Everyday Wonder Women
Each week, I sit down with a woman you probably never heard of before—but trust me, by the end, you’ll be so glad you did. This is where we get real about the tough stuff women go through, the grit it takes to get through it, and the lessons they pick up along the way. It’s honest, inspiring, and full of stories you won’t forget.
Everyday Wonder Women
Episode 14:🎖️May Military Series...The knock at the door with Ginger Gilbert Ravella
Ginger Gilbert Ravella shares her powerful journey from being a military wife and mother of five to becoming a widow and voice of hope for others after her husband Troy was killed saving others in Iraq.
• Life as a military spouse
• The devastating moment when military officers knocked on her door with news of Troy's plane crash
• Troy's purple heart heroic final mission saving over 20 special operators while flying solo
• The 10-year journey to recover Troy's remains from Iraq
• Finding hope again through connecting with another military widow
• Building a new blended family with her second husband Jim while honoring Troy's memory
• Creating resources for other military widows through books and speaking engagements
• Learning that human beings can't live without hope
If you're facing grief or know someone who is, check out Ginger's books "Hope Found" and "Widow's Might" - powerful resources for anyone navigating loss.
Hey friends, welcome back to Everyday Wonder Women and to the final episode of our May Military Series. I've saved someone truly special for this one. Today you'll meet Ginger Gilbert Ravella, a woman whose life was forever changed by one knock at the door. Ginger is a military widow, a mother of five and now a powerful voice of hope and healing for others, navigating grief and unimaginable loss. Her husband, troy, was an Air Force F-16 pilot who died saving others. His sacrifice was extraordinary and so is the way Ginger chose to live after it.
Stacee:In this episode, we talk about what it means to rebuild your life from the ashes, why strength isn't always loud or visible, how the military community shows up for its own and how hope, even in the darkest places, is never truly lost. Ginger is also the co-author of Hope Found, which she wrote with her second husband, Jim Ravella, a fellow fighter pilot who walked through his own valley of loss after losing his wife to cancer. It's a powerful book of grief, faith and second chances, and you can find it on Amazon. She also contributed to Widow's Might, a stunning daily devotional created by more than 200 military widows. I can't recommend them enough. Trust me, this episode will leave a mark, but the good kind, the kind that reminds you you're stronger than you think.
Ginger:My name is Ginger Gilbert Ravella, and I was born and raised in a little town called Clovis, New Mexico, which you're very familiar with, and went to college in Texas and just met the love of my life. He was an Air Force brat, and I didn't know much about the military, since my parents were in education, even though there was a base, a Cannon, in Clovis. But I met Troy that was his name, and he was 17,. I was 19, and I just knew that wherever he was going, I wanted to go too, and his dream was to be an Air Force fighter pilot and my dream was to be his wife, and I didn't really know what all that would involve.
Ginger:But I am thankful for the journey that we had together, even though it was cut way too short. My degree was in interior design, and so I did a lot of design that I could, between being a mother of five and moving around in the military all the time. We were married for 13 years and we moved 11 times in that 13 years all over the world. We lived in England and Italy and different parts of the United States, and so it was a pretty busy, full life.
Stacee:And that's so crazy to think that when you grow up in Clovis right it's so kind of isolated and there's really nothing out there but tumbleweeds and feedlot smells.
Ginger:Yeah.
Stacee:To come from there and then you get to go travel to all these places. What was that like?
Ginger:You know, it was just a dream. I think I lived a pretty small life. It was a sweet life, it was a beautiful upbringing and I had a wonderful childhood. But I mean, the furthest I would go was West Texas to go visit my grandma. So you know it just.
Ginger:But I always had these, what I believe God had put in my heart, just dreams of travel and experiencing beauty and and so to marry Troy and to have him take me into that world. He had lived all over and graduated from high school in Germany and he just had such a bigger picture of what the world had to offer, and so it was just another way that it was. Just he introduced me to a beautiful life that I wouldn't have experienced, and we got to do things that we didn't have normal 20-something-year-olds would not have the opportunity to do and see and experience by living overseas, and it makes you grateful to be an American. At the same time, it's like it's an awesome, an awesome life-changing thing to live overseas for a lot of reasons, and so I'm really grateful that the things that I studied in college at Texas Tech University, period furnishings and the history of art and all those things I actually got to see in real life just a few years later by being a part of the military community.
