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Happy Fourth of July WordPress World!
For many today will be a day of spending time with family and friends, eating bbq, and watching fireworks. For me today is a day of remembrance. Today I will remember the reason why we celebrate the day. Our independence. Our independence would not have been possible without the bravery of our soldiers. In 1776 we had a rag tag militia, now we have highly trained men and women who serve our country.
I would like to say thank you. Thank you to those men and women who every single day fight for people that they will never meet. They fight for people who don’t agree what they do. They fight so that we will not again know the terror we felt after September 11. Our soldiers fight in other countries so that the children in those countries don’t have to go to bed scared. In this country, we have no clue what real terror is. We can walk out of our front door, bash our president, drive across the country and unless we get caught speeding we don’t generally have to worry about being stopped by the police. We have a freedom that a lot of people only dream about. We have that, thanks to our soldiers.
This freedom comes at a cost. It costs us the lives of our soldiers. They are our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. They are dads who don’t get to come home at Christmas, they are moms who cant be there for birthdays. It also costs the lives of those who love them back home. It costs the wives who go to bed each night praying that tomorrow they will hear from their husband and trying desperately hard to remember that no news is good news. It costs the children who don’t get to have mom there when they play the swan in Swan Lake, or kick the winning goal in soccer.
And yet, even after all that cost, so many of them would go back. They would again fight for not just this country, but for the men and women who never got to make it home. For them its not about the living, its about honoring the dead. How can they not fight for their fallen brother? The man who gave his life while fighting to protect the man next to him.
I never want to forget the soldiers who have gave everything so that I could be free. I don’t want to forget the soldiers who were taken as a POW, or those who are MIA. I never want to forget the families of the soldiers. My heart goes out to them.
Today, while you are celebrating, please, remember these men and women. So many of them do what they do, and never hear a thank you. Some of them don’t do it to hear a thank you. They will tell you “its their job”. I firmly believe it while it may be their job to protect me, its my job to not let them feel forgotten.
To all my soldiers, known and unknown to me, thank you.
