Memorial Day is For Remembering

So by now I'm sure many of you are out there enjoying your burgers and beer, seeing friends and family and turning up the radio or firing up the boat (wish I had one!). But, please, take a few moments out of your day to remember the reason you are off work and celebrating... in fact, remember the reason that you wake up every single day to a life where you are not oppressed, where you can go to any job you want, where your kids can hop on the bus and go to school where they can sing in the choir or play football to their hearts' content, where you can go to any church your heart desires, where you can call into a radio station or write an editorial in the local magazine just because you feel like it, where you can get home at any time of the night you want without fear of a curfew, where you can live a free life. But the price of that free life isn't free at all, is it? (I guess it's true that nothing in this life is really free!) Be the person in your group today who stands up and asks for a moment of silence. Or makes sure to include our troops in your mealtime prayer. Or takes your children to a military cemetery or a base or a museum and teaches them that this holiday is sacred and special. Too many people take today for granted. Let's us not make that same mistake, and use it to spread knowledge about the reality of the fact that in order to have a country that is the superpower of the world, our military members and their families sometimes make sacrifices bigger than our comprehension. Today I am remembering my great-grandfather (Navy, Pearl Harbor), my grandpa (Navy, Korea, USS Princeton), my husband (Air Force), and the countless other men and women we know who are currently serving or previously served. I'm thinking of them today; are you?

Prayers Needed!!

So I may be a bit absent from the blogger world for the rest of the weekend... a few days ago my grandfather had chest pain, went in to the hospital and ended up having to go through surgery to get 5 stents put in (which keep vessels open going to the heart). They look like this:

It's actually a neat procedure to watch (I've seen many as a nursing student). They go in at the groin and feed a guide wire with a balloon on the end of it all the way up into the coronary arteries. The stent is wrapped around the deflated balloon. Once the doctor determines that the balloon is in the right area of the heart, they inflate the balloon, which expands the stent. This holds the artery open so that more blood can pass. My grandfather already had 5 to start with, now he has 10 (which is a lot!!). So they did the surgery and sent him home.

Well, today, one of the stents collapsed, and he had a massive heart attack. They had to shock him a few times to revive him on the way to the hospital, and he had to undergo another surgery. I am closer to my grandfather than probably anyone else in my family, so this has really hit me hard, especially since the one person I lean on (my husband) isn't here to be with me. Please pray for my grandfather as he recovers from this and hopefully gets to go home in a few days. This is one thing I hate about military life - it makes you too far away from your family sometimes to do anything or be where you feel like you need to be. I have great friends and a great church group who have been there for me though!

On a side note, please also pray for my patience, because the past two nights I have had neighbors that have kept me up literally all night. Last night I had to call the cops on the neighbors behind me when their rampaging party (complete with blaring rap music and a strobe light on the back porch) went past 3 a.m. (and I had to be up at 7). And now I'm in a hotel room listening to a family of 20 (taking up all 5 rooms around me) hoots and hollers and yells and slams doors in the hall at 1 a.m. I'm so sick of no one allowing me to sleep. I called the front desk and the guy came down and told them to go back in their rooms, but that doesn't help because their rooms are right next to mine. I really need sleep after such a stressful day. So, on that note, please pray!!

And In Case You Hadn't Heard...

So, now that everyone knows the BIG NEWS and has had a day to reflect, I wonder what the blogosphere thinks about the reactions they have seen from others out there. Personally, I watched the news in shock. I was out in my driveway talking to our neighbor when I got a text from a friend who is dating an Army man, and literally lost my breath. Instantly all of us ran back inside and I yelled at BE to hurry it up and find the news. Sure enough, there it was in big red letters on CNN - Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by U.S. Navy Seals yesterday. My first reaction was total and complete shock. I just listened and listened to the news reel, and swore I was dreaming. We have been waiting for this day as a nation for so long. After that, I felt joy; joy that all of those families of people killed on 9/11 and all the troops killed in the war since then, can finally say that a huge mission was accomplished, and that they have (at least a small bit) been avenged, even though I know that they can never get their loved ones back and nothing can ever, ever replace that or take away that portion of their pain. I'm sure that even a decade later it is still hard to wake up in the morning and bear. Then, I'll admit I got a little scared. What about retaliation? Obviously there are going to be some realllly pissed people over there. Then came the questions, Will my husband be deployed? Will they speed up his training? What about our troops over there now, are they safe? What will the next step for the country be? I know everyone has their questions, but at the end of the day, I had to realize that there's really nothing I can do about any of those questions. If they call, my husband will go, proudly and quickly. If they speed up his training, oh well, not like anything else about his military career has stuck to its original timeline anyway. I gave up being Type A a loooong time ago. Our troops, of course they are in a dangerous place, but then again they have been in that same dangerous place for years now, and I have ZERO doubt about their competence, so I know that they will take care of each other and do the best job they can do (like they have been for the past ten years already). As for our country, I don't know what the next step will be. I know security is already heightened, because all the bases moved up to FPCON Bravo yesterday (my husband was wondering why he got that message yesterday afternoon). As much as I sometimes disagree with what our political leaders do, I'm sure that they have thought of a possible retaliation and have taken measures to prevent it. Our military makes it possible for us to lay our heads down peacefully and sleep every night, and they will still be doing the same thing every other night. Last night when I was getting worried about everything, my husband just turned to me and said, "It seems crazy right now, but everything will be all right. Don't you have faith in God? Don't you have faith in us [the military]? Just trust them. Pray and trust them." I was so calmed by that!! It's true. We have a great God and a great military, both of which I trust immensely.

I am reminded of Matthew 8:26, where Jesus said, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

Please take the time today to thank any servicemen and women that you know - it is because of them that we can say we live in the mightiest of nations, and because of them that we could go about our daily lives today as if nothing had ever happened. And, pray for them, and for our political leaders. Because, "Where two or three gather in my name, there I will be in the midst of them." -Matthew 18:20. GOD BLESS THE USA!!!!!!! (p.s. and a HUA to our troops! love, your ever-faithful Air Force milwife)