Review: Never Alone

Never Alone: Ruth, the Modern Military Spouse, and the God Who Goes with Us

By Jessica Manfre (Moody Publishers)

For military spouses and others who move far from family and friends, especially when the relocation promises to be temporary, loneliness can become a permanent companion.

United States Coast Guard spouse Jessica Manfre has lived that journey of drowning in fears and feeling lonely and isolated. While reading the book of Ruth, the licensed social worker and therapist realized the similarity of Ruth’s story and her own. That experience birthed Never Alone: Ruth, the Modern Military Spouse, and the God Who Goes with Us.

The story sequence of Ruth provides the framework for the book’s eleven short chapters with timely topics such as Lonely Hurts, Guarding Your Heart, Wading Through Military Life, Your Marriage Is Your Covenant, Friendship Is a Gift, Church Can Always Be Home and Lovingkindness.

Each chapter follows a similar format. First, the author shares basic background and the experiences of herself and others, including some nonmilitary spouses like the pastor’s wife whose denomination frequently moves the family.

Manfre then walks through the topic and its unique issues, offers practical advice, provides easy-to-understand clinical-research-based data that reinforces the guidance, and finally grounds the information in biblical truth. Each chapter closes by moving through Ruth’s story to illustrate similarities.

However, the 15-year-Coastie wife doesn’t sugarcoat problems. She acknowledges physical symptoms sometimes accompany emotional and mental health issues, but she offers sincere truth and a toolbox for coping with what sometimes become every two-to-three-year moves or months-long separations.

Such advice includes friendship speed dating, while remembering that good-byes hurt, learning the difference between loneliness and solitude, talking through issues with your spouse, quickly seeking a church that feels like home, developing grit, letting go of failures, facing struggles honestly, and realizing the impact lovingkindness can make on the receiver and the giver.

Jessica Manfre’s personal lovingkindness comes through the comforting and comfortable conversational style of Never Alone. She emphasizes the ripple effect of acts of lovingkindness, illustrated by her own involvement in the makeover of a home of a military spouse diagnosed with cancer and initiating GivingTuesdayMilitary with the goal of 1 million acts of kindness, projects that led her to be named the 2019 Armed Forces Coast Guard Spouse of the Year.

Although targeted to military spouses, the quick read not only provides advice applicable to anyone, but also presents practical ideas and a biblical foundation to motivate Christians to extend welcoming hospitality and to offer lovingkindness in abundance.