Saturday, August 25, 2012

Tough Truth for Military Kids

Yesterday afternoon, Grace and I had this conversation in the car on the way home from school...

Grace:  Do we still use canons?
Me: I don't know.  That's a daddy-question.
Grace:  Do they have canons at Daddy's work?
Me:  I don't think so.  But they have bombs.
Grace:  Bombs?  Like Fruit Ninja?
Me:  Exactly

Tonight during dinner, out of the blue Grace asks me this question...

Grace:  When will Daddy have to go back to Iraq?
Me:  Iraq?  I hope never again.  The war there is over for us.
Grace:  There aren't more wars?
Me:  Well, yes there are still wars going on.  But Daddy doesn't have to go right now to fight in those.
Grace:  Daddy goes there to fight for us, right?
Me:  Yep!  Daddy wants us all to be safe.
Grace:  I wish there weren't wars.  Aren't you glad Daddy didn't die when he was away?
Me:  Oh my gosh, yes.  I'm so happy Daddy came home to us.

These are such hard conversations.  These topics don't come up often.  Joel's been home now 1 1/2 years - the longest stretch since Grace has been born.  So topics like war, soldiers dying and people being killed overseas don't come up in our house too often.  For the past 1 1/2 years, life here has seemed normal.  Not quite civilian-life normal, but still pretty quiet.

I just pray that God would grant me wisdom for these hard conversations.  These aren't things I would have ever dreamed to talk about with my 6 year old.

Do any of you military moms have advice for how to handle these hard topics?

1 comment:

Jamie said...

No advice just an acknowledgment that his must be very, very tough.