Ok, I’ll admit it here, I melt into tears of joy whenever I see videos like this one. Especially when they involve the little ones seeing their dad or mom after a long tour of duty to who-knows-where these days. It makes no difference where they’ve been, nor do these little ones know if their mom or dad has been to Afghanistan or Somalia or out to sea for a tour; all they know is that they have not been able to see them or be held by them for a long time. This one got to me in the first few seconds.
Servicemembers know that they will be deployed away from their families at some point in their service careers. They are no different than anyone else who must be away from their families and homes for a length of time. They think about their wives or their husbands, and they think about their children and miss their voices, their physical presence, and their touch. But where these servicemen and women go, especially over these last two decades, and what they are often called to do, puts a whole other dimension into that leaving and coming home.
To their little ones, especially the younger ones, there is no real sense of the dangers of the jobs that their moms or dads do, there is only the sense that someone very important to them is not there. The empty hole that they sense in their daily lives is real, if more amorphous and inexplicable in their innocent minds, and it is deeply felt.
You can see that in the reactions of these youngsters when that person they love and miss so much is suddenly there before them. It is precious to them, indeed, but even more so to that mom or dad who is finally home and able to embrace that precious little soul within their own arms again after so long.
All the worries, all of the loneliness, melts away when they see those little ones running open-armed toward them and they hear those crystalline toddler voices, full of inexpressible emotion, singing the words, “Daddy, Daddy,” or “Mommy, Mommy,” and finally enfold them in their arms. Nothing says, “Welcome Home” quite so purely, or so intimately.
Sit back and enjoy these homecomings. And remember all those who are serving today in our Armed Forces, here at home, those out to sea, and those in harm’s way in the most dangerous parts of our world. Remember, too, their families who wait and serve the nation with their faithfulness and patient endurance. They are of the less than 1% of us who have made the commitment to serve in our nation’s military and every one of them a volunteer. God bless them all.