Star Spangled Freedom

I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about the birthday of the country I love. This weekend, we celebrate our nation's freedom. We'll cook out. Watch fireworks. Get together with friends and family. Start vacations. Mow our lawns. Water our plants. We might even just sit and relax. All of these are part and parcel of what we, as Americans hold dear. We do these things because we want to-because somewhere along the line, a mom, dad, sweetheart, brother, sister, grandpa, grandma, spouse, child...has said goodbye unknowingly, for the last time to a person they love. Seen that person walk out the door, down the road, get in to a car, a bus, a van, a train, a plane...and they've never come back...at least, not alive. They get a box that holds a body, but not the spirit of the person they loved. They get a flag, a salute, a formal thank you-and they go home and try to figure out how they live their life now that a piece of it is gone. The person who is gone, went willingly, nobly, honorably, and was compelled by a sense of duty not everyone shares.
I'm a deeply patriotic person. I'm more grateful than I could even put in to words to have grown up in this great nation. It's not perfect, in fact it's far from it! But...it's my country. We're in the midst of so much political turmoil and unrest. Plainly insincere candidates vie for our votes, filling our ears with empty promises and meaningless words. Politicians are out to get what's best for them, personally, not our nation as a whole. In a world view, terrorists strike daily, tearing away at the morale of people just trying to live their lives. Making people feel a general uneasiness because no one knows when or where the next attack will happen.
And we Americans? We go about our daily lives, rarely cognizant of how much it's cost someone else for us to get up, get in the vehicle of our choosing, go to a drive through, and get a cup of coffee. I often wonder in what direction this great nation would head if people took just a moment, every day, to understand how thankful they should be. To realize that for the most part, we take this precious life we live, the freedoms we were born with, and the ability still to have a dream and live it out and make it come true-for granted.
If you served this great nation, and you're reading this blog...I salute you. I thank you, although thanks, while it's all I can offer you, seems woefully inadequate. This post is for you, and every single compatriot you served with or who went before you...and never came back because they gave the ultimate gift which always lurks in the background, but I believe seldom expected when one volunteers for duty. Freedom is never free. This country is built on the spirits, bodies, and lives of thousands of people you and I will never meet.  It's time for us to stop trampling the memory of those who so willingly gave all, and start living like their sacrifice matters! Old Glory won't seem so glorious trampled under the feet of those who want to dismantle this nation's history of freedom, democracy, and justice. No, we are not perfect. Never have been, never will be. This holiday, take a moment. We're in the dawn's early light. The gleam of twilight has just passed. Rockets angrily glare red, bombs burst in air, on the ground, everywhere it seems. But....she's still waving. Tattered, a couple hundred years old now, and spangled with 50 stars instead of only 13. It's up to us to prove that she still guides the land of the free, and the home of the brave.