Epic Stories

You know those stories that reach down into your soul and strike a chord of longing? The epic ones about things and places greater than ourselves? My roommate and I have watched the three Lord of the Rings movies over the past week or so, and I just finished watching the last one. After all that Frodo and Sam go through it just seems an injustice that they are separated; that Frodo leaves. The sort of things that they fought and overcame together make a kind of friendship that cannot be bought, forced or searched for, but simply happens out of a choice to love someone more than oneself. A friendship forged out of life itself. That is what we long for, that is the chord those stories strike in my soul. I yearn for a friendship of that magnitude, a brother that would follow me to the very gates of hell knowing I would never ask it, and knowing that I would do the same for him. I feel that what I so desire doesn't really exist. That has been the single greatest desire of my life. A wife and kids and that whole family thing that is supposed to be the ultimate goal of my life all seems like but a shadow of what is in my heart. I do not belittle or desire those things any less, but there is something beyond comforting about having that brother that will fight for me and along side me and love me as himself. I am so angered by our culture that tells us that the only relationships worth that kind of love are with the opposite sex. We can and need to love someone of our own gender that way too. Maybe that sounds selfish. I assure you it is not, because for that sort of friendship to exist it must be reciprocal. That is the hardest part of it all. My favorite story in all of the old testament is about David and Jonathan (as anyone who truly knows me will tell you) because it is a story about just that kind of friendship in reality rather than fantasy. The community I dream of seeing one day is a community where people aren't so caught up in having to be married and having to be coupled off with thier opposite sex partner, but one in which those beautiful marriage relationships exist alongside a greater community of brothers and sisters who care for each other like David and Jonathan did, Ruth and Naomi, Sam and Frodo. Imagine....