MEMORIAL DAY 2018: Another reminder that our freedom didn't come cheaply.

It’s all too easy, especially for those of us blessed to have grown up in this great land, to take our liberty for granted. We forget that freedom isn’t free. It must be paid for, and not just once.

Again and again, Americans have stepped forward in a moment of crisis and put their lives on the line.

They fought in the American Revolution – both in the heat of summer and in the dead of winter, when snow blanketed the ground, supplies were low, and the outlook was bleak.

Our patriots prevailed, but the struggle for freedom didn’t end there. It has played out on many other battlefields in the years since. Antietam and Gettysburg. Belleau Wood and Cantigny. Iwo Jima and the Bulge. Heartbreak Ridge and Hamburger Hill. Baghdad and Kabul.

It’s their sacrifice we mark on Memorial Day. And while we feel so much sadness for their loss, I think there is something else we should consider when we recall those who fell in battle.

It comes down, I believe, to what motivated those brave men and women to do what they did. Imagine walking towards danger and possible death when every fiber of your body is screaming at you to seek shelter. What makes you march toward the guns rather than flee from them?

A soldier, it is said, fights not because he hates who is in front of him, but because he loves who is behind him.

I think that’s what it all comes down to. Those we commemorate on Memorial Day fought for mothers and fathers. For sisters and brothers. For sons, daughters, comrades, and all others they held dear.

America remains worth fighting for.