America, land of the Free, and home of the Brave. The only place on earth, maybe in the entire universe, that freedom rings. True freedom, not even understood by many Americans, is what we have. And it’s what our soldiers fight for.
They fight for liberty, and justice, for all. They fight for our nation, whole, and united under God. They fight for our rights, our beliefs, and our well-being. They risk their lives for our freedom.
They risk their lives so that we may choose how much food we want. They fight so we can praise whichever God we see fit to praise, and praise him in the ways that we see fit.
They sacrifice daily so that we can marry whomever we may, so that we can spend our weekends however we might, so that we can choose how we earn our money, so that we can live our lives in relative peace and harmony.
Sacrifice is an everyday occurrence in our lives. You may not even notice its slight presence. It whispers in the air as you help someone, thus sacrificing your time. It bares its bittersweet face as you give up your slice of the pie.
Sacrifice is an everyday occurrence in the lives of our American soldiers. They sacrifice years of their lives. The prime years of their lives, when they should be finding the man, or woman, they will spend the rest of their lives with. The time they should be spending raising kids, playing with them, and enjoying life. Instead they keep a grueling physical regime, and they live simplistic lives. They spend all of their time away from family, and hometown friends.
They sacrifice their time, but also their bodies. They sacrifice digits, limbs, and other various parts of their bodies out of pure love of country. They loose the ability to walk properly when they are shot. They loose legs, and arms in IED explosions. (Improvised Explosive Devices)
They loose their ability to see, their ability to hear, their ability to taste, their ability to feel, and their ability to smell. They lose their ability to sense the world around them. They lose it all for their country, and fellow countrymen. They sacrifice it for freedom. Our freedom.
They sacrifice their minds, too. The act of killing a fellow human being churns many stomachs. Taking any life is difficult. Some of these men and women who fight for us kill nearly daily, each time it takes a bite out of their confidence. “Why do I do this? Am I doing the right thing?” they ask. For many, there is no answer.
The traumatic experience of loosing a comrade is incredibly stressful on a person’s sanity. It quickly douses the person with reality, and mortality. It brings out a certain amount of faith. As the saying goes, There are no atheists in foxholes.
As stated before, the bodily sacrifice is gross, and horrific. Taking this into account, seeing a gory wound may be even worse than receiving one. Many soldiers are haunted by these images for the remainder of their lives.
Then of course, many of these men and women never return home. They sacrifice their very lives for someone else’s freedom. They sacrifice all that they love, their family, their friends, their relationships, for your freedom. For my freedom.
I say thank you to those men and women, and to their families, because of their incredible service to this country. Thank you today, tomorrow, and everyday, for your incredible sacrifice.
God bless you.
One reply on “The Price of Freedom”
Good Memorial Day thoughts, Ian. The sacrifice to preserve freedom—theirs and ours—is easy to overlook when we’re just enjoying that freedom. But “there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend” … is what we’re remembering on this day. They were willing to (or did) give their own life—which is really the only thing we have?—for freedom, and for their “friends”. Remarkable.