One Nation Under God

Before I begin this blog post I will say that it may get a bit political. I have had these thoughts running through my head for days and have tried to organize them in a way that allows me to speak my voice without being defensive. This is my expression of those thoughts.

The first thing that I will address is that I am about to bring a beautiful little baby into this crazy and dangerous world. That alone scares me more than anything else. My husband and I will have the challenge of raising my baby boy to reject the expectations placed on young boys; expectations like being a "tough manly man" and "boys don't show emotions." My boy will never hear the expression "boys will be boys" come out of my mouth. My goal is to raise my son to be respectful to all, to hate none, and to love whole heatedly. He will be raised to trust in God and to never treat a girl or woman as less than. There are a lot of obstacles that my husband and I will fight against while bringing our son up in this broken world.

Turning to the current events happening in our world, it makes me sick to see what is happening. Any of the supremacy groups are not created out of good. They are created out of hate for someone else. It astounds me that these groups are still around in our year of 2017. I do not see the Black Lives Matter group as a hate or supremacy group. They were created to acknowledge and make public the injustice they face in their lives and to bring about change of good. I do acknowledge that there are extremists within this group and those bad seeds give the group as a whole a bad name. No one should ever use hate or violence to promote or further their agenda. Any person or group who does this receives no support from me.

There's the issue of the taking down of statues around the country of confederate personnel. I believe that taking down these statues is wrong. They have been standing for years without any complaints. I don't understand what people are so scared about in regards to these statues and monuments. They are not going to come alive and start the Civil War again. The people of today are doing a pretty good job of doing that themselves. The statues are a part of history. They stand as a reminder of what happened in our dark past and what we never want to happen again. The people that these statues represent may have fought on the wrong side of history and fought for a cause that we know was wrong, but that doesn't mean they were bad people. They lived in a different time. They fought for a cause that they believed was worthy, for a way of life that they grew up with. We now know that way of life caused unimaginable pain for an entire group of people and that part of history should never be repeated again, but those generals and figures weren't necessarily evil or bad. Their actions and the things they stood for, yes.

My heart is heavy and distressed. This great nation and country that I love is being torn apart and is at war within itself. I love learning about the Civil War from both sides, but it is not something that I would like to see repeated. I can only hope and pray for peace and acceptance of all people, regardless of race, religion, or nationality. I grew up loving and accepting all. My only wish is that my children will grow up with the same love and acceptance. I wish for peace in the world, but that peace first needs to be found within our own great nation that stands under God.