Love, Life, and Lent

I went to see the movie Dear John. I have seen it twice now. It is a message filled with choices, decisions, and reality. It is about priorities vs. opportunities. It is about sacrifice, love, and commitment. It is about life.

I have become my own valentine this year. I have embarked on a journey to question whether God's love for us is the only true love. I am entering this lenten season, on this Sunday of Forgiveness, perhaps not only with sacrifice, but with the need and desire to nurture myself. I am not perfect. I have made choices, and decisions. I have faced reality. I have made priorities and have taken and missed out on opportunities. I have sacrificed, I have loved, and I have made commitments.

I am living life.

I have wonderful friends who ask me everyday what I am thankful for, my accomplishments, my goals, and to remember my talents, skills, and blessings. Things could be different and I could have failed.

The opening narrative to the film, and what is to be a letter to his [John Tyree's] father states:

"There's something I want to tell you. After I got shot. You want to know the very first thing that entered my mind, before I blacked out? Coins.

I'm eight years old again on a tour of the U.S. Mint. I'm listening to a guy explaining how coins are made. How they are punched out of sheet metal. How they are rimmed and beveled. How they are stamped and cleaned; and how each and every batch of coins are personally examined just in case any have slipped through with the slightest imperfection.

That's what popped into my head.

I am a coin of the United States Army. I was minted in the year 1980. I have been punched from sheet metal. I have been stamped and cleaned; and my ridges and have been rimmed and beveled. Now I have two small holes in me. And am no longer in mint condition.

So there's something else I want to tell you. Right before everything went black. You want to know the very last thing that entered my mind?
You."
- Sgt. John Tyree
from the motion picture, Dear John