Stacee:Well, I see your social media posts and you're decorating as a total Pinterest situation.
Ginger:Well, it's a gift and a curse, you know it is I. I don't do it so much as a business anymore, but I'm always kind of redoing things in my own home, which you can call that what it is. But I I do like I do appreciate things of beauty and try to help create them for whoever I can be with well, going back to, you know you're at tech and you're getting your degree in interior design, and then you're with Troy too.
Stacee:Was there a time there where you were trying to decide if you're going to take your career to the next level, or did that even happen for you? Or was it just pretty much like we're moving and life's going forward this way?
Ginger:You know it was really. It was really fun to be able to find a way to incorporate my passion for interior design in very uncommon places. Because I'd worked so hard on that degree, I was like I really want to use it. But military spouses give up their careers a lot of times to be able to follow their spouses. But when we were stationed in England I got the opportunity to run a visual merchandising shop for the BXs. Those are like the military department stores.
Ginger:So in the United Kingdom there were quite a few bases open at that time and they all had a BX had this little department store on each base, and so I had a team of six people that I managed and we went and did all of the displays for all the different things that happened in these little department stores. So it was an alternative way I got to use my degree. But I got experience in management and it was really. I got to travel and it was just it was super cool. So I think I love that about any degree in the arts it's not always a straight line for how you use what you've learned, but that was an awesome experience I had.
Ginger:And then, pretty soon after that, we started a family and it became a little bit more difficult to still work, but I did I still. I really love residential design and love helping people turn their houses into homes and havens, and I think that's really important for everybody to have a safe, beautiful nest, no matter whether it's big or small, or extravagant or simple whatever. I just think that's important. So I love to help people create beauty in their homes.
Stacee:I was talking to my niece yesterday and she's a junior in college now. And to think that right now you're supposed to pick out what you do for the whole rest of your life Isn't that crazy that we even put that assignment out to young people?
Ginger:It totally is. It totally is. It's my freshman. I have two freshman twin girls at Auburn University right now and they're in that same boat like I don't know. We think we might want to, but, and yeah, it's not there's no general ed anymore. Undecided majors, like it's almost like they have to know what they're going to do forever, you know, at 18.
Stacee:so yeah, and you don't have to know, because life is going to take a bunch of left and right turns on you and you're not even looking.
Ginger:Yeah, it is so true. I never imagined, you know, that I would end up being a public speaker and an author and in ministry I just I don't know. I kind of wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader when I was six. That didn't pan out either. So life is a windy journey.
Stacee:Oh, that's funny. Well, for those listeners that don't know your story that you've written about so beautifully in the book Hope Found, can you talk to us about what you went through there and that whole story?
Ginger:I said, I married Troy and we had five children and he was an F-16 pilot in the Air Force. That was his dream was to fly fighters and in 2006, we were stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, Arizona, and the twins had just been born. So I remember he came home from work one day he was at that time he was super busy. He was there to be an instructor to guys learning how to fly the F-16. That was his primary duty and then his additional duty was to be the wing commander's executive aide. So he did that. And then he got picked up to work for President Bush and he was what we call a presidential advance agent. So he would go before President Bush, would go on trips, and he never flew Air Force One, but he would do a lot of the things that had to do with Air Force One traveling, so securing the fuel lines, hooking the steps on so the president could walk down. All of those people involved are all Air Force pilots. So it was this huge honor and I'm so proud of him for getting picked up to do that. It was a busy life. He was maxed. I mean, he worked, you know, easily 12 hours a day, and so I remember he came home from work and the twins were three months old, Bella was two, Grayson was five and Boston was eight, and so we had five little children all under the age of eight.
Ginger:And I remember he walked in the door and he said the general that he worked for at Luke Air Force Base was going to be the wing commander at Balad Air Base in Iraq. And he said, "ginger, he wants me to go with him and teach guys how to fly in combat over there. And I was like, well, you can basically tell the general like this isn't a good time. He's like let's just take some time. You know, think about it, pray about it. And he said I could probably say this might not be the best time for our family, but you know, this is what I was trained to do. My whole life was to go fly in combat. And I'm like dang it that I know.
