Proud to be an American

Well, clearly I am happy, proud, relieved, thankful, stunned, thrilled, etc about what my great country did yesterday, but I know a lot of people are not and I hope maybe if you're reading that you can read these words with an open mind and heart.

This morning, I woke up in a new country, a new world- I woke up in a world where the United States of America elected an African American man as the President of our great country. This morning I woke up in a country that allowed the voice of the people to change the course of history. This morning the ideals of my future children were altered.

My grandparents were alive when slavery was a, although fading, fact of life. My grandmother tells me a story of being a little girl and sitting in the lap of a black man that her grandfather knew, and feeling the scars of branding on the palm of his hand from when he was the property of another man.

To my parents, slavery was simply history, but they knew what it looked like to see bathrooms that were only for white people, and they remember having to decide whether or not you were for black and white kids going to school together.

To me, segregation is a part of American history, but I know how it feels to wonder if my country would ever be able to look past race and elect the better man.

And to my children, the idea that at one time anyone but a white man could be the President of our country will be a piece of American history. It will be as unreal to them as slavery and segregation are to me. Sure, they will understand the impact, they will see the effect. But they will not know the reality. And what might happen then, what their children will know, and their children, gives me hope in our country and our world.

This is an exciting, breath taking time. Barack Obama is not a socialist. Barack Obama is not a terrorist. Barack Obama does not have all of the answers, he will make mistakes, and our country's problems will not all be fixed this time next year, or even two or three or four years from now. But Barack Obama is a smart man who believes in an America where people who work get to live, children who try get to learn, and people who care about other people can have a voice. And if that means that my taxes might go up a little someday, well as a Christian, as a woman, as an American, that is a price I'm more than happy to pay.

God bless America