Sacrificing time away from your family to protect them and my family

Defending your home turf, whether you agree with all the politics behind the decisions made or not

Putting your life in harm’s way so that millions of people you do not know and will never meet can sleep at night knowing they can wake up in a freedom filled country worshipping who they please, working where they wish and having the power to do and say what they would like every day

Serving in spite of those who bath mouth our military for fighting in a war they do not agree with.

Proudly wearing the red, white and blue regardless of the consequences.

Paying the ultimate sacrifices so those who agree and disagree with your service have the freedom to enjoy doing what they do can continue to do so

All you do that most Americans will NEVER hear about

I salute each and every one of you and if I could meet you personally, I would salute you with the highest amount of honor and respect you deserve!

God Bless you and your family for the sacrifices you make every day!!

The guilty should go free

By way of Islamo Judeo-Christian (particularly  Christian) beliefs and values, it is only right that the good, the guiltless, the clean-slated, ought to give up and sacrifice for the scoundrels, degenerates and low-life scum of the earth.  Jesus of Nazarath suffered such a fate at the hands of Roman soldiers on the hill in Golgotha (Cavalry).  He lived as a gem-dropping, boastfully humble carpenter that could festoon a door frame with the greatest of ease and the exhibition of supreme craftsmanship.  Other than a few allegedly unsavory encounters with prostitutes and the thieves and heathens of the land, Jesus remained a perfect being in the eyes of the faithful.  This distinction, however, never barred the man from receiving the slicing sting of death upon that old rugged crucifix. What makes any otherwise upstanding, righteous individual on death row any different than the man whom some even outside the realm of Christianhood view as the Ideal Man?

Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice

It is selfish to consider one’s own life, liberty, and happiness as primaries within the context of one’s existence. Instead any good person ought to fry, hang, get gassed, or taste the sweet injection of liquid death.

May Jesus bless the perfect humans.

That is why we pledge our allegiance to Old Glory…to our flag of 50 stars and 13 stripes, and why we feel pride when we sing out, hand over hearts, to the “Star Spangled Banner.”  We know what has been sacrificed, are inspired by the love and price that has been paid, and are impelled to stay faithful to it.

What does it mean to pledge allegiance to something? 

pledge      noun       ˈplej

Definition of PLEDGE:  a binding promise or agreement to do or forbear

al·le·giance       noun        ə-ˈlē-jən(t)s

Definition of ALLEGIANCE

1 (1) : the fidelity owed by a subject or citizen to a sovereign or government 

   (2) : the obligation of an alien to the government under which the alien resides

2 : devotion or loyalty to a person, group, or cause

As Americans we respect the price that was paid, we love and are proud to be part of this incredible country, and are devoted to support it… but as Christians, do we show the same respect, love and devotion to the One star and His stripes?

We have an obligation to support it…

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”   Mark 12:17

We should be loyal to it…

“Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”   1 Peter 2:17

Show we are proud of it…

“But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.”   2 Timothy 1:12

Show our devotion to it…

“Pay to all what is owed to them: …respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.”   Romans 13:7

We will stand up for it…

“Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”   Titus 2:7-8

Understand what has been sacrificed for us…

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”  John 15:13

There is a song that gets me every time I hear it.  I love the message because it is exactly how I feel about my relationship with Christ;

“It ought to be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance

Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love

It’s like I’m falling in love, love, love
Deeper and deeper
It was love that made
Me a believer
In more than a name, a faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me”

“More Like Falling In Love”  - Jason Gray

I love this country, and am so thankful and blessed to live here.  But the love I have for this country does not compare to the love I have for my Savior.  One day this country will fall from my eyes and the only thing that will matter is the One standing before me. 

And like most people, I long to hear those words…

“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”   Matthew 25:21

Mummified cats were subjected to experiments comes from the Egyptian Collection’s National Archeological Museum in Parma, Italy. The mummy was purchased by the museum from collectors inthe 18th century. Because it is obtained in this way, there is noany documentation about where the mummies were.

Proclaimed MSNBC, Friday (13/04/2012), in Egypt between 332 and 30 BC, near the temple cats were bred specifically to be a mummy and offerings.

Mummified cats generally come from the period. Especially mummified kittens. “Kittens aged 2 to 4 months were sacrificed in large numbers because they aremore suitable for mummification,”the researchers wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.

The researchers conducted the mummy to see radiographs at the bottom of the wrapper. They found the cat is actually still kittens aged approximately 5 or 6 months.

