"Long before dawn, before her children stir, when darkness still fills the windows on Fort Richardson, Lauren Bretz wakes to pray:Protect the children, keep them healthy and cheerful. Make her a better mother and a better wife. Keep Nat safe in Iraq, bring him and his men home safe.

Lauren's a small-town Florida girl, home-schooled and raised since she was 4 to rely on a personal relationship with Jesus. She and Nat met at a Christian youth conference when she was 17 and he was 19. She knew she wanted to marry him right away, but her parents insisted she go to college.

So she got her degree in two and half years, and organized the wedding a week after graduation. That was 2004. She estimates they've spent 11 or 12 months together since then, between the training and the deployment.

When people find out her husband is in Iraq, they always look concerned. "How are you?" they ask. "How's he?"

She's fine. She's more than fine. She's making the best of a difficult situation. And Nat's doing well too. People have died over there. Every time a soldier is killed or injured, she gets a call and that's hard, but he has a job to do.

Some people might think it's weird, but she doesn't worry about Nat. God's protecting him. She knows this because of the time he stepped on a hidden bomb and it didn't blow up. And because of the firefight where he was spared as bullets whizzed by, as if he'd been walking in a rainstorm without getting wet.

"The safest place to be is in God's hands," she always says."

- story by Anchorage Daily News -
permission by Lauren Bretz

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