I play with my daughter every day and feel as though I have won the lottery of love. I cannot say enough how I am blessed. Yet in the background, the TV news reminds me of horrible scenes taking place among my friends at war and other families around the world. Sometimes it feels surreal as though I am picking a bouquet of flowers on a trail littered with dead bodies. I celebrate, yet I am sad.

On the way home from the Thanksgiving dinner I remembered that we hadn’t even said a prayer or had a conversation about what we have to be thankful for. It was our first Thanksgiving as a new family, my first Thanksgiving with Mike’s extended family. I felt too shy to speak up and kept waiting for that moment when an uncle or aunt would raise a glass and give us an opportunity to list our blessings and pray for soldiers and those burdened by the wars, but it never came. I don’t think this oversight is the norm in the family at all. There were so many people there and things were a little chaotic. Still, by the time we got home, the effect of it was too much for me.

When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. As cliché as it might be I keep thinking of that opening line.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way…

Because of my daughter and husband, this is the most hopeful, wonderful time of my life. And yet I am living it at one of the greatest times of despair in our world’s history. From Iraq to Darfur, from Palestine to Tibet, the injustice is phenomenal. We are so overwhelmed, we are laughing. I don’t know about you, but I feel on the brink of insanity from helplessness sometimes.

If you are feeling heavy and burdened by the politics of it all, imagine how a 20 year-old young man from Kansas who risks his life on a regular basis and is spending the holidays away from everyone and everything he knows feels. Imagine it is your son or daughter’s name on TV as the latest casualty. Imagine that your wife only saw her daughter’s Halloween costume through photos. Imagine that your Christmas or New Years celebration with your husband is done over the phone.

I think about this a lot. Thursday night the guilt of letting the day go by without recognizing the sacrifices our service men and women and their families have willingly made (so I could simply sit down and enjoy my meal) brought me to tears. Regardless of how I feel about the Why and How of these wars, soldiers deserve my respect and active support.

Today Mike and I decided to send care packages to soldiers over the holidays. As I was looking through the letters of requests I was shocked to see that a lot of them do not receive letters from family back home. I don’t know if this is because friends and family don’t care or if, like me, they assume that these men and women are flooded with well wishes. Either way, I want to invite you to express your gratitude by writing a letter to a soldier. There are two ways you can do it.

If you want to make it a family or work project, you could go to the site that I am using and pick a soldier’s platoon to work with. This would be pretty cool because it would get more people involved and together you could supply a whole group of men and women with some small or large items they could use to make their time overseas a little more tolerable and safe.

Most of them are asking for toiletries as there seems to be a shortage of that at the military markets. But one touching letter I came across was from a group of soldiers asking for warm socks, shirts and gloves for the Iraqi civilians that are helping the military out on their missions. As the US soldier said, “Some of these locals work for coalition forces and go out with us everyday on missions putting there own lives at risk. These people are very happy to have the US help their country they live in and are very loyal to us. To try and help them, to help our soldiers keep us safe out here I am trying to provide a little for them.”

If you don’t have time to put together a care package or mail a letter, the easiest way to let a soldier know you care is to use the comment feature below. Just type a quick note now and hit Submit. Or you can send your letter to me at penny@pennyrene.com. Instead of posting your note as a comment on my site, I will copy, paste and print out each letter to a soldier and send it along with the care package we are getting together. These letters will be distributed to marines of Attack Squadron 211 in Iraq and a HQ squadron near Baghdad.

This is such a simple thing to do and it will only take you a few minutes if you do it now. If you’re nervous about what to say, a simple “We are thinking about you back here in the US and look forward to your safe return.” is enough. These men and women just want to know that they are not forgotten. A lot of them say they would love to hear a little bit about home so for those of you who write funny comments on my blog – Jeff, Kim, Larry, Dave, Brooke – it would be easy for you to write a casual upbeat letter to one of these soldiers to help them forget about the stress for a minute or two. To break the ice I will post my first letter to an anonymous soldier tomorrow.

Thanks in advance for your participation. Please forward a link to my blog or my email address to any friends or family members that you think might like to write a quick letter to a soldier or would be interested in sending a care package to a squadron, platoon or batallion.

Photos are from Lucian Read Photography