I sit on the ground with her, this woman in the brightly printed dress and crow’s feet from the Widow’s Village in Rwanda.

She sits with a thud, because the genocide has that kind of impact–it has robbed her of her husband and her children–and she has been listening to another woman tell her story and the memories–they’ve just collided and shoved her down.

So I sit there with her in the dirt, a child in my lap and the village around us.

“God is good,” she whispers.

“Some warn that America’s freedom, like all things human, may crumble into dust. The reason it doesn’t is because in times of trial our country produces men and women of courage and fortitude, honor and sacrifice. Which is another way of saying America produces self-effacing heroes like last weekend’s hunting companions.”