Today is the day America honors those who’ve served our nation. It’s a day to pay tribute to the men and women who have willingly given up their own freedoms and risked everything with the hopes that they would secure freedom for others. There truly is no greater act of sacrificial love for humanity than the willingness to lay down one’s life for the hope of freedom.

Although I thought I was marrying the man I wanted to grow old with at the time, in 1994 I married the Army. I had uncles who were WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War veterans. They all wore the wounds of their service. I married into a family that also wore the wounds of service. And then my own marriage and family became a casualty of war.

Today, as we honor those who’ve served, may we understand the true costs of service. War destroys lives. War leaves physical wounds that never heal. War steals limbs. War makes sleep evasive. War leaves veterans with PTSD that is rarely healed. War creates brain injuries that are used to justify every immoral, abusive, and illegal act imaginable. War destroys marriages. War destroys families. War destroys spouses and children who struggle to love and understand the stranger it sends home.

Thank you to those who’ve willingly counted the costs and paid the price. Thank you to the families who likely didn’t count the costs, but paid the price nonetheless.

In the age of AI, robotics, drones, economic warfare, memetic warfare, narrative warfare, and educational warfare; we as humans have got to stop sacrificing human beings, marriages, and families, with the hope of securing freedom.

Freedom isn’t free.

Happy Veterans Day