My family has run a small business here in Hawaii for 23 years.  My husband and I started this business to supplement our income from a job he loved and worked for 25 years — as a Honolulu firefighter. 

Right before COVID struck, we were looking for land to move our business to.  A place to live, work, and farm for our family, for our children and grandchildren.  Our children had taken over the business and grown it.  We were small, but we supported our family, and a handful of workers who were like family. 

COVID basically threw an awful downward spiral to PUNANONI Naturals.  Since Hawaii primarily exists as a tourist industry, our business suffered greatly.  Through sacrifice, often working for no pay, we fought as a family, as a small business to climb back, to stay in business.

During this time, I had written a few blog posts for American Thinker.  My blog posts were very anti-Ukraine War, for I had researched the history, and I knew the farce of it all from the very beginning.  Yet, if I am truly examining my feelings, I felt stunned at the fact that our country is sending billions to a  corrupt foreign country under the guise of a "fight for democracy" while so many people here in our own country had been destroyed over the past two years of COVID lockdown!  I have felt like an abused child, forgotten by my country, for a long time now. 

On March 17, 2023, our warehouse burned down.  It was a total loss.  Everything we had built for 23 years, and the struggle for survival that we had slowly conquered since COVID — gone.  No one was hurt, so we are thankful.  The old adage "man plans; God laughs" comes to mind.  I wake up most mornings begging to have faith in God's plan.  It's even  more difficult now because the loss I personally have experienced is met with the loss of this once great nation — a world I do not recognize perpetuated by an active evil consciousness to destroy the freedom, and God-loving country I grew up in.

Image via Max Pixel.