-Thomas Jefferson
As I shirked the cover off of the bed this morning and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I had to stop & think for a second...there is a quiet peace. Oh, there are some sounds...the morning dove in the sparse trees of the field next to our house that always coos throughout each early morning hour; our excited & hungry dog licking me like endlessly until I feed her her breakfast; the soothing tick of our clock in our family room; the faint wave of fabric tickling the windows as the morning breeze wafts through the house.
But, generally, there is a peaceful quiet...no shrill blast of bombs in the distance or worse off, close by; no pop of gun fire, or sharp screams that follow; no cries of despair as a family happens on their lifeless husband, father, son, nephew, or cousin that had been left in the streets to die during battle because it was to unsafe to pull them to safety while they were wounded.
As Thew & I visited DC in the Fall on a random day of the week that we happened to have off, we wandered over to the Korean War Memorial where Lincoln peripherally overseas the Mall when Thew snapped this picture at the top of this post. I paused for a long while looking at those words. I even traced over the cuts in the granite that formed those letters with my fingertips as if to really take in all that those three words meant. Those words have been soaked in blood for generations of the only few hundreds years that this country has existed.
All so that a simple girl like me could grow up in a land without threat of violence; so I could go to school & learn as much & for as long as I wanted, not limited by the fact that I am a woman, while in other countries schools may be too far away to walk to or worse off, I may not be allowed to attend because of my "lowly" gender; I can walk into a store where aisles & aisles of food are at my disposal to take home with me to feed my family...I can even walk into a building where I can order food & only seconds later it is on a tray, hot & ready for me to devour...where in other countries, children die every second from hunger & lack of the proper nutrients; I can worship & pray in public, without hiding behind locked doors & covered windows...even carry my Bible around & read it with my best friends in coffee shops & parks, while across the world Christians send secret letters & e-mails in code & meet in dark basements for church services, the penalty of death at stake if their faith is discovered.
I am free...but I am free at a price. That price has cost countless men & women their lives, especially one who thousands of years before this country was a even a glimmer in man's eye, hung on a tree & died for the vapor in the wind that is me (but that's another blog post entirely ;) For that, I am indebted to those men & women
...to the generations that never received the chance of life because their soldier would-be father was killed on the battlefield as a baby-faced teenager, leaving behind his stricken parents & bride-to-be who had been waiting for her fiance to come home after his tour so they could be married & start their own family
...I am indebted to the husband or wife who kissed their spouse goodbye longing for their next embrace, only to greet their return in black & stroking a wooden box that now holds their beloved's body, another casualty of war
...I am indebted to the soldier who spends the rest of their life without a precious limb, bound to prosthetic or power chair due to the blast that killed their company & had them clinging to life throughout the months of excruciating rehab so they could function in what used to be simple tasks like taking a shower or feeding themselves
...I am indebted to the man or woman who left their innocence in the country they fought in, bringing back with them the haunting images of what they have seen war do to people or what war has made them do...it greets them each time they close their eyes, despite the endless hours in counseling where they battle those old demons to not swallow them up
...I am indebted to my family members & friends who have proudly enlisted because "it's the right thing to do" letting their stark bravery mask any fear of the cost of what serving our country may mean for their life...like my cousin, a Navy SEAL, who due to honoring his oath of maintaining national security to our country, can't even share with us how much of a hero he is
Despite the fact that we are a nation that has slipped in sin countless times & teeters on the brink of the planned democracy our founding fathers originally designed, I AM PROUD OF MY COUNTRY. I will always fly an American Flag on my front porch so that that the rays of the "dawns early light" may shine through it's fabric and the beams of the "twilights last gleaming" may kiss it's colors before the moon rises in the sky. I love our country & love this day :)
