Memorial Day
Last year, I stood in Bastogne.
The site of the Battle of the Bulge.
Cold air.
Dense woods.
Ground that still feels heavy even decades later.
It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been there.
History stopped feeling like words in a textbook.
You realize young men stood in those forests freezing, exhausted, surrounded, and terrified. Some of them never left.
The average age of a soldier on the front? Nineteen.
Scared and yet they stayed.
That place left a mark on me.
Because freedom feels different when you stand where somebody paid for it.
Memorial Day can easily become another long weekend.
Food.
Boats.
Time off.
But standing in Bastogne reminded me this day exists because countless people never came home.
Somebody surrendered their future so the rest of us could keep living ours.
Scripture says:
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13
Real sacrifice carries weight.
And I think one of the dangers of modern life is how quickly we normalize blessings we didn’t earn.
Safety.
Freedom.
Peace.
Ordinary mornings.
None of those things are free.
Somewhere along the way, someone paid dearly for them.
That made me think...
Maybe remembrance is more than honoring the dead.
Maybe it’s refusing to live casually with what cost others everything.
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