Happy Fourth!

For me, the Fourth of July ranks right up there with Christmas for favorite holiday. Growing up in Massachusetts, our history classes focused much on early American history and I learned to love it. The spirit of freedom always sang in my heart as we talked of the heroes that fought for this great country.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity of visiting John Adams's birthplace and the home that he and Abigail lived in after his presidency. As I walked through the rooms that they did, I thought about the significant contributions and sacrifices that Adams and the other Founding Fathers gave. I was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

Even our dear Esther is on her way to becoming a very patriotic little girl. It has been so much fun for Daron and I to watch her enthusiasm grow at each July 4th parade we've attended. She claps and waves with all the fervor she can muster - for the Boy Scout troops, the politicians, the Red Hat Society ladies, the beauty pageant queens, the church groups - she doesn't care who they are, just that they are marching in a parade and waving flags. She still doesn't have much of an understanding of what it all means, but I hope she - and Nathan - will learn that it's more than just catching the candy that's thrown to the crowd, oohing over the antique cars, or marching in time to the bands. I hope they will learn that the little flags they wave so eagerly are symbols of all that means freedom in our country. I hope that they will learn to love this beautiful land in which we are so blessed to live.

There is a reason that my eyes swell with tears as I listen to or sing the National Anthem; there is a reason that I cannot say the Pledge of Allegiance without a lump in my throat. It is that I know that Heavenly Father has blessed our country with incredible freedom - freedom that we often take for granted and forget to acknowledge God's hand in. May we remember to thank our God for the freedom that He has given us and may we remember to use it well.