Gifts

School has started, the temperature has dropped, and some way some how (if only for a moment) our house has slowed down. It kind of seems that every year around this time, life kind of slows down a little.  We all get back into our routine, Summer church projects have been completed and Christmas ones have yet to get started.  I have determined that God gives me this couple of weeks so that I can regain my sanity :-)  Because I don't know about you, but summer at our house is just.plain.busy.

I was sitting the other morning at the Home school co-op that we are apart of and I was observing the, over 50 families that are there.  Some are your typical home school families, some are normal looking people who just  happen to home school, and then there is us (I don't know where we fall on the spectrum anymore :-).  As I sat there I began to admire how different all of our families are and how despite the different looks that some of us embrace or the different schooling styles we use, we all were there for the same reason. We all, at some point, for some rationale, decided that our children would be better in a home based educational environment than public/private school.

And then it hit me as we were all asked to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance....I was reminded that we, despite our motivation, we home school because we can.  We home school because we have the freedom to choose to home school.  I all of the sudden found myself holding back tears.  Tears of thankfulness.  For all who had fought for my family and the 50+ sitting around me, to be able to make choices like to home school or not.

It is very easy for me to sip my tea sitting by the window on a cool brisk morning enjoying the sound of school buses going by, and LOVING the fact that mine don't have to get on it.  But it is also easy for my to miss all that I have been given and who gave it to me.

My tea,the coolness in the air, my sleepy children, my husband, my home, my rights.  Truly 1000 gifts.



Did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance was first published in 1892. 
It read like this:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
     one Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
On June 14, 1923 the Pledge received another make over and it read:

I pledge allegiance to my the
Flag of the United States,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
     one Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
 The following year it changed again:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
     one Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.

The last change in the Pledge of Allegiance occurred on June 14 (Flag Day), 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved adding the words "under God".   As he authorized this change he said: 
"In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war."

It is then that the Pledge of Allegiance was changed to read:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag
     of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
     one Nation under God, indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.

~LL