July 4 2015

July 4 2015 Greetings My Friend I go back to the Old Testament as I think about celebrating. God taught Moses and Moses taught the people to celebrate at certain times in the year. Along with the celebration were feasting and remembering. Today is the 4th of July, a day to celebrate. For a long time we as a people have remembered to celebrate but we seem to forget to remember. I am as guilty of this as anyone. When I worked I was thankful for an extra day off to slow down and regroup and to be with friends and family. Not all bad but in the celebrating I/we have taken the focus of the reason for the celebration whether it is to remember our military and their sacrifice for us or even at Christmas and Easter for Jesus’ gift for us. For me when I begin to look at the reason for the holiday deeper I find myself appreciating the life I have and the freedom that has been given to me. I get to see Junior’s sacrifice with each holiday to remember our military. It never occurred to me as a young person what our military men and women dealt with in a war. I saw the movies and such but did not register until many years later that a war lives in the military person’s heart and mind forever. As a nation when our Vets came home from Vietnam we were ready to move on, to belittle the military and we created even deeper scars for those who cared enough to give so that we may disagree. Today as each remembrance holiday comes I find myself taking time out to be thankful, to find a way to acknowledge the Vet and at the same time thank God for these people. Our trip to Nashville for the Marine Corps reunion moved me this year as I have not been moved in a long while. Our group is aging and the military wounds to their bodies are showing more so with bad backs and such. Each one entered into each day with thanksgiving and care and concern for each other and their families. I also sense their desire to be as supportive of today’s military people because they don’t want another generation to go through what they did. I also think that the Viet Nam vets were instrumental in getting the help they needed and not letting our government and its people to ignore the pain of war. Junior did the strange things associated with PTSD when he came home. His ex wife dealt with his nightmares and him waking up with her pinned to the wall by his nightmare. As the government took a look into what the Vets were complaining about studies were done and found out the long term effects of war. Junior lost a foot in VietNam. Years later he found out that the government knew that he would have disintegrating back problems and his good leg would develop problems mainly in the knee and hip problems. Today I see prosthetics are made differently. For Junior the prosthetic companies expected him to put his damaged limb in a wool sock with no other protection and each time he got a new leg he had to break in his stump all over again which meant sores, bleeding and 6 months of extreme pain. He got a new leg every 2 years because they weren’t made to last much longer than that. My desire today is to take time to remember all the aspects of this holiday and to thank God first and then any military people I can. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet