Memorial Day 2025

Hey team. All right. So, today many of us are off. It’s a national holiday. We call it Memorial Day and there’s a reason behind it. One of the things it gets me thinking about, excited about, and focused on is the fact that so much of what Memorial Day means to me is wrapped up in our core values.

Let me express what I mean by that. Memorial Day is about those who sacrificed ultimately and gave their lives in the line of duty for our freedoms. They served in the Armed Forces. They gave of themselves over the centuries. Most of them volunteered on their own to fight in wars like World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and so many others.

I have family members that have served in each of those wars, going way back. My dad was in Vietnam. My uncles were in Vietnam. I have uncles that were in the Army, uncles and a grandfather that was at Pearl Harbor in World War II, and so on and so forth.

What I mean by “it wraps up our core values” is that it takes a pretty selfless person, even at a young age, to enlist in the military during wartime, especially, and to leave everything they’ve ever known. It takes a lot of humility, it takes a lot of investment. It takes a lot of resolve to put up with and deal with the cold, the heat, the fear, and all the scary things that come with it. And then, in some of those moments, to give the ultimate sacrifice of your life so that we can go on living in a free land and have the freedoms—the luxuries—that we celebrate and often overlook. How free we truly are.

So, that’s what Memorial Day means to me. It’s that resolve to never quit. It’s that desire to put service above self. Those kinds of things. Those are our core values.

Because this is a Monday and it’s Memorial Day, I thought it was very fitting to talk about what Memorial Day is, what it means, and how that relationship is connected in my heart and soul to Memorial Day and all that has gone on.

So many of us, like myself, have family members that paid the ultimate price—the ultimate sacrifice in battle for our freedoms. So today, let’s remember them. Say a prayer. Say thank you. Because we have family members and people around us who had to go on living in this free land without their parent. Or they never got to meet their grandparent. Or they never got to meet their uncle, their aunt, or their cousin.

They never got to spend any time with them because they served. And perhaps on a day like this, they hear a story. They see a Purple Heart. They see a folded flag. But they don’t know them. They only know about them and what they did to set us free and to keep us free.

And that is why we serve.

So, thank you for listening. And remember, if you know somebody that has a family member who passed, say a little prayer for them today because they’re missing somebody close to them.

All right. God bless you guys. Have a wonderful week. I’ll talk to you next week.