Day 321

She was a prostitute who had taken sanctuary in a church alongside twelve young girls and an American.

The Flowers of War was, in the least, a difficult movie to watch. 

I turned off the TV, my stomach turning from the images and the truths my eyes had witnessed.  Of everything I hated watching, there was one moment that meant something to me.

The hero and the heroine sat together in the sanctuary.  For the first time, they're honest with each other.  Yu Mo looks at John, the man she had come to love, with sad, but determined eyes, and said this:

"Like them, I was at a convent for six years.  But unlike them, I was raped by my stepfather when I was thirteen years old.  By their age, I was already forced to take my first clients.  I don't want them to go through that."

She knew what would happen to the girls when the Japanese returned to take them away.  And she had made a choice.  What little life she had left, what opportunity she had for love, she was sacrificing.  She was going to give her life for them.

That's what meaningful life is, isn't it?

Sacrifice.  Big, small.  Whatever it is, sacrifice.

To our younger generations, we women have a responsibility to help lead our young women down a different path from our own lives.

And we also have a responsibility to the women who are experiencing or will experience the pains of life we've experienced.  Our greatest mercy is sharing in the pain and walking with women as they walk paths that ride parallel to our own history.  To have a heart mended by God connect to a heart hurting, seeking out love, nurturing, and understanding.  We have a responsibility to provide emotional sanctuary, a guidance, because God gives us these experiences to build in us that heart, a heart that propels us toward His children.

We have a responsibility to walk with each other.  To sacrifice, to love, to protect.

For Americans, we're unhappy with the un-fairytale ending.  We want the woman to have a successful career or the last laugh, living independently on her own.  We want to the couple to fall in love, whether star-crossed or heavenly ordained.  We want to see the hero win the medal and be recognized.

Sometimes the truth is that the hero receives no recognition.  Sometimes the hero isn't remembered by millions of people.  Sometimes the lovers, as much as they love each other, do not end up together.

As much as I hated the movie, I appreciate its honest voyeurism of what sacrifice, of what love, of what a higher purpose can be.

We sacrifice for those needing sacrifice.

Not because we gain, but because as sons and daughters of the Ultimate Sacrificer, we should be encouraged to do likewise.  To show the same love.

Sacrifice.  Responsibility.  Love.

These could be synonyms—should be synonyms.

A life without them is a life wasted.