She just turned five, my forever friend. She’s smart and cute and side-splitting funny. She doesn’t like babies, my cooking, or soda, and if ever you yell at her it would break her heart. She meow’s like a kitty, and wears dresses just because she’s a princess. She’s not my daughter or even my niece, but I couldn’t love her more if she was. She calls me Aunt Rachel, and it gets me every time.

Her name is Sarah, or sometimes Daisy…it just depends on which way the sun shines. She’s my best friend’s daughter, and she stole my heart. I talk to her mom a dozen times a day, and she always asks to talk to me when she knows I’m on the phone. Sometimes she tells me stories or what her brother’s doing, and sometimes I just fill her mind with propaganda about how wonderful she is for helping her mom do the dishes. I had to laugh when she fought for the phone with her mom, and she giggled and told me her mom sometimes forgets that Sarah and I are friends forever.

Last night, I called on my way home from school. I talked to my little friend, and she said she had a secret. Her voice was hard to understand in her gaspy, childish whisper. It took two times before I got the message. The secret she shared, well, it broke my heart. “If you talk to my Daddy on the phone, tell him to come home.”

Tell him to come home.

Her daddy’s a soldier, deployed to Afghanistan. So very far from home.

My little friend is five years old. She doesn’t understand war or duty or patriotism. They’re just abstract ideas that mean her daddy’s far away.

I can’t fix her problem, though I wish I could. My heart aches for the sadness she feels. I imagine the call years down the road when I’ll try not to break down and cry. I imagine my friend will be not so little, but still my friend forever, when she says, “If you talk to my Mom on the phone, tell her to come home.”

See, her mom’s a soldier, too. A soon to be chaplain with a burden to tell soldiers about Jesus. A mom who loves her kids more than life itself, asked to leave them for a while to minister to those who need hope. What can I do, but listen and pray? Listen to a mom whose heart breaks over the dad who’s away. Listen to the girl who whispers her secret. Listen and promise that I’ll always be there to listen and pray and be a keeper of secrets.

Pray for this family who does this for you. For freedom and country and each other and you. For God and the Gospel and the knowledge that saves. They’re not nameless faces, but real hearts and tears. They’re not an exception in this military life. It’s par for the course, and it hurts every time.

Do what you can. Help where you can. Most of all pray, because you always can. Pray for my friend, and pray for her man. Pray for her boy. And, please, please, pray for my little forever friend.