Happy Memorial Day!

We found a wonderful Memorial Day service in the Marietta armed forced cemetery.  

Ethan was rather dashing in his school uniform. 

Since we are in the South, we got to commemorate with muskets.  Hee hee!  Muskets!  I love it.

We found Dad's tomb stone...but don't worry.  This particular Tom Jones was from Alabama.

I love Memorial Day.  It's one of my favorite holidays.  I am just so grateful to live in this beautiful, free country.  I am always so moved by those who have served our country and for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.  I am thankful for them and for their families who supported them and survived without them. 

My feelings of patriotism run deep for many reasons.  We have our own proud heroes in our family now and those who have past.  Their stories are an important part of my own.  I have also lived in two other countries where freedom looks a little different than what we are used to.  Then there is the knowledge of the quality of life that so many people in this world live without any semblance of freedom.  Freedom is so hard-fought and so fragile.  It hurts my heart when so many people in this country feel like our country is a disgrace and patriotism a joke just because there are people who live here whose views and beliefs don't lie perfectly in line with theirs.  

That is exactly the gift of freedom that we have been given.  To have the choice of beliefs and the choice of disagreeing with each other.  Many travesties paint the history of our country.  The extermination of most indian nations, slavery, the internment camps that our Japanese-American citizens endured.  But our history is also painted with the struggle forward for equality, the optimism of capitalism and free commerce, and the steadfast hope that anything is possible.  We even gave that last one a name: The American Dream.  And the best part of the American Dream is that dream is different for every single uniquely talented person who lives here.  

I have heard the American Dream of our forefathers, the one where they say that all men are created equal, ridiculed and dismissed.  'We are still fighting that one.' people say.  'They were flawed, rich, privileged, white men who were just blind to the world around them.'   I don't think so.  I know they weren't blind to the state of the world they lived in.  They hoped for better.  They dreamed it could be.

Isn't it amazing, that one idea was still a dream worth fighting for when Martin Luther King used to unite people together under one cause.  His words and life propelled us even further towards our goal.  Changing the hearts and perceptions of an entire country is not easy feat.

Our forefather's world and our world are vastly different.  In just 242 years we have been reinventing ourselves, chipping away from thousands of years of cast systems, gender discrimination, and forced religion and ideologies.  True, our country isn't perfect...and never will be.  But that one unique idea has pushed us closer and closer to the ideal.  It pushes us still.  

I am optimistic about our future...just as long as we can remember our past.

Happy Memorial Day.