Ginger:I know. And so about a month later he came in and he goes. You know, I have to give him an answer and I really know this is what I'm supposed to do. And I said I know, I know it's what you're supposed to do. So he left for Iraq two months later. I just thought, well, it's going to be the hardest four and a half months of my life. That was how long fighter pilots rotations were at that point of Operation Iraqi Freedom. So when he left September 3rd of 2006, I was like you know, he'll be back after Christmas and we're just going to do this. I've done hard things before. He's had deployments. He'd flown in Northern Watch, but part of me knew this is war and it was the hotbed.
Ginger:The peak of what was going on in Iraq was around 06, 07. I remember having the conversation with him, probably a month before he left, and I just said you know what if something happens to you over there and we've? You know we could have maybe gotten out of this. And he said, no, he goes. "Nothing's, nothing's going to happen to me. I mean, that's fighter pilots, right? You know we could have maybe gotten out of this and he said, no, nothing's going to happen to me. I mean, that's fighter pilots, right, you know, nothing's going to happen to me. But he said but if it does, we're going to know that it was God's will. And I don't think I ever thought about that conversation again until three months later and it was November 27th of 2006.
Ginger:And it was just a Monday morning, right after Thanksgiving, and it was about 9:30 in the morning. The boys they were at school and Bella was my little three-year-old. She was jumping on the trampoline in the backyard and I was standing there with her and the babies were six months old. They were down for a nap and just got a knock at the front door and I thought that's kind of I wasn't expecting anybody. My girlfriend had already come over that morning. She used to. She'd come every Monday morning. She just told me before my husband left she was another fighter pilot's wife, friend of mine, and she said, hey, I want to come over one day a week, the whole time Troy's deployed, and just help you. And she's like pick a day any day. And I said, okay, how about Mondays? And so, faithfully, for the three months prior to that she'd been every Monday morning. She showed up Starbucks and like ready to help me, and so she had just gotten there, so she was the only one I really was expecting to come over and but I go to the front door and I just see the sea of blue Air Force uniforms and you don't want that knock or that phone call.
Ginger:And even when your husband does something dangerous for a living, I didn't know any fighter pilots that had been killed at that point. It was, you know, army infantry wives. Maybe it's not so rare, but very rare in that community at that point to have lost a fighter pilot. So I didn't really think it would be us, honestly, and I just kind of thought, well, there's no way God's not gonna let that happen to us. Like we're like living for Him and we're working at church and we're raising kids to be godly young American citizens. You know, you just have these things that you don't really realize. We make contracts, I think, with our faith sometimes and like you do this and I do this and wink, wink Lord, and I just think. I just thought we were untouchable maybe or something.
Ginger:So it was a huge shock when they told me that his plane had gone down west of Baghdad earlier that day in a combat mission. But at that point they said they didn't have any other information. I just remember screaming you know, we have five kids. This can't be happening. We have five kids. And they came back to my door eight hours later. At that point I'd had friends and family started flying in. It had hit the news that an F-16 had gone down and they did release his name, but his status for the military was called duty status, whereabouts unknown. So it's basically we know we've had a military accident, but we don't yet have the body, we don't know about the survivor. And so, you know, there was about eight hours in there where I was really confused, like I'm sure he's alive, I'm sure he's okay, but what if he's not? And what if he's, you know, suffering at the? You know, you just don.
Ginger:That day in Iraq he was flying what they call close air surveillance and so basically he's a patrolman in the skies and he's watching for anything that is going on on the ground that he can come support from the air tactically. And so he and his wingman were flying one of these surveillance missions and he gets a call over the radio from a downed helicopter and basically Troy figures out in the conversation they are special operators, they're doing reconnaissance missions and they've had an RPG has been. They've been shot in their tail rudder and they had a crash landing and they needed help and they were calling like basically, whoever is out there, whoever is nearby, these are our coordinates. We need you to get in here and help us. We're being overrun. We can see insurgent vehicles in the distance. They're coming for us. They've seen we crashed.
