What Hope Sounds Like

Hope sounds like going to your daughter's elementary school and hearing the entire school reciting the pledge of allegiance with their hand over their heart and going straight into singing the Star Spangled Banner, first and fourth verses. What percentage of the American population knows the fourth verse? Here it is, for the 99% of us that don't recall ever hearing it:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

This makes me a crying mess every time! I was also really proud of Kiara for getting "Builder of the Month" for her grade at this month's assembly. She is in the lower group for reading, but her teacher expressed how hard she tries and she does it with a smile. (Kiara let me in on her little secret that might give meaning to the smile. She came home the other day saying that a boy, whom shall remain anonymous, is in "oneth" grade and comes to her reading group and that she wants to kiss him and marry him. We'll just let her teacher continue to think she just has a really great attitude.) She has come a long, long way on her reading and I am really happy for her new confidence.

Her whole school has the theme of being a builder from this great poem that even my little kindergartner has memorized:

I saw them tearing a building down

a dozen men in a busy town,

with a ho-heave-ho and a lusty yell

they swung the beam and the side wall fell.

I asked the foreman if these men were skilled

Are these men you hire when you have to build?

He gave a laugh and said, "No indeed,

Common labor is all I need"

I can easily wreck in a day or two

what it took a builder a year to do.

I thought to myself as I walked away

"Which of these roles have I tried to play?"

Am I a builder who works with care,

measuring life with rule and square?

Am I shaping my life to a well made plan,

patiently doing the best I can?

Or, am I a wrecker who walks the town

content with the labor of tearing down

I've made my decision; I'll start today.

I'll be a builder in every way.

What a great theme for a school. Are you a builder or a wrecker? By the looks of my house most of the time, we are wreckers!