Creeks, speed limit signs, and freedom

I am having an amazing vacation. Seriously! I'm staying in an air conditioned, modern town house in the mid South (thanks to some extremely generous and awesome relatives), and sleeping in until ten or eleven every morning (shocking, I know). I've almost made a point to do little productive reading. War and Peace (I've started the second volume now) has been gathering dust while I've eagerly been devouring the second and third books of the Mysterious Benedict Society, and now I'm feasting on some Terry Brooks. If I have time I hope to dig into some P.G. Wodehouse before I'm completely done. Besides that, I've done very little. Oh yes, we've gone into town a few times to do some exploring or brief shopping. I've played games with my mom, watched TV with my dad, and gone swimming in a nearby creek with Craig.

The creek was the perfect thing to do in the blistering heat. Even though it only went up to our knees it felt deliciously cool to lie down and douse ourselves. Craig showed me that it was even possible to float in the super shallow water if you held your breath the right way, and I let the current carry me a little ways downstream. I only stopped because there were some creepy guys (who happened to be Hispanic) sitting on the bank a little ways down and I didn't really want to go by them, though I'm sure they saw me and probably took no notice. Between floating, Craig and I sat in the water and found lots of perfect rocks to skip. I had had little success in the recent past in skipping stones, but this time I discovered that when I'm sitting on level with the water I can skip stones proficiently enough. Not very well, mind you, but just well enough to excite me. My talents in that area have been considerably dry.

One day, I decided to brave the heat and humidity (which was quite decent even at quarter to eight in the evening) and go running. I settled on a golfing community across the street, and the whole thing was pretty uneventful, except for one tiny observation. I saw a speed limit sign that said 19 1/2 miles per hour! Wow, wonders never cease. Actually, I thought it was kind of funny when only a few days earlier I had seen a sign that said 19 mph. I was musing about this sight out loud (why would anyone do something like that?) when my dad pointed out that it was good for making people THINK about it. He got me there. I was thinking a LOT more about the speed limit than I would have if the sign had read a blase 20 mph. And I DEFINITELY looked twice or thrice when I saw a sign that said 19 1/2 mph. Mission accomplished, I guess. Who knows how fast I might have run if the sign hadn't been there?

After several days of doing pretty much nothing (sounds wonderful, doesn't it?), we finally ventured forth to do something different. Not only did we stop at Good Will and later Dairy Queen (pretty much a vacation tradition in our family), but we went to see the Battlefield of Antietam. I suppose it's not that much more exciting than most battle fields, but it was quite thought provoking for me. You see, not only was Antietam labeled "the bloodiest battle of the Civil War" (with 23,000 + casualties in the 12 hours of fighting, 4 times as many American casualties as there were on D-day), but the whole place was so serene and peaceful. Cornfields rippled lazily in the late afternoon breeze, round hay bales dotted the green landscape, and blue mountains rose gently to majestically fringe the horizon. We crossed Burnside's Bridge (Ambrose Burnside, as you may or may not be aware, is the general whose name has brought us the term that we use to refer to sideburns) where about 500 Georgia Confederates held out against Union attack for three hours or more. I walked across the bridge in awe, surveying the calm water and thinking about the scenes that this bridge had witnessed. It's amazing how such an idyllic place could host such carnage.

It makes me think, and it makes me feel grateful. Grateful for the beauty of God's creation that can remain unmarred by man's sanguinary conflicts. And grateful for those who so willingly spill their blood so that others may feel the pulse of freedom coursing through their veins.

They died so that that freedom wouldn't spill out.