It was miraculous - by that afternoon, they showed us to a shelter,” she recounted. “One of my husband’s leaders said, ‘Here’s my son’s car, use it as long as you need it.’” One family willingly shared a house. “We were a whole family, coming to stay with a whole family,” she recounted. “They gave us their master bedroom. We kept saying no, we couldn’t take it, but they insisted.” She described it as support like no other. “It was incredible, the way people just showed up for us.” It continues to be this shared love and care that gives her the strength to persevere, much like her husband in the line of duty. “I don’t think [community] is something optional,” she said, “it’s definitely a need.” And in these communities, the women combat their hardships, and thrive. “I would say relationships in general are important,” K’Lee finally said. “Having someone to lean on. People having people.”