“The fact that the cat was still young shows its origins as one of the cats that were bred specifically to make a mummy,” says researcher and professor at the University of Parma, Giacomo Gnudi.

The cat was wrapped tightly andplaced in a sitting position before mummified. Cat sitting position similar to that depicted in hieroglyphics. So that the cat was only occupies little space, embalmers cracked several bones, including the spine at thebase of the spine and ribs.

“Packaging mummy has a complex arrangement with various geometrical patterns. Eyes mummy depicted in black ink on linen small spheres,” the researchers write.

If you can imagine giving some things up for love, you would still, as a male human, baulk at the lengths some male spiders life go to, as their tumble with the lady of the choice can lead to the loss of his genitals, but researchers think they now know why.

Puzzled as they were why some male spiders have evolved to make this sacrifice, despite the injuries possibly leaving them sterile, University of Singapore scientist Dr Lin ran a series of meticulous experiments

studying orb-web spiders of the Nephilengys malabarensis variety, in which males are smaller than t females and often eaten by them during mating.

This gross sexual cannibalism is not the fate of every male, but what does happen every time is that the male sex-organ – the palp – breaks off inside the female during copulation, preventing other males from fertilizing her. Male spiders are usually have two palps at birth.

25 virgin males were used by the researchers, put onto webs loaded with waiting females. All male spiders mated, and in every case the palps had either been badly damaged or broken off altogether, though examination of the females revealed that only 35% of them had been injected with sperm, the rest apparently blocked by broken palps.

Broken palps, other tests confirmed, continued to inseminate the female after being broken off, males almost certainly having  evolved to lose palps because this strategy meant fertilization would succeed even if the female ate the male alive during the sex act/

This so-called remote copulation probably evolved as a counter-measure against the natural female aggression toward males, short copulation times, and the high cannibalism rates, surviving males – as eunuchs – more aggressive than those with working palps, and better able to fight off other males approaching the female for sex.

Even so, it makes you shudder at the thought that, if you took that hot date out to dinner and went back to her place afterward, she might just decide that her eating your manhood was going to happen for real, because she had an appetite to make you her dessert.

Having mastered those two little detail, let us now explore two other things you can go that can ensure your GOING HOME WITH YOUR MAN each time, every time… and making it last.

Rule #3: Understand Love

Love is when a guy cares for you and you care for him back; love is when you can’t wait from the instant you part until you can see each other again. Love is when you can’t keep your hands (or mouths) off of each other; or when you can’t stop exchanging gifts, because you care that much for each other. Right?

WRONG!!!

Love is a decision, a choice… and the actions you take because of it. Too often you find an average woman thinking or believing that love has anything to do with how you feel about the other guy. But this is a hugely dangerous premise because if love were a feeling, it would be doomed to fail – just like all those other human feelings and emotions that change with the circumstance, or that get sated. Hunger, anger, fear, pleasure… all these are fleeting human stimuli that are no more than mere secretion of chemicals in the body. The emotions are gone the instant the chemicals stop flowing. It would be such a shame basing an entire life on a choice that was made based on a fluid that flowed for a brief and passing moment in the human body. Love is supposed to last forever has got to be a lot more than that.

Love is when you consider all the pluses and minuses to be had in your man, and you DECIDE that you are going to be with him whether they add up or not. Love is when everything adds up wrong and you CHOOSE to still be in that relationship/marriage irrespective of the science behind it. Love is going the distance despite the hurts or challenges you may encounter along the way. Love is knowing that the same man who makes you most happy and so starry-eyed today WILL one day hurt you so badly you’d could kill him and then yourself; love is knowing that when that day comes you will still OPT to go on with it. Love is committing that you are going to be by his side through thick and thin, and you are going to help him be all that he can be!

It’s heavy, I know, but its truth. Love is courage; love is faith; love is IN SPITE OF, not BECAUSE OF; love is strength. This is why genuine love cannot fail, because it looks out for the bad times and the failures and deals with them when they occur, not quitting.

You do not have to “give it up” to every guy you spend the time of day with, but you need to at least love them a little. The average person on the street will consider it giving too much of yourself, but I call it stooping to conquer, since you are stronger and better because of it… And when you do decide to be with that someone, your marriage/relationship is going to be that much stronger because of it.