Ginger:So Troy's sensing the imminent danger of these guys and you know, in the special operations community they're very autonomous and if they ask for help, they need help. And at this time they're all having to refuel. You know they refuel in the air. So they go, a fighter pilot will go meet a tanker, they'll refuel and come back. So Troy sent his wingman off to get gas. The guys are still screaming over the radio they're getting closer, they're getting closer.
Ginger:So Troy comes in. So he's flying solo, without a wingman, and he's like I see you, I've got eyes on you, I've got eyes on the target. He gets clearance through the rules of engagement to use the gun on the F-16 to shoot them, because couldn't use a bomb at that point because he would have killed the good guys. So basically he has to fly what they call visual acuity. So that is all what Troy can see, what he's been cleared on to shoot at with the gun. So you're talking about 250 feet above the ground for visual acuity.
Ginger:On these insurgents there were about 15 Iraqi insurgent trucks full of guys with RPGs and machine guns in the back shooting at him, shooting at the guys on the ground, and he really took control of the situation.
Ginger:And I met some of the guys that he saved that day, some of the operators, and they said you know, we nicknamed him Frosty because when he came on the scene sorry, they said, when he came on the scene he was so cool and calm and collected and he's like I've got you, you know, I've got you.
Ginger:And so and he did, he saved all of their lives. He took out at least one or two of the first insurgent vehicles, but on his last pass he was turning around and the air was 50 feet lower than he was on the pass before and so with his finger on the trigger he was ascending back to do another pass. His tail clipped the ground. He was about 50 feet lower and so he crashed and then that last insurgent vehicle went off to the crash site. The other ones all went other directions. So all the guys lived. Over 20 special operators lived, but that last insurgent vehicle was like early Al-Qaeda or ISIS is really what it was before they had a label. Back then the Predator filmed them, taking his body, troy's body, unharnessing him from the jet, rolling him up in a carpet and taking him as a war trophy. Oh God, yeah. So that's what they told me the second time they came to my door.
Stacee:Did you see the video?
Ginger:I did not. That was classified, so I've never gotten to see that. I have gotten an image of right before he crashed, of Troy taking out the insurgent truck, so I do have an image of that, a still image, but no, I didn't. Yeah, I wish you know. There's things that I'll probably never get to see, but I know what he was doing and he was like I've got you and I'm going to take care of you. And that's the brotherhood of the military. It's a beautiful thing. They don't have to know each other but they have the American flag patch on their sleeve and they'll look out for one another.
Ginger:And if the enemy had gotten to them and taken out those guys and all their equipment very highly, highly secret equipment on all of their helicopter and I mean it would have been it just would have been a really bad day. But ended up being a really bad day for me. You know, we became a front page CNN news and I had to have guards at the front door and we didn't know what was going to be the next thing to happen. The military sent out, you know, thousands of men and women searching for him. The predator had filmed them going into a village and then, after that, they lost a connection and so they sent military dogs, sent dogs. They did everything but dogs, scent dogs. They did everything. But you know, as the days went on, I'm like Lord, let him not be a POW, be alive. And being tortured and in their hands. And they had told me, you know, that they didn't think there's any way he could have survived. There was some skull fragments in the jet wreckage and so they took those and they sent them back to the States and they were a match with the DNA that was on file for the Air Force. And so they conclusively told me at the end of that very, very long week that there's no way Troy could be alive missing that part of his skull. At that point, determined that he was KIA, but no body to be found and it took you years to recover his body. It did. It took 10 years. It took 10 years. Yeah, it was a long journey.
Stacee:How
Ginger:In the beginning, there's it much adrenaline and you're so numb and it was so shocking and I was so surrounded by so many people and there was so much to do. Just the business of death is overwhelming. And then we were trying to have a memorial and go to Arlington bury what little remains we had, and I was trying to protect the kids from even knowing that any of that had happened. I mean, so they only knew that their daddy died in the war and he was home with Jesus. Because I'm like I can't wrap my brain around this level of hate and evil in the world. How am I going to explain this to my little babies? Probably, I would say, for the first month I was numb and then I would say then I think the reality of like he's not coming home and I'm a single mom at 36 with five little kids, and the pain of just like he was bigger than life. I mean he was the best daddy, the best husband, he was an amazing Air Force officer. He was just a light for the kingdom of God. He was just so many things.
