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.

Day 206

She came in alone today.

She hadn’t been alone the last few times we saw her.

Wearily, in a soft tone, as I welcomed her, she said, “You know my husband passed away.”

And I quieted.

“Four months to the day of his diagnosis, he passed away.”

And when she departed, my prayers went with her.

When we first met them, it was almost four months ago.

Initially, because of her father’s recent passing, they were coming in to update files.  Flustered, quick-tempered, a type of anxiety was written on the husband’s face.

At the end of a frustrated hour, he seemed to exhale in a way of saying, Look, I’m going to level with you…

“I’m dying…”

At his openness, we were all silenced.

Diagnosed with cancer—a diagnosis that sealed his soon departure from this world—he had but one care.

“I need to know she’s going to be taken care of when I’m gone.”

And I remember that moment.  He said it with strength, dignity, and pure love for his wife.  He fought the tears, but I sensed his desperation, his need for everything to be done and done right.

This was man who was not fighting cancer.  He wasn’t even fighting the bank.  No, he was fighting for her.

And as she walked away from our office today, I remembered his love for her.  Accepting his diagnosis and trusting God, his priority went from his own health to her wellbeing. 

And how special that was for me to see a man love his beloved so much as to make sure she was cared for in the midst of his own personal struggles.

Can you imagine the strength, the trust in God throughout his last months?  Knowing what was to come, being prayerful, but being proactive and seeking out her welfare.

One flesh.

A shift in my heart came.

The last few months God has been showing me images of true love.  Of sacrificial love.  And whenever He reminds me of a love searching out the good for others, I am reassured in my singleness.

As my standards and expections are raised by examples of His love, I know that either I’ll have a husband that fights to sacrifice…or I won’t.

The next guy I date will be special.  There is no doubt in my mind that He is giving these examples to me for a purpose.

His will or no will.

I prayed for her tonight, praying for peace in her heart at her loss, but mostly praising the beauty in her having experienced His love here on earth through him, and knowing that she’ll one day see the man who sacrificed for her right next to the God who sacrificed for all.

Day 164

You don’t get burned ’cause nothing gets through

It makes it easier, easier on you

But that much more difficult for me

To make you see

Heart’s a Mess, Gotye

What is this blog?

This blog is where I write, process, and share whatever God has me to share.  It's not always eloquent, but whatever I post is prayerfully posted.  Not meaning that what I write is always pretty, but meant to read by someone else.

This is very different from Twitter.

Twitter is a journaling of unedited, on-the-spot thoughts.  Negative, positive, unnecessary, but there.  Sometimes frivolous, sometimes recording joy, and at times recording moments that need some type of processing.

It's lately that I wonder if my writing is becoming a hindrance to me.  To friendships.  To growth.  To living life outside of my computer screen.

What would I do if I just shut down?  Shut this down?  Shut Twitter down?  Then what?  How would I process?  Who would I go to, to talk through life?  Is this a handicap or is it healing?

There's a lot of unexplained sadness in my heart now.  I'm wrestling with pieces of myself, struggling to be healed and to overcome learned behaviors.  But it takes time.  It takes conscious effort to change these things.

And, God, I feel so lost.  I don't even know what to pray for anymore.  Here, there, where?  Him, her, who?   This, that, what?  What do I need to be searching for, God? What do I need to be praying for, God?  How do I need to be growing? 

Listening to Priscilla Shirer Saturday night...God, every sentence hit me deeply.  What am I enslaved to?  What do I not know how to say no to?

Maybe these social networking sites need to be put to rest for a time.  Maybe what once was an aid is now a distraction and where introspection was helpful, maybe now it’s turning into self-centeredness.  It's not that they in themselves are harmful, but, maybe, maybe what I've let them become is.

And, God, as I end this tonight, I pray for friendships.  I pray for passion.  I pray for growth, grace, and love.  I pray for direction, for understanding, and revelation.  I pray for community.  I pray for experiences.  I pray for my heart.  I pray to be seeking people and things outside of myself.  I pray for my heart to be changed.  And I pray to see and experience a change in others.  Encouragement and loving kindness.  I pray for concern and I pray for connectedness.  I pray for continued strength in my OYC and for each of the girls I started this journey with…  I pray that I’ll continue to chase after You.

I’ll be back in a week.  Pray for the best!

Day 13

Jamie:                    Have you always been a Christian?

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.