Memorial Day and the Responsibility of the Living

As a military wife, living in survival mode limited my ability to truly understand and navigate both military life and my husband’s losses.

Over time, I began asking myself:

Is this only his loss?

Or is it also mine?

Our family’s?

Our neighbors’?

Our nation’s?

Even the world’s?

I believe it is all of the above.

Should we not mourn and grieve the cost of war?

To understand what truly bonds a country together, I believe we must also understand the weight carried by those who serve, those who sacrifice, and those who remain behind holding memories, burdens, and grief that are often unseen. We live in a world constantly wrestling between good and evil until Christ returns. Because of this, we cannot underestimate the nature of man or the lengths the enemy will go to distort truth, distract hearts, divide people, and convince each of us—including myself—that selfishness, pride, power, and destruction are somehow justified.

War reveals both courage and brokenness.Sacrifice and suffering.Honor and grief.

Coming to understand how to support my husband was not simply about “understanding the military.” It became a deeper walk with Christ. A daily surrender.

Seeking God to understand God.Walking humbly with Christ.Allowing the Holy Spirit to guide my eyes, search my soul, speak truth to me, counsel me, love me, convict me, forgive me, and soften my heart.

That daily walk has taught me how to be present with my husband in his grief and with the grief carried by so many others. Because if we do not bring our pain before God, we often attempt to numb it, ignore it, blame others for it, or seek revenge through it.

Joe and I often talk through these complex layers together. We know these moments of loss, remembrance, and conflict will happen again in this broken world. We also know the consequences of avoiding grief, minimizing pain, or refusing to witness the suffering around us. But we have also seen the healing that begins when people choose presence instead of avoidance.

Scripture reminds us:“Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” — Galatians 6:2

Long before neuroscience explained co-regulation, emotional safety, and communal healing, God designed people to heal in truth, community, humility, confession, remembrance, and love.

This Memorial Day, we ask our family, our community, and our nation to join us:

Share the stories.

Speak the names.

Post the pictures.

Write the letters.

Have the conversations.

Healing happens in community, truth, remembrance, and presence.

Billy Graham once said:

“As I stood in the hospital quarter of the Danish ship ‘Jutlandia’ in Korean waters by an American boy scarcely 20 years of age and watched helplessly as this young life ebbed away, I thought: What right have thousands of pleasure-seeking Americans to go on living when this lad in the early flower of youth has to die? And in that moment, the fact dawned on me that if he had to die for America, some of us must live for America. Sometimes it is far more difficult to live than it is to die. They have handed us a torch, and we have a responsibility to see that they have not died in vain.”

We also carry a responsibility.

What does it cost when we ignore our current condition?

What happens when we carry grief alone?

What is passed down to the next generation when pain remains unspoken, unresolved, and unseen?

The cost is not only personal.It impacts marriages, children, communities, faith, identity, leadership, and the future of our nation.

Perhaps one of the greatest ways we honor those who gave their lives is not only through remembrance—but through how we choose to live, heal, love, lead, and walk alongside one another afterward.

— Emma & Joe Martin