Ginger:I was like, well, the you know, just like the crater left behind was just, it was not, it didn't feel like I was going to make it and I honestly didn't want to and and so I kind of quit. I mean, I just kind of, I just kind of was like Lord, you can just take us all home now you know me and the kids and I and I was like Lord, you can just take us all home now. You know me and the kids and I wasn't suicidal, but I honestly was like I don't want to go on. And so you know, if there's a plane going down somewhere, you know I'll buy me and the kids tickets. I mean, that's kind of how that felt, like just let the earth swallow me up and all of this. But so I went through a battle of depression and anxiety and insomnia and then really, about six months in six months is a hard point. After you face a tragedy or a loss like that, I think everybody else starts kind of filtering back to their lives and you're left with yours and um and you, you just I think that's kind of when the darkness sets in. And that was really when I got some some medical help. I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I.
Ginger:And then I met another widow. Honestly, I finally met a young widow who'd lost her husband in a plane crash and she lived across the country from me. Her name was Marlo, she lived in North Carolina, and we started talking on the phone and I was like, can I come see you? I was desperate and I was surrounded by this beautiful village of people who loved me and were caring for my kids and help. But I was like nobody understands. This is nobody understands. I'm not an 86-year-old widow, I'm a 36-year-old widow and I need somebody my age.
Ginger:And so I flew to North Carolina and spent three days in this beautiful woman's home and she just spoke life into me and truth into me and sort of was like you can't just like start living again when you start feeling better or any of this makes sense or you have any kind of answers, or like you got to keep walking the walk and the feelings will follow. And it was just some of the most precious, sacred few days and it's really fueled sort of what I do now is to just be there for other widows. And I feel like you just, you know, earned the authority like she had to me to say the hard things and to say the real things. And so I would say at that point I started getting a little bit of fight back. I was like, okay, the Lord has left me here. Obviously, I've prayed to go home every day and I'm still here and I knew, you know, of course my kids needed me and I would have never done anything to. But I just I didn't want to live like a mediocre life. We had lived a full, beautiful, rich life and I didn't want to just exist and be apathetic or just be a robot or just scratching the days on the wall until it was time my time was over.
Ginger:So I did a press conference in Phoenix and it got picked up by Bill O'Reilly and the O'Reilly Factor and in it I just basically was like there's beautiful stories of what's happening, what our men and women are doing in uniform overseas, because it was so political and so anti-war, anti-bush or whatever, and I'm like it's not about any of that. It's not about whether of that, it's not about whether you're for the war or you're not. It's about the people who are sacrificing their lives, their families, their limbs for the freedom and the democracy of not just our country but the other countries of the world. And so I just kind of I don't even know what I said, honestly, stacey, but Bill O'Reilly liked it and he was fired up about something and so he had me on his show and I started just speaking at some military charity events and just sharing our family story and just thought you know what Troy gave his life serving and you know, yeah, maybe I could carry that on. That's kind of what I thought.
Stacee:You're such an inspiration and I just got this other little book that you were a part of yeah, widows Might. It is so amazing. I mean I just love the format. Every day you have an inspiration, or just like a hope, really, that you can go on.
Ginger:You know, that's just it, Stacee. I think I realized there's things that we think we can't live without. You know we can't live without a car, you know a nice this or a good paycheck or whatever. But I realized, like human beings can live without a lot of things, but they can't live without hope. I really think that is the thing I want to do for the rest of my life, is be a hope giver you're doing it.
Stacee:I mean really, I can't thank you enough for sharing your story here and even though it happened, what coming on 20 years?
