This Independence Day

I'm totally torn on how to write this post. I always like to write a little something when our various national holidays roll around. Last year for the 4th of July, I focused on the beautiful, positive things about our nation. I love the idea of America, its founding, its history, its system of government (as the Founders intended it, that is) more than I can adequately express. This year, though, I'm feeling the need to write something different.

Things are scary in the country and the world. Over the last few months, I've been following current events and the latest in politics, but I've been feeling a sort of apathy toward it all. Not that I don't care but that I can't do anything about it. Writing to representatives doesn't seem to help. Petitions are pointless. Elections don't even seem to do much. Politics are politics -- always just carefully calculated and manipulated. I stay informed, I still get riled up about the issues, but I feel kind of defeated.

I plan to write more on it another time. It doesn't seem right to do it on the Fourth of July. I'm going to spend it the way John Adams said it should be celebrated:

"I am apt to believe that [Independence Day] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not." 

My little family is going up to spend the day with my parents, my siblings, their significant others, and all the nieces and nephews. We'll have a huge barbecue - hamburgers, hot dogs, Mom's amazing potato salad, watermelon, apple pie, the all-American works. The kids will play on the slip-n-slide, with my parents' overly excited dogs running around them. My pyromaniac brothers will start lighting fireworks (just the start of hundreds of dollars worth of fireworks) before it even gets dark (hopefully, I won't catch on fire this year).

Then we'll spend the evening hours, all of us spread out on the cool lawn like we did when we were kids, watching the town's firework show light up the sky, with its resounding boom echoing through the valley. The kids will wave sparklers. I will be playing my camera's shutter speed to catch the designs. Dad will, most likely, play Jimi Hendrix's version of The Star-Spangled Banner at least once. And I will think, as I always do at this time of year, of the sacrifices and miracles that have made America what it is.

But still, I feel different this year. And I can't stop thinking of this quote...

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." - Ronald Reagan

May God bless America as He has before.