Washington D.C.

Days 1-6:

My adventure began as I got off the plane at Dulles Airport to a drizzly rain and waited for Aubrey and her mother to pull up in the car.  I already felt at home with all of the green trees and the smell of that sweet and warm southern rain on the air.  Their home is nestled in the woods and furnished in such a way that no one could question who lives there.  

You can tell the Browers are well traveled and enjoy a diverse amount of things.  Without any delay I was introduced to the last member of the family I hadn’t met, Garrison, and the darling little historic center of Ellicott City, where they live and able to enjoy antiquing as I never have before.  I loved being with the wonderful Brower family and felt an immense gratitude for their putting up with me and more than that welcoming me into their hearts and home.  The place and the people were adorable in all their uniqueness.

The very next day my tour of the city began and I have to say I was impressed with all I saw.

Our nation’s capital, the center of the government today, an imposing city of sights to see: 

I saw a great many of the famous sights (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Vietnam, Korean, and WWII Memorial plus the Capital, White House, Supreme Court, and Library of Congress­) as I traveled around this great and historic city of ours, but I want to focus on the two that stuck with me, the Arlington Cemetery and the Jefferson Memorial.

First the Arlington Cemetery, although not on my original list of what I wanted to see was very moving.  There is a phrase in my major I have often heard, 

“One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”  

As terrible as that sounds it is often the case that we become detached from the sorrow when it isn’t a face or a name but a number of those that died.  I have tried to teach my students this difference as we learn of the terrible price of war and discuss what is actually worth going to war for.  This cemetery brought that lesson home for me.  Every name has a marker, has a place, and they go on as far as you can see.  I remember thinking just how real all those numbers became to me as I looked at the names on some of those markers.

And as I saw the reverence that is in attendance as the military guard the grave of the Unknown Soldier my heart was touched that the sorrow was very real for a great many families affected.

I would like to put in my gratitude here for all those that have served and are serving our country at this time.  Whether we feel the cause is always just and perfect these men and women risk their lives to bring freedom and joy to our lives and the lives of so many around the world and I honor you from the very bottom of my heart.

Second you may think it odd that the Jefferson Memorial would have been so poignant, but as much as the building is beautiful and the statue is almost overbearing in size it was the inscription that touched my heart.  It reads:

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

I love how deeply these men felt their cause was just and how aware they were of the role that the Lord played in their future.  And the fact that tyranny can be over more than the physical state of an individual but over the mind of us is such a beautiful concept that I feel it had to be remarked upon in this post.  How blessed we are to have had men prepared and ready to give of themselves to create such a blessed and God-fearing country as this.

Since my personal history obsession has been World War II beginning around the age of seven (for more exact information we may have to ask my mother or better yet Rachel when she started giving me home school history lessons on the subject), we went to the Holocaust Museum.

I am sure you are all aware of the horrors that were experienced in those years by the men and women who were hated by Hitler, but I encourage you all to go and see, allow yourselves to be surrounded by the reality of what happened.  For myself I simply remember thinking, "So many faces."  That is what makes history more than the dusty books on a shelf, but real and intense to the heart of our human existence.

I would also like to share with you a poem they had in one room and leave it at that:

"We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.

We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers

from Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam.

And because we are only made of fabric and leather,

And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the Hellfire."

The rest of my time in Maryland with the Browers was planning and prepping for the weeks ahead where we would have very little internet, time, or contact with those at home and traveling with a girl like Aubrey means everything must be checked and double-checked: bless that girl from the bottom of my heart for all the planning she did, but she really seemed to enjoy it so I don't feel too bad for not doing more myself.  Needless to say we were well prepared when we drove up to NYC's JFK airport and handed them our passports (never done that before, it was so exciting) to leave the country.

(Oh and we learned to always trust the TomTom, she knows more than you do about traffic up ahead.)