Thank you for your service!!!!

It is Memorial Day weekend. For many of us, this is simply a 3-day weekend. However, the reason we have a 3-day weekend is because there are men and women who risk their own lives to give us the freedoms we enjoy today. For that, I will be forever grateful.

Since our move to Florida, we have been blessed to meet many families who serve our country in the military. The wives may not be overseas in the war, but their battle on the home front is just as important. While their husbands are fearlessly protecting our country in lands far from here with flea collars around their beds to keep bugs away, their families are here without their husbands (or Daddy to the children) at home. I have not met any women who serve, so I am not trying to be sexist in saying that women don't serve overseas. I know that they do, and I am so thankful!! I am just going to speak about the wonderful women I have befriended here in Florida.

Friends here are staying home, paying bills, feeding their family, cleaning house, taking care of their children for MONTHS and even over a YEAR at a time without seeing their spouses. Even when they are not deployed, they work long hours for you and me. Days often pass where they don't even communicate with their spouses. They are not paid as well as they should be. They are moved frequently, sometimes without warning. All have been moved only to have their spouse deployed, leaving them home in a new city where they don't have old friends or family. The sacrifices they make for EVERY ONE OF US are GREAT. After meeting these special new friends, I now make a special effort to thank our service men and women whenever I see them in public. I walk over to them, and simply say, "Thank you for your service." I hope you'll take my challenge and find someone to thank today. If you know someone personally in the military, please take the time to write them a letter, make a phone call, or email them to say, "thank you". You'll be glad you did, for they secure our freedom for us!!!