SixandahalfDays is about living life every day. It is about faith, family, and fun. About doing what we know we need to do, even though it is hard. Today, I want to take break from my regular weekly posts and say thank you to those who have lived this and given of their lives every day to defend the freedom that we live in.
Our veterans took their oath to defend our freedom and lived that oath every day. They gave up time with family, time to pursue their passions, and some their very lives. All to pursue this idea called freedom.
Freedom means something different to everyone. I have had the privilege to work on a project to interview several veterans with Stories of America. Each of these veterans had a different view of what freedom is, but it was always something worth fighting for. To the World War 2 veteran that stumbled upon a Nazi concentration camp while on patrol, freedom was something worth dying for. To the Vietnam War veteran that was taken captive, freedom was something worth living for. To the African American Korean War veteran, freedom was something worth waiting for, to fight for the freedom of someone else, even though at the time, he himself was not truly free. Freedom means something different to each one of us.
America is the land of the free. It is not a perfect nation. It is a nation that has in the past, always upheld the idea of freedom. We often take these freedoms for granted. We forget that as Americans, we have the right and duty to continue to fight for our freedoms. While it is often easier to sit back and let our government take care of our problems and difficulties, to bail us out when we get in over our heads, to solve all of our problems for us, this is not freedom. This is not the freedom that these men and women gave their lives for. They fought to free us and many other nations from this very thing.
As Americans, the best way to say thank you to these veterans who invested their lives to defending our freedom and gaining the freedom of others, is to live our lives every day, fighting and defending our own freedom by taking care of our own families and those around us. It is not the government’s job to feed the homeless, it is my job. It is not the government’s job to fix unemployment, it is my job. It is not the government’s job to make sure my family is educated, it is my job. As we live our lives every day, putting God first in everything we do, striving to make our piece of the world a little better every day, that is the best way to thank a veteran. To show them that their efforts were not in vain. That we live out our freedom on Sunday mornings and the other Six and a half Days every week.
Thank you, veterans, for all you have given us. May we always fight to maintain that freedom.
As a six year veteran of the Navy, from 1968 – 1974, “Thank you!” for this post. Extremely well said, and spot on!
Thanks for reading and commenting. And thank you for your service to our nation.