It Begins With Us
Although my husband’s railroad job is a huge sacrifice to our family, travelling around the country has afforded us the luxury of being able to not only see places we’d have never been able to see but also to meet folks we would have never otherwise crossed paths with. There’s something about connecting with people on a personal level that gets you to the heart of what’s really beating in this big, amazing country that we all call home.
In the past six years we’ve been from one end of the country to the other and one general consensus I’ve found is that good people are everywhere. Good, down-to-earth, hard working Americans grace not only our nation’s border states but also all the states in between. From the coal miners and steel workers in Pennsylvania and Northern Minnesota to those that we’ve talked to down in El Paso and Las Cruces that have come to our country legally that are in favor of “the wall.” Americans are good people and all of them have a story to tell…as do we all.
We’ve experienced the southern hospitality of the “Deep South”, hiked the Organ Mountains in New Mexico, climbed a waterfall in Wisconsin, and fished right on Lake Superior. We’ve shared conversations about God, Trump, hunting experiences, family, and the direction of our country. We’ve explored Charleston, South Carolina and swam the beaches in Savannah but in all our travels and experiences nothings compares to seeing the devastation of the flooding in America’s Heartland…our home.
RV life allows you to connect with people on a personal level and you really get to hear others’ stories. We’ve me so many families affected by the floods, hard working folks that have lost everything. Not only have they lost their homes and personal belongings, such as pictures and sentimental keepsakes but they’ve lost their livelihoods with their family farms and crops that they’re dependent on to pay their bills. Seeing these flood waters up close has affected me and the way I look at life. It can all be gone just that quick. We’ve had some hard days this spring with not only the continual rains but with tornadoes as well. It’s been tough for mid-westerners in particular.
In all the small towns, big cities, and campgrounds we’ve stayed in over the years I had to post this picture from the other day because it renewed my faith in our youth and the parenting that is done right which we sometimes fail to see.
These boys, who were from Mississippi and Georgia, would get up every morning around 6 a.m., with fishing pole in hand, and walk the banks of the small lake that was across from our campsite. Their eyes would barely be open and their hair smashed from just getting out of bed but there they’d be…fishing. It did my heart so much good to see these youngsters, between maybe 9 and 13, riding their bikes through the plethora of mud holes that laced the roads in the campground from all the rain. I saw little girls squatted down in the bathing suits, literally playing the mud, without a care at all of getting dirty. To be quite honest, it took me back to my own childhood. It was encouraging to witness kids be kids and not walking around with cell phones in their hands or playing on video games.
If we want to get our country and it’s citizens back to a place of goodness and solid foundation then we’ve got to start with our families…and that begins with our children. We’ve got to stop pawning them off on televisions, video games, and “stuff.” It’s imperative that we invest “time” in them and teach them the basics and life skills that were taught to us as children. There is no greater investment than the up and coming generations and it starts with us, right here right now. It’s not about Democrats or Republicans, black or white, or rich or poor…it’s about our kids and grandkids and raising a morally strong generation of up and coming adults.
It starts with us.
Love and Peace,
Kelly 🙂
