#19 "S" The Life of A Victor

I cried while watching Mockingjay Part 2 today. (Major Spoiler alert if you haven't watched or read it...)

Not Katniss and Primm danced.
Not when Finnick died.
Not when Primm died.
Not when Katniss let Gale go.
And not even when Katniss held her baby and talked about how to overcome nightmares. 

All of those were touching moments, but they didn't move me like the scene between Effie and Katniss when they say goodbye. Not because they were parting but because of these words exchanged between them...

"I hope you find it." "Find what?" Katniss asks. "The life of a victor," Effie responds.

Katniss didn't feel like a victor when Effie said that. Katniss had a choice of how to live in victory even though Primm was gone, even though she didn't know how to move forward she still chose to.

20 years later I still make that choice of living even though my mom is gone. 20 years later I still make the choice that life can be lived in victory even though there have been parts of it that didn't feel like it. My mom could have lived in victory but she chose not to. That's is probably the hardest sentence I've ever written because I know she wanted to. I know she thought she was choosing to live in victory, but the truth is she struggled. She struggled with finding a life of victory rather than pieces of victory. But pieces of victory isn't what Christ came to give us. He came to give us the whole stinking thing. The whole life as a victor. We can live in victory because of what Christ has done for us. Victory in our relationships. Victory in our hearts. Victory even in our struggles. Victory even when we don't feel like it. Because truly, that scene was all about moving forward when you don't feel like it. That scene of Katniss and Effie wouldn't be the one that that show as the victory moment of the movie. But it holds more victory than the moment that she shot the arrow into Coin's heart. It wouldn't be the scene where you walk out of the movie and think, "she won...now let's all go home and live happily ever after" but it is the scene that led to those other scenes. How many of those scenes do we face each day? Those scenes where you chose to respond in love when everything in you wants to yell and scream at somebody or something? Those scenes where you don't want to meal plan and go grocery shopping and do the laundry and grade papers and just plain be responsible but you do anyway? Those scenes matter more than you know because they set you up for the movie scenes that make the highlight reel and you need all of them to make it a good story.

So that's why this scene made me cry. Because it was all heart. It was the moment where you get to chose how to move forward and do you it, even though you don't feel like it. You do it because you know the rest of the story and it is a story of victory. Go live it.