The tension

November 11^th is Remembrance Day, a day set aside to consider the price paid by so many so that we could be free.  And by “price”, I mean “the ultimate price.”

To be honest, there are no veterans in my family. Neither of my grandfathers served and my uncles were all born during or after World War II.  I haven’t had close friends heading off to Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else over the last few years.  So it’s not as personal for me as it is for some.

But what I do have are stories, history lessons, books and movies.  And it’s through these avenues that I learned to appreciate what it really means for people to go to war, for soldiers to fight for our freedom. And I am in awe at how willing people were to give up everything – even, at times, their own lives – for a cause. No one wanted to be left behind, to the point where some young boys would even lie about their age, just so that they could get a chance to get in on the action.

That’s pretty incredible if you ask me.

I will be forever grateful for what so many have done to keep our great country “glorious and free.”  It takes someone living under a rock to not realize that we are definitely blessed here.  Most days my biggest problems consist of attempting to pack a lunch while still bleary-eyed from the 7 or so hours I had in a bed or trying to figure out how to keep warm at the office. I have never had to spend any time in a bomb shelter. I have never dug through rubble looking for food or family members. I have never had to say good-bye to a loved one headed off to war, not knowing if I’d ever see them again.

And it’s because of people who have gone before me and fought the fight for me. For us. 

Not a lot of countries have the same freedoms we enjoy and take for granted.

But at the same time there’s something in me that balks at the thought of anyone being killed in a war.  Because, as evil as they may seem, they happen to be a person – a human being – who just happens to be on a different side than their killer – who, by the way, is also a person, a human being.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And yet this is where we find ourselves.

See, the day after the Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers shot and killed Michael Zehaf-Bibeau in the halls of Parliament in Ottawa a few weeks ago, the government gave Vickers a standing ovation for his actions.  And while part of me was very relieved that the threat had been eliminated, that threat was still a person with a name.

Vickers still killed a man.  And while I’m sure he’d do it all again in a heartbeat to save others, that has to be weighing on him, even a little bit.

That’s what gets me about the lack of peace on earth in the world: the tension we find ourselves in, between being grateful for our freedom, but knowing that blood had to flow to get that freedom.

It isn’t a fun place to be.  But somehow I think it's a good place to be.