Happy Birthday America!

 

How grateful I am for your birth.

More than two hundred years later it is hard for us to imagine how difficult your birth must have been, but as I try to put myself in the colonists' shoes, I feel an overwhelming sense of awe and gratitude.

Daughter G with her TX cousin!

It is not a small thing to separate from a homeland and create a new one.  It was not done lightly.  And the ensuing war was horrific, as wars are.

My brother in law and father in law.

 

My mother in law and sister in law.

But the right to be heard and represented was felt so deeply and desired so strongly.  After years of tyranny at the hands of British kings, the colonists had had enough.

Me and my father in law, sweating it out by the river!

And they were willing to lay down their lives if necessary, for the right to be included in the governing process.

 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cousins.

Thank you, founding fathers, for your vision and perseverance.  Thank you, God, for keeping your hand on our small nation when it was so new, and so assaulted by bigger, more powerful governments.  Thank you, servicemen and women, for continuing to guard our liberties and our heritage of freedom.  God, forgive us for thinking we could govern ourselves.  How desperately we need you!  

"If my people, which are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." ~ 2 Chronicles 7:14.