Thanks is not enough

Over the past week Saving Private Ryan has been on TNT or something like that where they repeat the same movies every night. We are busy until about 8:30 and then the TV pops on and Bart hits the couch. Walking in and out I have watched the last hour of the movie about three times now this month.
I am not sure if there is truly anybody out there that has not watched this movie at least once. I am a die hard Tom Hanks fan. I was in the theatre to watch this movie the first weekend it came out. It was a little too graphic for me but of course, I had to have it for my complete Tom Hanks collection. However, I don’t think I have voluntarily pulled it out of it’s case to watch at my house. I cried too much the first time and still have shed a tear or two every time it is on television. Bart is a die hard war fan. So we do watch it every time it is on television.
The last hour is quite heart wrenching. As is the first hour that depicts the beaches of Normandy. I am grateful for those soldiers. I am grateful for those mothers that taught their boys to be strong and brave and proud of their country and then let them go. I am grateful I cannot see into the future and have to KNOW that someday it might be my children. Anyways, back to the last hour. They find the last Ryan boy and explain his brothers are dead. He is already worth something when he does not shirk from the fight at hand and does not want to leave his company.
Chase watches with us as he is a big fan of whatever Bart does. He asks why Private Ryan doesn’t want to go home. Bart explains to my innocent little 10 year old who is just on the verge of becoming something more than a child that it is “better to die doing something great than to die of old age.” I understand my husband’s sentiment. I think I do.
We continue to watch and see that Tom Hanks meets his fatal bullet right at the end of the battle but he grabs Private Ryan and tells him to “Earn this. Earn this.” Earn the deaths of the people who came to find you and bring you back alive. Earn the lives that were sacrificed for you to come back and live a life. Bart served in the National Guard until several years after we were married. Currently his old Richfield unit is serving overseas. Several times Bart has mentioned to me how bad he feels that he is not serving his country. That some young 18 year old is standing out there on the front line in his place. Where does he get off sitting here on his ass when others are out dying for our freedom?
You then see Private Ryan, an old man now come with his family to Arlington cemetery. He has found Tom Hanks headstone and he whispers to him “I tried to be the best man I could be. I hope if you are looking down you will think that it was enough to earn what you have done for me.” And it is over for me. I am a-bawling. No, Bart does not cry but he certainly watches the movie the next night.
How come that movie evokes so much emotion? How come Tom Hanks makes me, Private Ryan, certainly Bart and probably the rest of the world feel indebted for sacrificing his life when Jesus Christ did that already for all of us? And we forget that all the time? I can just feel my own horror at having to live up to Tom Hanks saying that to my face. I know Bart takes that to heart. Bart would never ever allow somebody to give his life for him and Bart not make good on trying to repay him.
More and more, I believe that Christ had a wife and a family and so much more of a rich life than the scriptures portray. It just makes sense. He came to earth to live and be one of us. He had to have an intimate relationship in order to understand all that we go through. It makes me more horrified to think he had to give all that up…for me. For all of us. And yet he did. And I cry for Tom Hanks. I hope that at some time I can have the courage to come before my Savior and lay my life down before him for him to see and judge. I hope. I hope that He will then call my life good enough to sacrifice His for. I hope.