Really Soaking In It

My husband likes the show Border Wars.  Have you seen it?  Some of it is pretty cool... the tracking they do, the crazy ways people smuggle or try to smuggle in drugs and it is awesome to see the drugs being caught before they make it over to America. 

He was watching this morning when I got up and I watched for a while with him, but like always that show makes me sad. 

The people who risk so much, who give up so much and who often lose so much just trying to make it to America make me sad and they make me really think.  Our America where we live so ungratefully.  I don't mean we are selfish or greedy... oh we ARE, but I mean we live here without very much thought of how truly blessed we are to be here.  Truly.  Truly.  Blessed.

And why?  Why us?  There is no difference between me and the woman who wore all black, paid $6,000 (for the second time) and lay curled up in a ball as far up under the dashboard on the floor of a smuggler's car so that she could get back to America to be with her 5 year old son, who is an American citizen.  We are the same.  We are all sinners, who make bad decisions and fall short every single day (and sometimes every single minute). 

I'm not here to talk about people crossing the borders and all those political border issues... that's not the point.  The point is that we are such undeserving, ungrateful, entitled, self-centered people here in America.  Wow!  Harsh.  I know!  I am totally there, too, and maybe you aren't!  If you're not, I hope to be more like you! 

It makes me sick.  It makes me want to cry.  It makes me want to do something.  What?  I don't know.  The first thing I will do is be more grateful and try to teach my daughter how undeservingly blessed we are with so many things (tangible and not), but many of those things come because we live here.  In America.  Is America perfect?  Not by a longgggg shot, but we are pretty great ;) 

Have you ever noticed that we, people from families that have been born in America for generations, lose sight that we are living the American dream.  Right now.  Us.  We get to live it without any effort at all (minus the amazing men and women who serve our country).  Who do we hear talking about the American dream?  People who are working, suffering and fighting to get here to be able to live it.  We have it, but we rarely give it any thought. 

We rarely stop and feel the blessings.  I mean really soak it all in.    

So on this 4th of July will you stop, soak all of it in and thank God for all of our blessings, for our country and for the people who are serving our country and working to make it a better place for us to live?  (And yes, I will be praying for the men and women who patrol our borders also!  America would not be anything without them.)