On December 16, I attended my grandchildren's Christmas program at their Christian school. One is in kindergarten (he was Joseph), one in first grade (she was, and is, an angel with a slightly smudged but still angelic face), and one is in fifth grade (and she and I have had our zen moment when she was only ten months old, and it has lasted ever since!). Every year, since the oldest was in first grade, I have gone to and reveled in the Christmas programs at their school. The joy, as I wrote in a previous blog post called Ode to Joy, is palpable and ever-present at this school.
I am grateful to my parents for bringing me up in Christianity. My father was a career Air Force officer, but also the product of a poor farm family in Iowa. He worked his way through Coe College in Iowa, and joined the Air Force after graduation as a lieutenant. He had a wonderful life in the service of his country, and he and my mother were staunch Presbyterians, before being a Presbyterian might actually brand one as a loon. A topic for another post.
I am grateful to the USAF for providing me as a teen-ager with a heck of a good time by sending my dad to Japan. After graduating high school, I spent two years in Japan as a 17 to 19 year old girl without a care in the world, took some college courses, learned how to drink, dated both airmen and officers, and came back to the United States with an appreciation of this country that is simply not possible if one has not lived elsewhere. I could have kissed the ground when I arrived home in 1965. If I hadn't been a self-conscious teen-ager that is.
I am grateful to my husband, who as an immigrant from Germany looked at this country and said yes. He put himself through the University of Arizona with no help from the government or anyone else. He, um, WORKED, in other words. Imagine that. He CHOSE this country because of what it was. It is beyond sad that, as of November 4, 2008, and possibly quite a while before, it is no longer that country he chose.
I am grateful that I have the memory of the United States when it was a country full of independent, hard-working, mature adults with Judeo-Christian values and no patience for the whiny, socialistic ,namby-pamby ninnies that make up half the country now. I always smile when the lefties sniff and say that Leave it to Beaver was a fantasy. Actually, it wasn't. I LIVED the 50s sitcoms, with a mother who stayed home (though she had been a professional woman), a father who took pride in supporting his family and who would have been HORRIFIED had his wife had to go to work, friends in similar circumstances, and the innocence that all children deserve and should have, but no longer do have unless their parents do yeoman's work in trying to shield them from the filthy water in the cesspool they must swim in, which is our current culture. It is almost impossible to protect our little ones now from the decline of the morality which I once took for granted. I am grateful that my daughters try.
I am grateful to our Founding Fathers for their wisdom and faith and the divine inspiration that I find so obvious. I pray, literally, that we do not lose all of that during the next administration--my greatest fear for my granddarlings. If Obama acts like Obama, and if the Supreme Court has an opening, we are doomed.
Still, I am grateful for the happiness my grandchildren have because of their place in the Christian family and school. They do feel true joy at the knowledge of Jesus and the Bible, of the Ten Commandments by which they can live and prosper, and of the certainty that we pathetic humans are not all there is in the universe to provide guidance, purpose and meaning.
When my oldest grandchild was ten months old, she and I experienced a moment of eternal bonding in a seemingly mundane setting. Now, at ten, her hope for the world, as expressed in her biography written at the beginning of the school year, was that all people could know God. Her one wish. She is the embodiment of the Christian child, loved and cherished and promised eternal life and hope. I can still look into her eyes and see eternity, and she can look into mine and see...I don't know exactly, but she still has that knowing smile, and I am content to simply bask in it.]
In public school, my friends' grandchildren are being subjected to classes in human sexuality at age ten. In Christian school, my grandchildren are learning about God's love and his plan for us, that they are His children and that they can behave in such a way as to honor their Father in Heaven as well as their parents here on earth. They can be innocent and pure a little longer than the kids in public school. I see no sense at all in teaching human sexuality to ten year olds who may or may not be able to read and do math on a third grade level, let alone THEIR grade level. What kind of sickness persuades rational adults to think there is ANY value in teaching ten year olds about sex when they have no context in which to understand it. Schools should butt out of social engineering and trying to usurp what should be parents' responsibilities. It is NOT a school's job to teach children about sex, especially when the moral aspects of same will NEVER be mentioned.
I am grateful to the Catholic schools which educated my youngest daughter and to the Christian school which is educating my grandchildren so mucn better than public school could hope to do.
It doesn't really matter if atheists and satanists and crazy people and bitter, angry lefties fuss and whine about Christians and Jews and our pesky affinity for moral behavior and convictions. It doesn't matter that moral relativism is rampant in the world and becoming so in the United States. We still have to push onward and try our best. We must encourage our children and grandchildren to be good, as defined by our Judeo-Christian values. The values of our Founding Fathers and the values that have made this country the greatest ever to exist on this most imperfect earth of ours. We have free will, and we can exercise it to promote the moral climate that made our country what it used to be. To bring it back, at least part of the way, to what it once was. For that to happen we need conservative principles and strong people to promote them.
I am grateful to God for allowing me to be born in the United States of America where freedom is treasured as it is nowhere else. I pray, for my granddarlings' sake, that we will somehow preserve it and protect it from the menace of the Marxist regime that is about to try to take it from us.
Merry Christmas to those of your who are blessed with faith. Happy birthday, Jesus. Bless my family and my country. My granddaughter wishes for you all to know God. Oh, if only...