Rule #4: Learn To Forgive

You know, when you don’t forgive someone, you aren’t hurting them; you’re hurting you. Really, they go around not knowing that you’re having such misgivings about them, sometimes not even knowing that you still exist at all. Sometimes, such folks actually know that they have hurt you and go around proud or unhappy about it, but the sad part is that you actually still use up all of your energy holding on to all that negative emotion, hurting the people around you because you have chosen not to forgive. And so you find it impossible to learn how to trust again. It drains you – unforgiveness; it makes you bitter and difficult to be or have around. But if instead you understand that the other person is human and they are bound to make mistakes at some point – just as you are human also and bound to make your own mistakes as well – you’ll be able to let go of all ills, big or small. This way, your relationships will not have to hit the rocks every time one of you hurts the other. Simple, controversial… but true.

There are a truckload of other dos and don’ts anyone can come up with, but I’d be surprised if any of them trump these simple truths. The problem is we keep trying to be smart and independent, moral and upright; but if humanity has proven anything about these things over the course of history, it’s that smart and moral tend to fail, but sacrificial doesn’t.

I am a guy; and possibly my views may not be views you readily agree with, but if you gave them a try they just might work for you as they have for my wife and I. I used them with her and they worked; I USE them with her and they work! And I guarantee that if you are sincere about bearing these words in mind with a view to doing the right thing, you will end up GOING HOME WITH YOUR MAN each time, every time!

I’m not going to bore anyone, trying to analyze what happened during the past nine years, nor will make any attempt to calculate the final balance. History and generations after us will have the hard task to assess all the pros and cons of this war. My thoughts are flying in a completely different direction. I’m thinking, if this war was wrong, why did so many Iraqi civilians and American (and British, and from many other countries) soldiers have to die? Was it in vain?

The primary excuse the Pentagon used to justify the initial attacks was the tip that Iraq was allegedly in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). As it turned out later in 2003, there were no WMD’s in Iraq. But the invasion did not stop. A second excuse came in and it was Saddam and his atrocities. One much more reasonable motive, so the war kept on. Thousands of mothers, sisters, daughters and wives continued packing the bags of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands, sending them to fight a war that it wasn’t theirs.

I have always liked men in uniforms. But that’s it. Before Iraq I only enjoyed soldiers in movies, TV shows and documentaries. I have never actually thought how a mother or a wife of a soldier would feel. Ironing and folding the uniform, polishing his medals and stripes, putting some family photos between the leather belt and the camouflage pants, while the inevitable questions circle like a vortex in her mind: Is he going to be OK? Will he come back in one piece, or some child strapped to a bomb will blow up his base? Will he return in a metal coffin with the national flag wrapped around it?

Questions without answers. Questions, with which such brave women have to live every single day… Questions that dictate the course of their life, turning it into a constant nightmare. Facing the real evil every day.

This is business. War is business. A business where the basic merchandise are life and death, demanded and supplied through the currency of bravery, courage and patriotism, not only on the side of the soldier, but also on behalf of their women.

To me such women are among the strongest, along with the single mothers taking care of sick and disabled children. I admire these brave women. I may love men in uniforms, but I can’t put myself to walk in these women’s shoes even for a second. I’m not that brave at all.

So, this is a trubute to all the women around the world, who had been brave enough to give away their dearest and to live through the whole nightmare of war in the name of the sacrifice, love, freedom and life. This is also a trubute to the women and men on the other side – in Iraq, who also gave thousands of lives as collateral damage to a war that they, as civilians, had nothing to do with. Because war hurts for everyone:

Being Passionate

Everyone has passions as well as emotions for things and/or persons in contact. Passions are physical as demanded by body and mind of the person for getting pleasures. These are generated by physical senses of the person through physical contacts. These are meant for gaining physical pleasure from the external sources like things and persons. 

Passions make a person almost crazy for the thing of attraction, and if there is any failure in consuming the passion, sadness of a proportional strength grips the person, or it may even induce the person to commit some crime to get the desired pleasure.    

Emotional Spell

Emotions are functions of the brain of a person needing no physical contacts but just the information on the other person and work for his/her welfare through sacrifices of the self. Thus, emotional persons are sufferers to a great extent unless the other persons get emotional for them, sacrifice their own interests for take care of the interests of the former. So, emotions work for giving to others.

In-spite of aparent losses to the emotional persons, human beings still like to become emotional about others and sacrifice their own interests. Does it mean, they are net loosers? No, because they get satisfaction in taking care of some ones they care for and from their own sacrifices. Yet, these gains are psychological.      

