Oct 21

Written by: michaela renee
10/21/2009 7:11 PM

I’ve been trying to write this piece since the day he called and said he was driving across California to get my stuff and bring me “home.” I thought about writing this the night I drunk dialed him and told him I’d buy a one way plane ticket from San Diego to Sacramento to fly up and drive back with him on the same day.

I contemplated writing this piece the afternoon he bit his tongue and worked side by side loading the truck with a guy I used to date who was still a good friend. And I wrote a whole paragraph the day I saw him pull out of the driveway with all my furniture headed for Northern California while I sadly stared down my final few days in San Diego.

And then I couldn’t write anymore. See, up until that day, I believed I was the only one making a sacrifice.

Up until that moment, it was about me, and all the things I was giving up for him: my love of the ocean and my mailing address in San Diego; my long walks on the beach with my best girl friends; my football team; all my favorite restaurants; and all my memories.

I began to think of other historic examples of profound sacrifices and realized, there is absolutely no sacrifice without love. There is no sacrifice without the kind of love that makes people trust, on blind faith, that the sacrifice is worth it.

Jesus of Nazareth died upon the Roman cross and gave his mortal life so believers could be forgiven for their sins and blessed with the opportunity to have eternal life.

In the 16th Century, Shakespeare wrote a play about a young couple in love, at odds because of the conflict between their families. The death of Romeo and Juliet, the ultimate act of passion and love, became the final sacrifice from the unresolved hatred between the Capulet’s and the Montague’s.

Soldiers do it every day for our right to freedom, and parents do it every moment when they choose their children before themselves.

When you sacrifice something from a place of unconditional love a beam of light hits your heart in the right place the moment the sacrifice has been made.

I had no expectations when I arrived in Northern California, and I most certainly knew the sacrifice I was making, and all that I was leaving behind.

He was waiting patiently for me to arrive, his smile spoke louder than his words.

Then I unpacked and my clothes took over his closet. His eyes winced and he shook his head, and I saw the first of many sacrifices he would make. It wasn’t until I was pulling my car in the garage where his “man-couch” and tools once sat that I started to reflect on all the sacrifices he’d made.

Sacrifices he’d made for me. Suddenly my sacrifices didn’t seem so overwhelming, because of all I’d lost, I’d gained something they write about in history books.

And while he may not have died on the cross, or taken a renaissance knife through the chest, or a bullet on the front lines in a foreign country, I know his sacrifice comes from the same place in his soul.

Suddenly I see it clearly, and the words on the paper are erased as I pen the true meaning of sacrifice. And so I offer this…

The greatest sacrifices come from a place of unconditional love, and they‘re never known until long after they‘ve been made.

Copyright ©2009 Michaela Renee

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