I took the above picture of this mom and baby in a sling 5 years ago in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. As a former babywearing mom of 7 children (not wearing them all at once, mind you, but each one successively in turn as I am not a mother of septuplets), this young mom totally pulled on my heart strings. I wanted to strike up a conversation with her on types of babywearing, find out how old her baby was, whether or not she breastfeeds, and where she is from. I wanted to see if she attended LLL meetings. Not wanting to overwhelm her/frighten her with a stranger’s interest, I abstained and just admired her similar mothering style from afar.

I got to gaze at the wonders in this room, which just oozes stories from American history, almost 6 years ago, in May of 2019. That’s when I toured it with a group of homeschooling friends, on my National Treasure tour (a few posts about that here). It was fun to watch the inauguration proceedings yesterday and think, wow, I was in that very room 5 years ago.

I just love that Pres. Trump’s inauguration ceremony took place in this room full of beautiful memories for me. It’s cool he took his oath of office to follow the Constitution as President of the U.S in a room with George Washington looking down on him from above, maybe from heaven too. At least it was symbolically with George’s painting on the inside of the domed ceiling above Trump’s head.

It’s like George was saying as he watched the ceremony, “OK Donald, be a good boy! You have endured multiple stressful, grueling legal proceedings, your life has been spared, the people have spoken, you got a second chance, now don’t blow this!” Hopefully Trump will learn from Washington’s triumphs and mistakes. I hope he does good stuff by getting us out of so many entangling alliances like George warned against and be modest like George was. Is that even possible? Or is that like asking a pig to sing? I hear he’s already taken us out of the WHO. So yay for that! He sure made a ton of promises in his inauguration speech, and I’m not sure all of them are Constitutional. I don’t care about the U.S. going to Mars, I just want the federal government getting OUT of things, including my personal health business.

OK, back to the Capitol interior. Everywhere you look in the rotunda, from the paintings on the walls, to the painting of the dome’s ceiling, to the friezes, you can see stories or at least figures from U.S. history, showing reverence for the past, mixed with hope for the future. These aren’t just ordinary stories.

They are stories that sometimes involve God, including prayer meetings and a baptism. These stories sometimes involve victories. They sometimes involve exploration. Having the inauguration in this room calls attention to the points of America’s Christian Godly heritage and/or pivotal moments that we can all learn from and be enriched from. They help us to enlarge our memory to be a collective memory of faith-in-God people of our past.

Come along me with me to learn all about this! Just watch the video below with my favorite U.S. Christian historian, David Barton. These are little known insights into U.S. history. Did you know one of the paintings shows a Geneva Bible? Watch below. If you thought this room was just cool because it was in the movie National Treasure, you are in for a treat.

The room also has come statues of American historical figures, including George. The whole building has statues, 2 famous historical people from each state. Some of them are in the rotunda and the rest are in the rest of the building. especially Statuary Hall.

You can read more about the rotunda here too. Enjoy and I hope you get hooked on history, for it truly is “His Story,” meaning God’s story. Go watch National Treasure too! Truly, history is a treasure for all of us to learn from.