Salute to Our Heroes

This is my Grandpa.  In this photo, he was probably 18 or 19 years old, and had made the decision to enter the Air Force and fight for his country.  While he was never deployed and did not see action during the Korean War, he is still a hero.  Of course he is my hero as my grandpa and all that he taught and showed me in his lifetime, and I hope to have a post more focused on that in the future.  He is a hero for his love for his family: his wife of over 50 years, his children, and his grandchildren.  But he is also a hero because he was willing to fight for the country he loved in order to preserve the freedom of its people and protect these people and the values that our country stood for.
Today is Memorial Day.
Today we salute heroes like my Grandpa: men and women who put their lives at risk, many of whom died, to protect and preserve our country and the freedom of its people.  This took courage, certainly.  But more than that it took a degree of selflessness: a willingness to say: I love my country, and I believe in what it stands for and care about its people so much that I am willing to risk my safety, even my life, to protect it.
Every time I see men and women in uniform, there is a certain degree of awe and a great degree of respect in my heart for them.  I don't know where they're from or who they are, but the decision they have made is visible.
I cannot say that I am proud of my country in this present day and age.  Many things have happened in the U.S. government in the past several years that I am ashamed of and saddened by.  But this will never change the fact that I am proud of what my country is built upon.  When I hear the National Anthem at a sports event or a parade, while to many it may seem like "just something we do," I find myself moved with love and respect for what my country was built upon and the men and women who have served and died to defend that.  I am not proud of what my country (or should I say its government) is right now; but I am proud of what my country has been in the past and what I believe it can be again with the right people, virtues, and God-fearing citizens leading it.
I did not always have this deep respect in my heart for our soldiers, our country, our National Anthem.  This has been instilled in me through many things: what I've read in my history books, what I've seen in movies like "Sergeant York," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Captain America;" a trip to Washington D.C. where I saw so many memorials of the wars our country has fought in and the people involved therein. But something that really instilled in me a newly realized love for my country was an audio presentation I heard 7 years ago that a priest shared in his homily on the 4th of July: The Story Behind Our National Anthem.  I hope that you will take the time to listen to it, and that it will change how you listen to and participate in the singing of that National Anthem.
"Oh say can you see/ By the dawn's early light/ What so proudly we hailed/ At the twilight's last gleaming?"
God bless America!