You may have noticed {or not} that I didn't post on 9-11. I had intended to but I got caught up in the moment and watched a lot of the coverage. I had forgotten how many of our kids had no idea what 9-11 was. I fielded a lot of questions from them. They were quite bewildered by it all.SaraGrace finally asked me, "But what did we ever do to them?"
Good question.
I had forgotten that both of the planes that hit the WT towers had originated from Boston.
We have now flown out of there. We pick people up from there.
It's so very close to home.
Our church had a special time of remembering and it was very powerful to watch the people around me. It was an event that impacted the entire country, but for those who live in the Boston area, it was so much more intense. They knew people who died that day. A lot of them had flown that flight on different days. It happened at THEIR airport. Taylor had a teacher who broke down in class on Friday because he lost five friends that awful day.
My mind drifted to the day my cousin told us he was going back to Iraq. It was the last time I would ever see him. He lost his life to a sniper on Thanksgiving Day a few years ago. He left behind a wife and two young children. I remembered his funeral. The flags. The military presence. The sadness.
And Ryan...he is in the Army because of the feelings it invoked in him to watch what had happened to his country. His unit is scheduled to go to Afghanistan early next year and I watched the recap with a different feeling than I did when it happened. We sang, "I'm Proud to be an American," at church and when we got to the part that says, "And I'd stand up next to you to defend her still today," I got a lump in my throat.
Because I would rather stand up than have my baby boy stand up for me.
But stand up he is.
I am proud of him.
But I want him to come home.
Just like every other mother of a soldier.
But America...she stands for FREEDOM. And it's worth the fight. This country is so very special. Not perfect, but special. Let's not lose sight of that in our desire for comfort and security. This country is still the best that the world has to offer. Don't let anyone tell you differently. If you don't believe me...travel a bit.
As for us...others who came before have paid a far greater price so that we could live in freedom. Let's not take it for granted or squander what we have been given.
I end with these words excerpted from Ronald Reagan's "A Shining City on a Hill" speech...
And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart -- but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships -- they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home--he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep -- all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.
You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage." |
