duty

I still remember and maybe I always will, though it wasn't that long ago, the day I left for basic training; to start a new phase of my life. I remember the day of and the night before most clearly.

I remember that my girlfriend, of only two weeks at the time - a woman that I would eventually come to love and then eventually have to let go - stayed up with me until 4 in the morning, when exhaustion finally claimed us. I remember that four of the greatest girls you could ever ask for as sisters or friends came to visit that night and, though we shared few words because none would suffice, we shared enough love to last a life time. I remember that morning sitting on the couch in the apartment that had most recently been my place of residence with some of the people I care most about, and beginning to cry as we prayed together. I remember my mom meeting me at the recruiting station to say a final good bye. And I remember my best friend, then, now and I hope always, and our last embrace before I left and the tears on both our faces.

What's the point to all this? I take measure of everything that I've gained in my short span of years, all that I've accomplished and my level of success I suppose, by what I've had to sacrifice. A man, who was really more than a man, once said, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." And I wonder more often than ever now if laying down your life isn't as easy as simply dying. What would be the difficulty in dying surrounded by the people you love, after all? What if the hardest part of everything that Jesus did wasn't that fateful day hanging on a cross, but every day leading up to it that he set aside all his desire for the sake of those he loved?

I don't have a whole lot of moments of real vulnerability with very many people. But the truth is, everytime I think about what it is that I really do, am being asked to do; where I'm being asked to go, I'm filled with apprehension. Not for what I'm going into, but for what I'm leaving behind. Maybe it's the things you leave behind that tell you how worthwhile your life really is.