Friend: Since I was young.
Jamie: All your family Christian?
Friend: Yeah…your family?
Jamie: Nobody’s Christian in mine.
Friend: Wow. I respect that. I didn’t have to make any
sacrifices to believe.
This is a conversation I had with a friend some time ago.
When he said it, the word sacrifice stabbed me in the heart.
Sacrifice? No one had ever used
that word to describe my family. And it
stung me, because I know there is truth to it.
Somewhere in my heart, I know this is a sacrifice that comes with following
Christ.
Tonight I sat in the theater with my best friends,
watching the ever-famous Twilight. A
ridiculous love story between a vampire and human, this movie held the weight
of their wedding.
I read the saga a few summers ago. With each book you’re an audience to the deepening
love of Bella and Edward. Nothing can
keep them apart; no one can separate them from each other. Bella is willing to sacrifice friends and
family—and her very life—to be with the one she loves.
That’s a strong love.
When I watched her walked down the aisle tonight, I saw
the pain in her eyes. The confusion, the
hurt, the fear of goodbye. She held onto
her father and walked with unsteady legs, realizing exactly what her decision meant. Loving Edward meant
saying goodbye. It meant accepting that
everyone she loved would eventually die while she would live on forever. She wants to be with Edward, but what that
means hurts her deeply. As she and her
father Charlie pause for a moment, she surveys the picture before her. Wedding guests smile, and her stomach
churns. You wonder if she’ll make it to
the altar.
And then she sees him.
At the end of the aisle is the love of her life. And her eyes stay focused on him. And just like that, she’s reminded of why she’s
making the sacrifice. While she loves
her family very much, she knows the decision already cemented within her heart.
This is what loving God means to me.
I say goodbye to the life I knew. Because I know at the end of the aisle is
where I’m supposed to be. With Him. Forever.
As tormented as I am—leaving my world, my friends, my family—behind, I
know The Truth in my heart.
And there you have it.
I cried at Twilight. And not
because of the cheesy love story, but because of the greatest love story in my
life and what it means.
Note: You have to really know me to understand where my heart is now. There is much this post does not reveal, and I truly wrote it for my own use, not for an audience.
