By Sandra Bost
This April marks the 40th anniversary of the Month of the Military Child. Founded in 1986, it was established to honor the “resilience, strength, and sacrifices” of children whose parents serve in the military (militaryonesource.mil). To my own heartbreak, I had never heard of it until today.
I only discovered it while searching for a connection between the month of April, PTSD, and the Purple Heart to finish a memory that has been lingering in my drafts for over a year. What I found was a symbol I never expected: the dandelion. It was chosen because a dandelion can put down roots almost anywhere and bloom even in the most unlikely places. Alongside it is the color purple, worn on April 15th to represent the “joining of all branches”—a blend of every military service color into one.
In my family’s history, my mother’s daddy and my grandfather were not the same man. One was a hero; the other was a survivor struggling with the ghosts of World War II. Imagine earning a Purple Heart for bravery on the front lines of battle–not far off the shore of Normandy Beach–only to return home to a different kind of combat: raising a young family while battling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
In those days, his condition had no name. The world wouldn’t recognize PTSD until 1980, decades after he had traded the physical battlefield for a psychological one that never truly ended. The Purple Heart is a symbol of courage under fire, but there is a different kind of bravery required to balance the weight of war memories with the mundane demands of family life. My grandfather fought on the front lines of both, but the second battle left casualties that no medal could ever acknowledge.
My mother was one of those casualties. She spent her life trying to forgive the version of “Papaw” that was left wounded by war. The Baptist minister by day and alcoholic by night who would often let the numbness of the bottle pull him away from the family for weeks at a time, leaving them to fend for themselves while he remained lost in the shadows of his own nightmares.
The children of wartime veterans are often the silent witnesses to a conflict that follows their fathers (and mothers) home. They are the secondary victims of a war they never signed up for.
In the garden of life, most people view the dandelion as a weed—just ask any lawn-maintenance crew–it is something to be eradicated. But to the military child, it is a badge of honor. It represents the ability to thrive when the soil is packed hard and the environment is unforgiving. Think about those lone dandelions you have seen growing through the crack of a sidewalk. It truly is a resilient marvel.
This resilience is more than just survival; it is what we might call the “biological embedding” of faith. In Romans 5:3-4, Paul writes: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Just as the dandelion has conquered concrete by adapting to its environment, our hardest seasons often produce the strongest versions of our character.
The pressure of the sidewalk doesn’t kill the dandelion; it forces its roots to go deeper to find the life-giving water beneath the surface. My mother’s struggle to find Peace in the shadow of my papaw’s war was her “concrete”–and while that pressure was heavy, it was also the very thing that forced her to develop a perseverance that eventually bloomed into hope.
I am so grateful to have discovered the Month of Military Children before this April comes to an end. As I look around, I realize I know so many precious military families–parents serving with honor and children living out a unique quiet bravery. If you are carrying the weight of a legacy you didn’t ask for–like the secondary PTSD of a parent’s trauma, or just growing up with the absence of a deployed parent–know that your resilience is seen. You have strength that the world might mistake for a weed, but God sees as a vessel of Hope.
What “concrete” is currently pressing against you today, Friend? Can you trust it to Jesus and let Him use that pressure to forge your character in a way that will lead to a Hope that never disappoints?
Lean into the pressure and trust His Plan. Watch as He turns your struggle into a harvest of Hope–proving that even through the hardest circumstances, His Grace can make a resilient soul take flight. Like the tiny parachutes of a dandelion seed, your endurance becomes a vessel of Hope, carried by the breath of the Spirit to plant beauty in places you never thought to imagine.
He is so very able.
