My gift

I consider this still unfinished, but it's something i'm working with, and I'm hoping will come to be a great peice sometime (probably not in the near future--but soon)

I wondered what it would take for me to give my life for someone. How much emotion and love towards them would I have to feel to be willing to die for them? Could I die for a complete stranger, if it came down to that?

My sister Jenni went into labor nine hours before she was supposed to be induced. If she had the baby within the next three hours, he wouldn't be born on her husband’s birthday. He came out one hour into the new day. But he couldn't breathe right, his lungs weren't clearing properly. His heart beat was in the low eighties, and slowly dropping. Then the doctors couldn't find a kidney.

The first time I saw him was through a glass window, where he was in the back corner. A bright light was on him to keep him warm and tubes and wires ran all over. As I held his big brother up to the glass, so maybe he could see his new brother, I thought about death. My little nephew, who I knew nothing about, would I give my life for him? If there was possibly a way for me to take his place, if by chance he was going to die, would I do it? I couldn't answer that question. I knew my sister would, without a second thought, her son or her? It would be an easy choice.

After my mom was diagnosed with cancer, my dad said he would die in her place. He would take that cancer in a heartbeat, if it meant she would live. After watching his mother and sister die of the same thing, I could see why he would do it.

I dated a man who I thought I could die for. That if it came down to someone saying "It's you or him" I would say "By all means, take me." Even after he broke my heart I realized that I would die for him. And I wondered if this was the emotion my sister had, when her baby boy had a question mark for the future. I wondered if my dad was full of this feeling as he watched my mother go through radiation treatments, and I wondered, as I watched the man I would die for fall in love with another, if this feeling I felt would leave me.

I’m not sure if it’s worth it. To have a feeling so powerful towards someone that I would die for them. I couldn’t see how it was worth it, when the one I would die for, would no longer be willing to die for me. The unfairness in situations was more than I wanted to accept. My father wasn’t able to take my mothers place, as much as he wanted to, he wasn’t able. My sister was helpless when it came to her son and his medical problems. Just like them, I am helpless when it comes to the power I feel I have within me. It doesn’t matter how much I would want to take someone’s place, the situation’s the same, and it couldn’t occur.

When I first held my nephew, after he finally came home, I wondered what the power is that flows through the soul, when one feels that someone means so much to them, that their life isn’t worth enough in comparison to that person? How does it come? I don’t remember it coming into my life. I don’t remember it always being there. I don’t remember if it was there when he first told him he loved me, I don’t remember if it was there when he told me he was going to marry me, I don’t remember if it was there when he told me that he was breaking up with me because God told him to marry someone else. All I remember is watching my mother suffer, and feeling helpless, watching my nephew teeter on death’s edge and feeling sorrow, watching the man I love walk away and feeling pain. Would it be considered a gift of life or a gift or death if I did die for someone?