Ginger:it's crazy to think, but yeah it's still really there, right, it's still so fresh and and you know, through the years of just watching God be faithful to us and carry us through unthinkable circumstances and especially it was, you know, 10 years. We we actually went back to Arlington three times because in 2006, we buried the initial remains. In 2013, an Iraqi turned in some toe bones of Troy's to the embassy in Jordan. Finally, the Air Force notifies me officially and they say we've been tracking this guy for a year. We've been following all of his leads. We've dug up 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of graves in Western Iraq trying to find Troy. We thought this would be it. We thought that he was going to lead us to him, but it turns out he had just gotten these bones and he just wanted money and he doesn't know where they came from. So we went back to Arlington in 2013, buried those toe bones.
Ginger:But I talked to the medical examiner the Air Force medical examiner in 2013. And I said "okay, can you really explain to me what I have buried here from these last two internments at Arlington? I said I want to understand, I'm trying to explain to my children. And he said well, ma'am, from 2006, you have the very top of your husband's skull and now you have the tips of his toes, of his foot. And I said, so you're telling me? All I have is the top of his head to the tip of his toes. And he said yes, and I just wept and, stacey, I was like you know what the Lord's telling me? He's got him top of his head to the tip of his toes. This is no accident, that that's the only thing of this amazing human being that I have physically left on this earth. And I just thought it had been seven years, which is the number of completion and beauty.
Ginger:And though Troy's body wasn't at home and I was still praying fervently for that, I looked at life differently, I think, from 2013 on, because I was like you know what, whether or not this happens in my lifetime that he comes home. I pray it does, especially for my kids. But I can look back and see God's faithfulness. I can go. He's had us, he's carried us, he's got us from the top of our head to the tip of our toe too, like we made it, you know, we made it through the unthinkable. And so then, in 2016, when I got that final notification and it was an epic, crazy rescue mission where they were listening to some phone calls, our intelligence community, our special operations community, and they found him and brought him back to this country in this amazing patriotic ceremony called a repatriation in Dover. And we came back and we, you know, watched this flag-draped coffin come back.
Ginger:This 10 years of waiting and praying, this homecoming, you know, that was just truly a miracle. I mean, I had high, high levels in the military tell me that it was just going to be one in a billion, after that long, that Troy would ever be recovered. When I found out more details about the recovery, I found out the guys that flew Troy's body finally out of Iraq was that same unit that had had the crash landing that Troy saved. Really, and I was just astounded at the beauty and the power of the military brotherhood. You know that they do not leave anyone behind on the field of battle. So help them, god. And they mean that.
Ginger:And so you know, I've just gotten, my kids have gotten to grow up seeing like life doesn't always go like you think it's going to go, or you want it to go. Go like you think it's going to go or you want it to go. But that doesn't mean that God still isn't making beauty out of all the ashes of whatever the thing was or the person was that we just thought was going to be our hope. Our only hope is in the Lord, and I just you know that's what I really think with this little book, Widow's Might, that 287 widows collaborated to write this beautiful, sweet, powerful book. My friend Rachel. It was her vision and she founded this ministry Never Alone, and I get to be a part of that.
Ginger:And so you know, I think that Troy would look at me and the kids now. They're now 27, 25, 21, and the twins are 19. And I think he would be proud of us that we didn't quit, you know, when we wanted to. I can't wait to watch what my children do For the good of other people. I already see it in them because they just kind of have old souls. They figured out life isn't all about them at an early age in a very hard way. I wish they didn't have to find that out. But they're going to do big things for this world and the kingdom of God and I can't wait to watch.
Stacee:And I imagine you never thought you'd ever get remarried.
Ginger:I did not. I thought, you know I wanted to. I couldn't imagine a loved marriage. I couldn't imagine spending the rest of my life not married. But I was like who could ever, you know, walk in Troy's shoes? They were huge shoes to fill and Jim is just an amazing man of his own right and he has loved us well and honored Troy's memory and Troy and Jim's late wife, andrea. I mean, we all live here. You know it's kind of an interesting scenario, but your heart grows, I think, to just love more people and they're a part of our life every day and decisions that we make. But it does take a special human being, I think, to understand that You're the ultimate blended family.
Ginger:We are the ultimate blended family and you know what? Jim is Troy's ultimate wingman in this life. When I think about Troy not really having the wingman that he needed to have that day in combat, I look at Jim and also a fighter pilot in the Air Force himself, and I just think, yeah, yeah, jim has been Troy's ultimate wingman in this life and in the way that Troy would have wanted, which was with his family.