Ideally speaking, under an emotional spell, the person sacrifices without any expectation in return. But, in practice, an emotional attachment expects some emotional response from the other side, failure of which may make the person disappointed and depressed. In majority of situations, an emotional person, on failure of getting a favorable response, blames him/herself for the wrong chioice he/she made and repent.

The Balance

Passion is a physical attribute inherited by humanity from its beastly origin while emotion is an intellectual state gradually evolved through jumane developments. Some persons have highly passionate nature and have low emotional sensitivity while some others are of highly emotional type but get passionate rarely. Life is meaningful when enjoyed with occasional passions and it becomes great through emotional sensitivities for good things. So both are necessary with a balance of each other to make the life full of satisfactions of occasional pleasures and contented through emotional sensitivities.      

Coming to practical situations, the person who sacrifices invariably develops a feeling that the other person should reciprocate in some way. There is a mismatch of expectations. The person who has been at the receiving end of the sacrifice is torn between his or her desires or needs and the need to repay the obligation. Subconsciously, this person starts resenting the person who sacrificed and in the process got an upper hand. Many favors that would have been done ungrudgingly, are now done with a degree of resentment. You would think that the person who sacrificed would be satisfied at some point. But that rarely happens. Invariably, what is sacrificed becomes much larger than it actually ever was. That is because it is repeated so often in mind to generate that feel good factor. It is then inevitable that there will be a moment when the other person cannot “repay” the obligation, or seem “ungrateful”. This gives the person who sacrificed a chance to lament that despite such sacrifices, the other person did not help even in a small way. Backbiting strains the relationship some more. The person who sacrifices is so lost in his or her expectations that he or she does not think that there might be a genuine reason for other person not doing as told. So what starts on a good note, invariably sours.

At the end of it, I am left to wonder whether sacrificing anything is truly worth it. Instead, if we “sacrificed” only that which did not really matter to us, wouldn’t we be better off?

Just imagine: you’re crawling around in the mud, just like in the movies. You’ve got your coworkers next to you, and all of you are wielding M-16s. Shots fired in your direction – you’re trained to fight, trained to fire back. A huge firefight ensues… you see your friends getting injured and dying all around you…. and the whole time, all you can think is, God, I hope my kids are okay.

Image via Wikipedia

That sounds pretty scary to me.

My dad was in the Army, and I married into the Army when I was 17. Granted I filed for divorce by the time I was 20 because soldiers don’t always make the best husbands or fathers, but I still have a great deal of respect for those who are able to go out there, fight for our freedoms, come back, and live a life that even slightly resembles normalcy.

I’ve had many friends in the military, several who lost their lives.

Honestly, it makes me sick to my stomach to know that soldiers get spit on when they return. This didn’t just happen during the Vietnam War; this has happened after 9/11.

Really? Are we STILL that primitive, people? SPITTING on some complete stranger? Why? That would be like a pro-lifer spitting on a woman for having an abortion. Ridiculous, rude, unnecessary, and outrageously disrespectful! Though there are conflicting stories about this, I have personally known a handful of soldiers who returned to be spat upon at the airport or near the Army base. No major protests, no huge groups of people; just soldiers who have gotten spit upon.

Soldiers are trained to fight, to follow orders, to do whatever it takes to protect the freedom of their country. They go without showers, sleep, and food. They stay on alert for days at a time to make sure nothing happens. They sacrifice their time with their own families to protect your families.

I’m a recently naturalized US citizen. Strange, yes, people don’t think I belong anywhere but here because I have no accent, I’m white, and I write well and get good grades as well as knowing a lot of the slang terms being thrown around. I know there are a lot of people with opposing points of view and who don’t think the troops should be anywhere but in the US at this point, and that’s fine.

Just don’t take it out on the troops. And troops, soldiers, if some girl thanks you for your service to your country, it doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting some. Just saying.

It would be nice for people to be a little more respectful, though. Just in general.

This Veterans Day, thank someone who has been or is in the military. Even just signing that contract could mean the end of their life; they are willing to sacrifice everything to make sure we all have what we need. They make these sacrifices so people like myself can sit at home and go to college and get an online degree.

So, really, even if you don’t know anyone in the military or who is retired military, just find someone who is and say THANK YOU. If it weren’t for their sacrifices (even if the orders they follow are sometimes misguided), then where would we be?

I’d like to say a big THANKS to all of the military veterans, retirees, soldiers, and reserves. This Veterans Day is for all of you.