Military Kids
I’ve held at least half a dozen crying kids this week. Some of them weren’t even mine. And, for the record, I wasn’t the one making them cry (this time).
Move season is tough. Emotions are high. The kids swing from hysterical giggles to crying behind the pantry door. I’m the adult, and I’m not much better. We may have only had these friendships for two years, but we have loved hard.
So we hold our time loosely.
I break up fights (and apologize when I was part of the problem). I press pause on my own plans for extra snuggle time. I let the kids see me cry. I hold them and rub backs and kiss heads when they’re the ones in tears. I answer questions about how long it’s going to hurt and when they’ll get to see their friends again. Impossible questions without easy answers.
It’s the month of the military child, the group of people I spend more time with than any other.
I haven’t just parented them, I’ve opened my house to them (so many military kid friends). I’ve taught classes full of them. I’ve mentored them. I’ve prayed for them. I’ve tried to keep them from getting run over as they careen around our neighborhood, bike tires barely touching the ground. I’ve hired them as pet sitters. I’ve turned them down when they’ve tried to con me into letting them rake my dirt for a couple of dollars. I’ve cheered for them at basketball games and football games and soccer games. I’ve put bandaids on skinned knees, pulled prickers out of bare feet, given glasses of water and the dregs of my fridge.
I’ve loved them with everything I have in me… and always will. Because they are incredible. They are something else. And they have loved my kids in return.
This week I had to break the news of a change of vacation plans to one of our kids, the kid who had specifically asked for the part of the plan that had been derailed, the kid whose best friend packed up and moved out this week. The timing wasn’t ideal. But my son didn’t even bat an eye at the disappointing change in plans before responding: “That’s okay. We’ll still be together, so we’ll have fun no matter what we do.”
He knew what real loss was, and it wasn’t a change of plans.
Don’t get me wrong. My child is not a paragon of virtue. He’s been in and out of fights with his brother all week long (physical wrestling matches and screaming tussles that the neighbors can hear). But here’s what I see consistently with military kids: they know what matters, and they don’t waste their love on anything else.
They’ve had almost everything in their lives taken away at some point, placed on hold, switched up, and changed around time and time and time again. They’ve held loss in the palm of their hands and kept going, and so they know—in a way a lot of us in our comfortable, safe, controlled worlds sometimes forget—that what matters is the people we love who love us in return. Nothing else is comes anywhere close.
And no, I don’t want to talk about their resiliency. I get that we’ve used that word as a badge of honor to make us feel better about the grief we’ve put these kids through. No. I want to talk about their love. Because that’s the measure of these kids.
They love enough to say goodbye and then choose to say hello again. They love enough to fight for each other. They love enough to welcome the outsider and look for the one who feels alone. They love enough to pick up and move and do it all over again year after year after year.
May we stop demanding that they be resilient (they already are—let it go), and instead just be a gentle place for them to land. May we see past the strength they’ve been forced to develop and instead see how incredibly beautiful their love is.
Let’s celebrate that this month. And let’s hold them a little closer in whatever way we can.
They’re still only children.
