The Ones Who Came Before

I drove the van of students to the next historical marker around town, something I had passed by time and time again without a thought to what it was about. We had just completed a study of our county and community's history, which concluded with a field trip to the local cemetery to find the headstones of the pioneers and founders of our town. The children weren't afraid of the cemetery; they were meeting old friends, people they had come to know in the stories they had heard.

I wanted the children to imagine what it must've been like to settle this land before there were decent roads and towns built-- before there were lumber yards and dry goods and grocery stores to provide for folks' needs. I wanted them to know and begin to appreciate all of those who came before who built what we take for granted now: roads, power lines, water and sewer systems, telephone services, school facilities, garbage collection, laws and the court system, businesses to provide goods and services for most every need, houses to live in, churches in which to worship God and love and support each other, and so on. I lived in twelve different houses in my growing up years-- every one of them was built by someone else.

And even though I researched and taught the local history lessons, I hadn't realized how much I had been taking for granted all that came before. Even though we see technological advances, we just assume the infrastructure in our community, state, and country has always been there. Pioneer history seemed so far away. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the history of our country could be measured in three person's lifetimes, and that's not a very long time. My grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon, and before she was sixty years old, man had landed on the moon. The technological advances in just her lifetime is astounding.

A while back I did some research on the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I thought I'd really do my homework and read some of the previous writings that fanned the flame of freedom, which brought the colonists to the decision to break from England. I learned what the definition of verbose was-- using more words than are needed-- [my dad thinks that describes my writing], but I don't hold a candle to those guys. By the time I got to the end of a sentence, I couldn't remember what the beginning was about. But I'm grateful those men and women had the gumption to stick with their quest for freedom, and we all are the benefactors of their hard-earned efforts.

Braveheart is on my top movies list, but it's painful to watch. I cry every time I see it, but probably not for the reasons you'd think. What brings me to tears is the depth of William Wallace's desire for freedom, and what he was willing to do to attain and keep it.

I fear too many of us know little of that kind of dedication. My generation and younger are entirely too comfortable with complacency. We're too busy chasing the American dream to be bothered by decaying values and eroding foundations. But there won't be another house to move on to if these walls collapse around us.

Every generation must learn the value of freedom and be given the tools and motives to maintain it. Otherwise, the sacrifices of our own countless brave hearts who came before us were for naught.