Celebration Weekend

We got to spend the weekend celebrating the marriage a dear friend. This is the first wedding of a really close friend that I've attended - so emotional! I absolutely love weddings. I also think that anyone who says otherwise is completely lying or delusional. To me, there's nothing happier. I also love the rehearsal dinner. It gives you a deeper insight into the couple - how much people love them, crazy things they've done over the years (which they would probably never want anyone to know!) and how much they love each other. In short, Abbie and Gray, your wedding was stunningly beautiful, you are both so incredibly loved and blessed and with all that love surrounding you as you begin your lives together, I know that nothing but a long life of happiness and love can await you. I love you guys!

Tomorrow is the 4th of July - one of my personal favorite holidays. America the great. America the beautiful. I'm pretty sure that most of my readers already know how I feel about America and how most people who don't appreciate where we live can really grate on my nerves. We take so many luxuries for granted. Most of us can't even come close to understanding just how good we have it.

I recently purchased a really beautiful book called 6 Billion Others: Portraits of Humanity from Around the World.

It profiles people from all over the world and asks questions about hopes, dreams, background, career, family, etc. Some people have several pages, but the section of the book I like the best is in between those sections. Several people from far and wide are asked to respond to the same question. The answers are short and sweet, but this is the part of the book that quickly allows you to see how different life is in different parts of the world. While reading responses to the question: What was your worst day?, it hit me. (I'll generalize by saying 'we', but believe me when I say that I'm speaking from my personal experience) We get so caught up in ourselves and our 'problems' that we completely lose sight of people who have real problems all over the world - every day. Civil wars, rape, disease, famine, discrimination, marginalization. Please never mistake me when I speak about America. I know that we are not perfect - we have our problems just like every other nation in the world. And yes, some of those things do still take place in our country, but I am still truly of the belief that in America, the general population is empowered and at liberty to fight for things that they believe in. We are all still encouraged to make our positive mark on the world - to make things better. This is something that does not happen often in other parts of the world. The general theme seems to be - don't make waves, don't question - things have been done this way up until now, why change them? Americans don't settle for this mentality. We are bred to question, to think for ourselves. That is why we are innovators. I hope we never stop.

Being of an age group where it's trendy to begin to question authority/government, where rocking the boat is often done simply to rock the boat and where people tend to be anti-everything, I say one thing. Happy birthday, America!!! We've got a long way to go, but we've also come so far.