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Saturday, November 8, 2014

Day Eight I am thankful for my freedom.


This past week during poetry workshop a woman read a poem that was beautiful, and emotional. Fully admit she had a hard time getting through it without tears. The class of course thought it was about drugs and getting high. And we debated endlessly about it as the poet could not say anything until she was told she could respond.

When she did, through a tear filled explanation it was discovered the poem had nothing to do with drugs but war. For her home country is at war with one another and it was her account of what she witnessed as a child on the streets before her parents escaped to America.

"You guys do not realize the freedom and the privilege you have of not growing up like that. War is awful."

We know it isn't pretty. We have seen the pictures, I have had friends that have fought and have come back changed people. But hearing it from an actual person who grew up there, spent her childhood not knowing if anyone in her family, including herself would see another day.  It made me really thank the Lord a little more.

I have thought about that poem a lot this week, as my month of thanks continues, and I have found myself thanking the lord I grew up in a country that allows me to be free. I do not care what your belief is in the system that we have currently, whether you like the President or not. To me that does not matter. I am thankful enough that we have the ability to decide who we want, and get the right to vote every four years.  I am thankful that my country allows me as a woman the right to an education, and to vote and to wear what I want. Yes, this classmate made me think a lot about the sort of thing. Why?

Because these are freedoms that other cultures do not allow.

Maybe there are a lot of things that I do not understand about politics at the moment. Maybe I do not agree with certain things. But at the same time, I get to wake up and go to work. I get to decide what to do, what to be. And I am free.

And for that...I am thankful to be an American.

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