I’m not a gun woman. I don’t even think I have shot one but this talk going on has started me thinking and I thought I would bring my thoughts to you. As many of you know I have had two husbands. The first one died suddenly when he was still in his thirty’s. I remember he was so excited when deer hunting season arrived. He talked with me about when he and his friends set up camp and sat around the campfire in the evenings. He liked the way the moon shined on them and the way one of the men sang old songs. He said it seemed like a prayer out there in the cold, but feeling warm by the campfire. In the very early morning,he and his friends started out through the woods to find their deer.

Let’s skip several years. I married my second husband and he told me much the same story. The guns were second in his memory to the wonderful feeling of friendship he had at the camp. Sitting around the campfire and the smell of sizzling bacon and coffee brewing and the men talking was the most important time of the hunting trip. The following morning they too took off through the woods in an entirely different part of the country to get their deer.

That freedom has nearly ended as far as I can see. The cost of hunting and fishing has become so great ordinary people can’t afford this luxury. That is too bad. But what if our guns are taken away from us? Will that be our final freedom? We won’t be able to defend ourselves any more.Our second amendment says that we are able to keep arms and this will never be taken from us. Our arms will protect us from our government becoming too tyrannical and this is important to us today. After all, the criminal will never give up his or her way to kill us. We found that out this week at Boston.

To get back to hunting and deer, I have heard that if we don’t hunt the deer they will die of starvation because there are too many of them. In Wisconsin, when I lived there, people went out in snowmobiles to feeding stations to put out feed for the deer. Shortly after my first husband died, my friends took me out in their snowmobile to feed the deer. We went to a feeding station in the woods and took hay out of a shelter and threw the hay all around the area. Some of the deer were already there anticipating their food. Wouldn’t it be better to have some men, and women too, out there in there in the woods setting up their camp and sitting by the campfire talking? Then, in the very early morning, they will take up their guns and go tramping through the woods to get their deer.

Though I am not a gun woman I believe we should be able to keep guns and I believe this freedom should not be taken from us.

Last week I wrote to you about the simple life. In it I wrote about the life of folks years ago. I did live that life but it isn’t like life today. We have to live our lives today and there is a way to do that.

As much as I know, which isn’t a lot, very few of us really live the simple life. Most of us make their choices to keep their lives out of control, which leaves them rushed and not satisfied. Simplicity must be more than dreaming about the past where folks did live a simple life. They had to. Their government wasn’t there to help them so they had to call on family or the church when they needed help. But we, today, depend on our government for everything, our loans on our homes,which we pay much more than we can afford, our college loans, our coming health care and our retirement. There seems to be more of these things every day. Our government is helping us become more and more dependent.

When I heard the other day that our children don’t really belong to our parents but belong to the government I said to myself, “This is enough.” I hope it is enough for you parents too. We must get back to the simple life.

You can get back from your frenzied life. Keep your children at home with you, eat at the table together, talk to them about right and wrong, play games inside or outside with them, watch what they are looking at in TV or video games. You are driving them to so many places these days looking for just the thing they need when all the time they just need mom and dad. This not only tires you out, but your kids too.

Get out of debt. You will sleep better if you don’t owe everything to others. This is very important if you want the simple life. And get back to God. He is in control of everything and if you let him, he’ll put you on the right tract. I think this is the most important thing you can do to simplify your life.

The simple life gives you real freedom. We need that today and it begins with you and your family. Stand up for our constitution in America today. It’s important because our government is taking much of our freedoms away. Getting back to a simpler way of life will help, not only your family but others too. Freedom comes one family at the time!