Stacee:Right and the most important role, the most important role. A really good way to think about it.
Ginger:Wow.
Stacee:You, of all the people I've interviewed and really all the people I know, had one of the biggest detours ever. Before the detour hits, I feel like you think things are going to go a certain way, but what advice would you give to a 20 year old woman knowing what you know now?
Ginger:you know it's.
Ginger:It's interesting because I'm I mean, I'm raising 20 year old women right now, and I'm trying to to teach them that life doesn't always go like we plan and that we have to be open, we have to hold our plans a little more loosely and we have to keep our faith.
Ginger:We have to keep our eyes on the goal of just loving other people and loving God and not have to have all the rest of it figured out, because it's all going to end up being different anyway, and I just hope that my children and any young person, especially young women, can go.
Ginger:You know, there's a strength that we don't even realize we have until we need it, and there's a grace that comes with that, and I think that I would not take the credit, I wouldn't say I just pulled myself up by my bootstraps, you know, and marched on because honestly, it was kind of curled up in a ball for a long time. But I think there is something beautiful with just partnering with God in this life and going. Okay, this is not what I wanted and this is not how I want it to be, but God and I we're a good team and I think there's a lot of things that we have left to do, and so I think I would tell the 20-year-old don't quit If there's a fork in the road and you don't know which way to turn, just keep walking. And you don't know which way to turn, just keep walking.
Stacee:Over the past month, we've heard from remarkable women in the military, women who've served, sacrificed and stood strong. But today Ginger brought us something deeper. She showed us what it looks like when your life gets completely shattered and you still get back up. Ginger didn't wear the uniform, she wasn't flying the plane, but make no mistake, she served, she sacrificed and she stood tall in the wreckage of the unimaginable. Here's what I took from her story and I hope that every single woman listening hears loud and clear.
Stacee:Real strength doesn't always kick down doors. Sometimes it just means showing up. Sometimes strength is lying on the bathroom floor at 2 am, crying so hard you can't breathe and still waking up the next morning to feed your kids. Sometimes strength is getting out of bed and putting on mascara. And sometimes strength is saying yes to hope, even when your world has been ripped apart. When Ginger lost Troy, her husband, her love, the father of her five children, she could have folded. No one would have blamed her, but instead she made a decision, not just to survive but to live, to tell his story, to be a hope giver. And that's what she's done on stages, in books and in the hearts of other widows who now know they're not alone.
Stacee:Let's talk about Troy for a second. He died a hero, flying solo into combat to save a team of special operators under siege. He didn't hesitate, he didn't flinch. He said I've got you, and he meant it. And you know what? That same unit, the one he saved, was the one that brought his body home 10 years later. If that doesn't make you believe in the sacred bond of military brotherhood and sisterhood, then I don't know what will. Ginger sees that moment not just as closure, but as a symbol that God's got him from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. If you're listening today and life has smacked you with a loss, a betrayal, a detour so painful you don't think you'll make it. Listen closely. You can survive what you thought would break you. You don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to have it figured out. You don't need to be strong every second. You just need to hold on to hope.
Stacee:Ginger didn't claw her way back alone. She had a community, she had faith, she had medical professionals helping her and she had the quiet strength to reach for help. There's a message in that for all of us, especially women. We don't have to go it alone. We don't have to pretend we're fine when we're bleeding inside.
Stacee:What Ginger teaches us is that resilience is about saying this hurts. I don't know how I'm going to survive it, but I'm still here, so there must be something left for me to do. It's about trusting that even in the ruins, something beautiful can be rebuilt. As we close Military Series, I just want to say thank you to the women and men who serve, to the families who sacrifice, to the genders of the world, who show us that courage doesn't end when the battlefield fades. It lives on in quiet kitchens and busy schools and second chances and books filled with hope. So if you take anything away from this military month of everyday Wonder Woman, let it be this Be someone else's wingman and, whatever happens, don't quit, because someone somewhere is waiting for you to say I've got you, just like Troy did, just like Ginger does and just like we all can.