Blue's first 4th of July.

~guest post by MRS

Here in the United States, we are getting ready to celebrate our freedom and independence on July 4th. The celebration will be honored by friends and families with cookouts and parties, by communities with festivals and capped off around our country with displays of fireworks.

As an American, I value this independence and the freedoms that are given to me in our bill of rights, however one freedom that isn’t mentioned in the bill of rights is one we tend to take for granted: the freedom to choose.

Obviously there are some things we have no choice about in life, i.e. taxes, but there are plenty of things that we can choose to do or not to do. We can choose to go to college, go to work, we can choose whether or not to have buy or rent a place to live. We can choose so many things that we don’t think about that freedom until it is taken away from us.

12 weeks ago, when complications were discovered in my pregnancy, I was ordered to bedrest. I knew that if I chose to get up and continue my normal activities that I risked losing my baby, so I considered bedrest mandatory. Not a choice at all, but something I HAD to do. During that time, I had several people comment about how nice would be to get to “lay around” all the time. As I thought about those comments, I realized that just how “nice” lying around would be depended on whether or not it was your choice. If you choose to spend your day lying around on the couch, it can be enjoyable, sometimes even needed. But being forced to lie around changed things. Bedrest was not fun, and I’m very happy to say that I have just been given permission to resume “mostly” normal activities.

I’ve continued to think about the power and freedom that comes in our ability to choose. As I was thinking about what to write about this week, I started to think about food, what we choose to eat and feed our family. When my husband and I shop for our food, we have so many choices about what to feed our family. At our local grocery store we can buy almost any kind of fruit or vegetable that we desire. We can choose to buy organic or conventionally grown produce. We can choose to buy beef, chicken or pork in a variety of different cuts. At that same store, we can choose to buy frozen pizza, boxed mac-n-cheese or we can choose to buy the ingredients for those foods and make them at home. We can also choose to shop at a local farmer’s market or roadside stand. We can and do choose to grow our own produce in our garden.

I love having those choices. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I really like some of those prepared foods and depending on our budget and time constraints, sometimes we even choose to buy and eat them. But that is our choice, a choice we make for our family and we don’t expect every family to make those same choices. And that is one of the things that I love the most about this country!

So the next time you’re out shopping for food for your family, take a minute and forget about whether or not slow, local, organic, conventional, etc foods are best. Instead, just appreciate the freedom we have to choose the foods we want to eat.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe 4^th of July!