When a child leaves the home there is a big absence that every parent feels. A once loud, chaotic home suddenly becomes quiet and orderly. While it’s not talked about as often, military moms experience something similar when their kids go off to training. It’s tough and they usually aren’t allowed to reach out to their parents for weeks at a time!
For one mother, that experience was made a little easier when something truly heartwarming happened.
A son in the National Guard
Lisa Gafkjen has a son who just left for basic training. Her son, 19-year-old Tayder, went to train for the North Dakota Army National Guard and hasn’t been able to talk with his family all that much. Lisa and her family wait each day, hoping to get letters from him when he is able to find some time to write them.
Special words
Each time she gets one of his letters, it’s an emotional moment!
As you could imagine, only getting to hear from your son through letters every so often could be pretty disheartening in a world where FaceTime exists! Still, Lisa kept the letters and would pile them up in a special spot after reading each of them.
Something different
When she received his most recent letter, however, Lisa noticed something different.
Normally the letters have Tayder’s handwriting all over them and that was still true, but this time there was someone else’s.
“I read his part first and it said he hadn’t gone to the store yet when I talked to him last,” she said.
What she soon realized was that someone was looking out for her son.
A problem
Tayder was running low on stamps and didn’t have enough postage left.
When the clerk saw there was an issue, he decided to take care of it himself.
“Pd. by window clerk” and an arrow pointing to words that said, “Thank you for protecting my freedom.”
For Lisa, the moment was very emotional. Someone else decided to be kind to her son because of his service. As a result, she was able to read his letters!
“It was pretty emotional,” Lisa said when she realized how the letters made it home. “I was fighting back the tears, the postal worker paid his postage. It was really special.”
Lisa went to Facebook to post the story and as you can imagine, it got a lot of attention!
A lot to say
The post already has over 70 comments and people are still talking about how it made THEM emotional just reading it! For Lisa, it was just confirmation for her that her son was doing the right thing, even if it was hard for her in that moment.
As the comments flooded in, it reminded everyone what it means to be kind for someone else.
Here are some of our favorites!
“That is awesome, still some great people around”
“Taylor and I are in tears reading this
..beautiful! Thank you for posting, Lisa!!
“Oh my heart! Cue the water works!
Check out the original post below to read Lisa’s reaction!
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