Thinking About Sacrifice

Did anyone else watch the History Channel on Saturday? I am a huge college football fan, and although it was billed by ESPN as Monstrous Match-up Saturday, I wasn't really interested in watching the games on most of the day. So I started flipping and landed on the History Channel, which was running 9/11 programming all day. Normally, I'm not one to watch that sort of thing, but I found several of the documentaries fascinating. There was amateur footage from that day, along with interviews of the videographers. There were first-hand accounts from first responders, people who were actually in the towers and, in at least one case, a husband who was on the phone with his wife when the first plane smashed into her floor of the WTC.

As horrifying and tragic as so much of the programming was, what struck me as I watched and ultimately moved me to tears was something I had never thought enough about to realize before. I watched the amateur footage and the interviews and realized that the NYFD responders walked into the WTC KNOWING that they, in all likelihood, would not walk back out. I mean, the risk associated with the work of a Fireman is obvious -- every time they rush into a fire, they are putting themselves at risk. But one of the surviving fireman talked about looking up at the towers that day and how all of the men in his company stopped to shake hands and say goodbye, acknowledging amongst themselves that they were embarking on a mission of almost certain death. And as you probably are aware, they were right: entire ladder companies died that day.

How did they do that? How did those men know that they would never go home to their wives and children again, never see old age, and do so knowing that their rescue mission may not even be successful? It is beyond my comprehension how a human could make this kind of sacrifice for a stranger. It makes something rise up in me -- sorrow? gratitude? -- and I haven't been able to shake the images of their faces from my mind.

At the same time, the Lord has whispered to my heart: I made the very same sacrifice. I knew, and yet I chose to walk on the earth and suffer a shameful and torturous death so that man would not have to. I did it knowing that my sacrifice, my rescue mission, would be rejected by many, and I chose to do it anyway. Why? Because I choose to give My Love to mankind, to YOU.

And I have to ask myself, How often does this realization about my God move me to tears? To action? How often do I go through a day unable to shake His image from my mind?

Time.

My grandfather passed away this summer, and I saw quite a few people at his services from various times in my life that I never see and rarely think about. It's not that I don't like them or never care to see them -- on the contrary, it was a wonderful by-product of an otherwise awful occasion -- but with the exception of one grandmother, I have very little that connects me to the places and people of the first twenty years of my life anymore. Unless you still live in your hometown, you can probably say the same thing. We grow up, leave home for school and then a job, and in my case, eventually marry and start a family in a completely different state. My husband and child get the bulk of my time and attention; outside of my immediate family, my church family is a big part of my daily life. At the end of a day picking up toys, paying bills, preparing dinner and running errands, there's just not a lot of time left to maintain relationships with the people I knew when I was 15. I can hear you, and yes I know that is what facebook is for. Believe it or not, though, I don't and in all likelihood never will use facebook. I have my blog(s) where I share about our lives with people we love but don't see every day. And I don't have the time or the energy to give to facebook. At any rate, I am fond of many people who are no longer part of my daily orbit, and seeing some of them again this summer was a delight and well, cause for reflection. I am nothing if not a navel-gazer. Seeing and talking to all of those people who knew me as a teenager, I wondered if any of them thought I was any different now.

I went to school with a girl named Erinn, and for most of our middle and high school years, we were inseparable. Our parents were friends, which meant that my parents trusted us together. We played most of the same sports and took all of the same classes. Occasionally people even mistook us for sisters. When we were freshmen in high school, her parents got the surprise of a lifetime: baby #3. As her dad told it when I saw him this summer, her mom went to the doctor to have her tubes tied, and the doctor said sure, we can do that as soon as you have this baby in about 7 months. Wow. Anyway, that baby turned out to be a little brother, Brandon, who is now the same age we were when he was born. I remember visiting the hospital when he was born, and Erinn and I marveled at how old we would be when he was our age.... 30! Ancient! We tried to imagine what we would be like at that age, what our lives would look like. It is one of those memories that is burned into my mind with a clarity that makes it seem like yesterday. I imagined myself married with a houseful of children. I only have one child, but I still hope and dream of more. And this may sound silly, but I tried to imagine how poised and mature I would be. I remember thinking, "Memorize this exact moment and how you feel, because when you look back on it you will be so different." Ha. Thinking back on the 15 year-old Me who was imagining the Present-Day Me, I am surprised at how often I feel like we are still the same person. Do you ever feel that way? Like, when will I feel like the grown up that I am?

I thought I would be...well, like my mom. She has always seemed more reserved and serious to me than I view myself, and I guess I thought that was who I would turn into when I became an adult. I suppose I have to some extent, but I often feel like an impostor in an adult world -- like Tom Hanks in Big. I often watch my mom, now a grandmother, and wonder if she ever feels the same way. I wonder if I will still feel this way when I am her age, wondering when I will no longer be 15 on the inside. I think of my grandfather and the stories he told in his final months, how often he referred to people 20 years his junior as "old." Did he ever feel like a great-grandfather? Or did he look at me as I grew into a woman and mother and marvel at how it was even possible?

Time is a tricky thing, it is. Maturity is not a guarantee, but aging is. Aging always brings wrinkles, but there are no assurances of wisdom. Life is constantly reminding us that death is inevitable, but rarely does it prompt us to make the most of our time by living. I don't know what any of this has to do with still feeling like a teenager, but I do know that watching my grandfather slip away this past year has made me realize that I can't put off things or people who are important to me because one day they will be gone. And it happens so quickly. I suppose that's a big difference between the 30 year-old me and the one from 1995. Well, that and about 25 pounds.

Hello

So I have another blog that I use to share about my daughter, Olivia. It's tied to an email address that I am getting rid of (I have to pay for it) and so I needed to move those posts to a new home. That meant coming up with a new blog name, which required way more thought than I expected. Anyway, after I chose this name, I started to feel like maybe I wanted to keep it just for me. There is virtually nothing in my life that is just mine these days, and I miss having a thing that I don't have to share with someone else. Besides my toothbrush.

That means that the family posts still need a new home, and I have this space to talk and think about things other than dirty diapers and laundry. I have no idea what it will look like since I feel like I put my brain on a shelf two years ago, but feel free to stick around and find out with me.