The meaning of Memorial Day can get lost in cook-outs, trips the lake, and Riverfest. I am as guilty as the next person. (Note the previous post about a cook-out with friends.) However, this year, Memorial Day takes on new meaning for our family. It hasn't been six months ago that we spent time in both Vietnam and Cambodia. It was in these two countries that I fully grasped what life COULD be like outside of our USA.
The most sobering of our trips was to the Killing Fields and to the Pol Pot prison. The atrocities committed in/at both were eye-opening. It was standing at a killing tree in the fields that I truly "got" Memorial Day. Men and women, for hundreds of years, have been fighting for freedoms. Yes, these include the freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom to bear arms, etc. But, they also fought for the freedom to live . . . to live freely is something that we take for granted EVERY day. To live freely is so much more than choosing the party with which I want to affiliate or whether I want to worship as a Christian or a Muslim. To live freely is to wake each and every morning knowing that my children will have the food, the clothes, and shelter they need. It's knowing that I can walk into a store and make purchases that I need without fear of reprisal. It's knowing that I won't be marched into a Killing Field to watch my child murdered simply because of the color of my skin or worse yet for the color of my father's skin. Freedom . . .
(The picture is of Ali with a Cambodian baby in the floating villages. This child was born on a raft and may never see dry land.)
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