It seems that the only news we are hearing lately is bad. We all know about the doom and gloom regarding COVID-19, racial tension across our country and political shenanigans taking place on a daily basis. There is not a day that goes by that our brains aren’t inundated with negativity. Truthfully, I am sick and tired of hearing people in the news complain about how awful our lives are today. The question that keeps popping up in my mind is, “Where on this big earth would you rather live?”
Rhonda Smith
You see, I have been to other countries. When I was a teenager, we lived 30 miles north of the Mexican border in the small town of Los Fresnos, Texas. My dad worked for NECO at that time in Matamoros, Mexico. He would occasionally take us on a ride across the border to “look around.” We thought we were going on an adventure or out to eat, but his mission was to expose us to what it was like to live in a place where people work 12 hours a day for 57 cents an hour.
Most of the assembly-line workers were 14-15-year-old girls, and the cost of living there was not that much different than in Texas. I remember seeing the streets lined with huge cardboard boxes and then was horrified when I realized that there were people sitting inside of them. That was my first experience realizing that human beings literally did not have anywhere to live. If I could, to this day, I would require every American teenager to take that tour so that can see the reality of poverty.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Haiti on a mission trip. If I thought Mexico was bad, Haiti was a thousand-fold worse. I don’t think I saw one house that I would want to call my home, as none that we saw had running water, electricity or much furniture to speak of. Not to mention that all of us in our group were a little fearful as we stepped off the airplane into a country that is known for its corruption and practices in voodoo.
Luckily, a representative from But God Ministries, the organization we served with, met us at the gate and paid off the appropriate “guides” to get our luggage and escort us out of the airport before the bad guys could get to us. The hour-long ride to our compound was eye-opening to say the least. Tent cities as far as you could see, buildings crumbling still — leftovers from the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that had taken place four years earlier. We slept under the ever-watchful eye of two armed guards who sat in a perch atop the walls that were wrapped in razor wire. Children walked for miles in shoes with no laces to our Bible school in hopes of getting a teddy bear or some candy.
I remember being extremely angry when I got back to my church the next Sunday. I had just come from a place where people openly praised God for the small morsels of food and water they got, while we sat in our nice clothes in our cool air-conditioned $4 million building, sitting stone-faced, emotionless, afraid to raise a hand to praise God in thankfulness or even open our mouths to sing to Him. I thought, “Shame on us!”
Three years ago, I traveled to Thailand, this time to minister to missionaries who have given their lives to serve in other countries. I went to offer my gift as a therapist to these servants, who do not have the luxury of calling up and making an appointment to talk to someone about the horrors that they experience in their daily lives. They told me about saving little girls from the sex trade, the fear of being kidnapped and killed for sharing the love of God, stories of actual imprisonment for the same, living in places with no police protection and watching people be killed right in front of them.
One missionary adopted three children while in Asia (rescued from sex trade) and could not return to the United States because the children could not get visas. She could not bear to leave them behind. One woman had moved four times in two months because the government told her she had to. All the missionaries had something in common — they felt very alone, “everyone always leaves.” One man cried with gratitude at having someone to talk to. He called us “heroes” who came to help them when no one else would.
Last week, I asked my Facebook friends what they still loved about America, despite everything that is going on. Freedom was the No. 1 response I received. My friend Paula summed it up well. She said, “I love America because we have freedom. Freedom to work where we want to, freedom to serve a God we love, freedom to send our kids to school to learn, freedom to own our land, freedom to make decisions on our own and not have people telling us what we can and cannot do. All of these things I think we take for granted.” Paula knows, because Paula was with me in Haiti and in Thailand. We know what is out there, and it ain’t always pretty. Ask any veteran who has fought for that freedom on foreign land.
I want to add a few other things that I love about America, common things that are not as easily accessible in other places.
I love that we have cool air-conditioning and hot water. We can use as much or as little as we want (if we pay the bill).
I love that we have cellphone service almost everywhere we go. We can call 911 if we need help, and someone is going to come and help us.
If we decide that we want to see mountains or drive across the country to the desert, we simply get in the car and go. No one is stopping us (as long as you are in a group of 10 or fewer!).
Even if our church is not meeting in a building, THE CHURCH (all of us) is still allowed to worship in any way we choose.
We can choose to paint our living rooms any color we want.
I love that we can peacefully sit on the front porch and watch the butterflies and bees.
We can cook and eat any food that we like.
We can read any book or watch any movie available on the cloud any time we want!
We can have friends of any race or religion that we choose.
I love that we have the choice to get up every morning and go to work, or not.
We still have freedom, and if you look up and down 16th Avenue, no one has lost a bit of it yet.
Despite all the trials that America faces today, I cannot think of another place in the world that I would rather live. Any time that I have been away from here, I was always grateful (and sometimes relieved) when the plane touched down on U.S. soil. Yes, our country is flawed, but we should all work together to make it better and stop acting like spoiled children who are being deprived of a lollipop. We have it really good, people. And guess what? You can still fly any kind of flag you want in your own front yard. Heck, you can fly 100 of them if you want to.
As for me, I will continue to proudly fly the red, white and blue of America (still) the Beautiful.
Dr. Rhonda Smith is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at South Central Regional Medical Center. Email her at
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July 14, 2020 at 01:00AM
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