70 years.
It’s been 70 years.
29 years before I was even born… D-Day.
My experience with D-Day has been through what I’ve read in books or have seen in documentaries… or classes, or news stories.
Sometimes the stories grip me in a very real, deep, and sorrowful way. But most times the stories are just that. Stories that happened at another time.
It’s impossible to imagine what those troops experienced on that beach.
Impossible.
I was watched the Today Show yesterday and saw this short segment of a story… of Frank Devita, a grandfather today… who was a young 19 and mere 145 pounds when he landed on Omaha Beach.
I think about my son is is only years younger and a dozen or so pounds less. Watching Frank remember broke my heart… for him, for those young men who died 70 years ago, for the families never born because of that loss…
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“Love your freedom. Because that’s what we fought for. We fought for the freedom.”
-Frank Devita
We live in a day and age where maybe the black and white images provide an emotional separation… We live in a day and age where, I THINK… many take our hard-fought freedom for granted. We live in a day and age where we sit behind computers and smart phones and say what we want, how we want and call it freedom.
What those guys died for was not for our freedom to “do what we gonna do”… they died and suffered with the hope that in freedom we can accomplish great things. In freedom we can build. In freedom we can solve. In freedom we can bless. In freedom we can discover.
It’s not the freedom to say what we want because we’ve had a bad day. But it is. But it’s really not. After hearing Frank’s story I am reminded that freedom that was earned by precious blood is a freedom with a much higher calling.
Please take a moment to watch. I wept. WEPT. But don’t let that stop you. Please watch.
I know there are many others out there. This is just one that I recently came across and wanted to share. And I am wildly thankful I have the freedom to do so.
xo
