250 Years of Answering the Call

This week, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, when a group of colonists put forward a revolutionary idea: that government answers to the people, not the other way around.

This anniversary has me thinking less about what the Founders gave us and more about what they asked of us - to take responsibility for advancing the American experiment.

For my family, the answer has always been service, whether in our public schools, in government, or in uniform.

I’m a third-generation Soldier, but earning the opportunity to serve didn’t come easy. At 24, after years of trying to join the Army, I was told I wasn’t medically qualified because the shape of my feet could limit my ability to wear combat boots. I was disappointed, but no less certain that I wanted to serve.

For years, I carried that disappointment as I built a career, got married, and watched others take the oath I had hoped to take myself.

I was 28 when I walked into a Texas Army National Guard recruiting station, older than almost everyone else I eventually shipped to basic training with. It wasn’t a surprise the recruits called me “mom.”

People sometimes ask why I enlisted at 28, during wartime, when it would have been easier not to join the military at all. The answer is simple: by then, I understood exactly what I was choosing. I wasn’t drifting into service. I was answering a responsibility I couldn’t walk away from.

In the Army, I got to represent something much bigger than myself, twice over - my nation and my state. I learned Texas from inside a uniform: the small towns, the enormous distances, the way communities show up for each other. Serving has been the greatest honor of my life because of the people I led and served alongside. They represent the very best of America.

Our Founders, too, bet that ordinary people - farmers, tradesmen, a surveyor turned general - could serve their communities and govern themselves better than any king. They understood that serving this country was a responsibility, not a reward. It was a trust to carry, not a title to claim.

That’s the idea I keep coming back to. The uniform was never the thing that made me a Soldier; the commitment was. When I decided to run for Congress, I carried that same commitment with me: show up, do the work, put the mission ahead of yourself, and trust that the people you serve can tell the difference between someone working for them and someone working an angle.

That’s why this anniversary feels different. A 250-year stretch is long enough to forget that self-government was never guaranteed. It was a choice our Founders made and one every generation since has had to make again, often without fanfare.

This year, a striking number of veterans are making that choice by running for office, because many of us arrived at the same conclusion: service doesn’t end when you leave the military.

We served in different branches, in different places, and under different circumstances. Yet many of us describe the same motivation as our “Why?”

Not ambition. Responsibility.

I often think about the version of me who walked into that recruiting station at 28. I wasn’t the youngest person there, nor the strongest, but I was willing. I’m older now, and the room is different. The willingness hasn’t changed.

This Independence Day, I’m celebrating the freedoms we inherited from previous generations and reflecting on the role each of us plays in protecting and strengthening them.

For some, it’s military service. For others, it’s mentoring a child, volunteering in a school, helping a neighbor, organizing a community, voting in an election, or stepping forward to lead.

The path may look different, but the responsibility belongs to all of us. The American experiment hasn’t been sustained by famous names in history books. It’s always depended on ordinary people who decided that citizenship is something you do, not something you have.

And 250 years later, that’s still true.