Posts Tagged With: heroes

(Photo credit: Fort Rucker)

It’s Gratituesday!  Today I am grateful for people who are willing and able to do things I cannot or would not do.  I’m not a brave or daring type of person.  I am continually amazed by people who are willing to go into dangerous situations and  risk their lives, or their personal health and well-being, for something outside of themselves.

How does someone willingly put their life out there as a potential, highly likely, sacrifice.  In a war zone, in a militarized zone, in a combat area, in a hostile environment, all those euphemisms for extremely dangerous, life-threatening places scare me beyond reason.  And yet, military personnel daily place themselves in these situations.

They defend freedom, they protect the innocent, they help support a fragile peace, they keep anarchy at bay, they stand between madness and hell, they offer a sense of stability in the most unstable of situations.

The amazing thing to me is that they do this willingly.  They volunteer!

They leave family and sanity, they leave friends and safety, they leave predictability and order, and they go and do whatever the situation requires.

I am so thankful someone has the discipline and the courage to do such things.  Grateful that they have faced such difficulties in the past, I stand in awe of these stalwart men and women.

How do I repay these heroes?  How do I honor the things they place on the altar?  How do I remember and reverence such acts as these perform?

This kind of debt seems unfathomable.

My gratitude seems miniscule and minor and wholly inadequate.

Veterans Visiting the Graves of Fallen Soldiers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)