Sacrifice

What is a sacrifice?  I posed that question to my family, and here is the response.

“Doing something you don’t want to do so that someone else benefits.”

“Denying yourself something so someone else can have something.”

 “Thinking of another person and going out of your ordinary way to make a change.”

“Giving up your wants or needs for someone else’s.”

“A sacrifice looks like how you choose to spend your time, your money, and your things.”

I took a moment to reflect on the sacrifices I have made as a mother and a wife over the past few years.  I have sacrificed nights out with my husband to stay home with sick kids, watched Sponge Bob instead of Ellen, made breakfast instead of sleeping in, read books to kids instead of taking a hot bath and reading a novel, drove kids around to activities instead of resting on the couch with the stomach flu, and sacrificed time as a couple by working opposite shifts to avoid day care.

But these sacrifices are so minuscule compared to that of my ancestors. 

You see my grandpa, Alfons, was the youngest of eleven children. His father and two of his brothers were killed in World War I. After the war, life was deplorable in Germany. There was no work, no money, and no food. The situation was desperate.  The only solution families had was to send young adults off to America in hopes they could earn money and send it back to their families in Germany.

So, at 19 years of age, my grandpa left Germany with his 2^nd grade education and arrived in Kansas in 1925 to find work as a hired hand on a farm, only to find himself four years later in yet another depression here in America.  His living conditions were horrible.  He lived in an unheated barn, kept his hands warm in the oats in the winter, and was taunted for speaking German.  During the hot summer days, he would stack bales of hay in the barn. It was hard manual labor, often working until his hands bled.  The farmer’s sons made life even worse for him. Unbeknownst to him, as he would stack bales of hay in the barn, they would throw them out through the back of the barn.  The farmer was upset with him, yet he took the punishment so he could keep his job and send his family in Germany some of his meager earnings.

When I think of the sacrifice my grandpa made, I am humbled.  When I think of the sacrifice his mother made to send her son off on a boat to a foreign land, I am at a loss for words.  The ache for a son who is alive but unreachable must be like seeing a nice cool swimming pool on a hot summer day but not being able to jump in. How difficult it must have been to wake up everyday knowing that your son is alive, struggling, alone, and suffering great hardships in America. What a sacrifice his mother made when she sent him to America and what a cup of suffering it must have been for her every day of her life. Living in poverty, Grandpa was unable to save money to purchase land, let alone a passage to get back to Germany.  Little did he know that when he left his homeland, he would never see his mother alive again.

Would I be able to make that kind of a sacrifice?