And the Award Goes To...

Last night, I saw the movie, "Zero Dark Thirty," the gripping 12-year story of the search and killing of Osama Bin Laden. The movie follows the young woman, Maya, committed to a point of obsession with finding him over years of dead trails, un-threadable bits of information and loss of friends in the same pursuit. At one moment in the movie, she reveals what is fueling her motivation. "I've lost a lot of friends trying to do this. I think maybe it's my role to finish the job."

The older I get, the more moved I am by stories of long fought battles, marathon races and hard-won victories. When she said this, I felt a tear come to my eye. It has been a long road with unexpected twists, dead trails and and lost friends, both physically and spiritually. But like Maya, I find that the more suffering I survive, the more determined I become to just finish the race. It's too late to give up, though the temptation to do so gets heavy at times. I need to see how my story ends and I need to see how God's plan for my life unfolds.

Tonight, Ben Affleck took home an Academy Award for "Argo," the winning film for Best Picture of the year. He spoke of taking home his first Oscar 15 years ago as a kid for writing, "Good Will Hunting," not knowing what he was doing and naive to the world he had just entered. He expected he'd never receive another award. After more than a decade that included public scrutiny, ridicule and needing to completely rebuild his reputation, he humbly received this award as a different man - one who understood every battle he needed to overcome in order to get there.  His closing words were, "What I learned was it doesn't matter if you get knocked down in life, what matters is that you've got to get back up."

Someday, all of glory of the Oscars will go away.  The accolades of this world will no longer mean anything. What is promised is a prize to those who have run the race in life so as to receive it - that there's something indeed at the end of it all worth all of the tears, incredible loss, unspeakable heartbreak.  If I were to imagine the award I might get at the end, it might be for Tenacity - something I have found within myself despite myself.  Or more likely, receiving the acceptance of God in his very presence of God alone will be the unfathomable honor.

I have to keep going.  I want to receive this prize.