Essay About Love: Love is Sacrifice

I left work today realizing just how fortunate I am to be on the track towards a successful career. And on top of that, the fact that I actually enjoy my job makes it even better! It's definitely been a long road.

I think about how I had to deal with rude and ignorant customers as a convenient store cashier during junior high, the strenuous labor working alongside my mother at the dry cleaners in high school, and then finally those dreaded double shifts waiting tables for three years during college. And yet I look at what I have today and realize that I haven't obtained these things for myself. All of it has been provided by the hands of the good Lord, and the sacrifice of my parents. It's truly amazing what a parent's love for his/her child can accomplish. How much they are willing to sacrifice for the sake of their children. I must say without a doubt that is one of the most important lessons my parents have taught me. Love is sacrifice.

My parents immigrated to the U.S. in 1999. My mother came to this country first in January of that year, along with her parents and her siblings. She left behind her husband and her two daughters in search of a better life for all of us. Being away from your child even for a minute is the hardest thing to do as a mother. Not a day went by during our separation that she didn't think of us, did not long to hold us in her arms and to sing us to sleep with sweet lullabies. She fought back tears and endured heartache every day, but she knew that in the long run, this would all be worth it.

My dad tells me that during this time while I was in Korea under his sole care, I would look up at all the airplanes that flew by and cry out, "Um-ma, Um-ma" (mother in Korean). My father would shake his head and tell me that it wasn't my mother and I would burst into tears. My father and my aunts (his sisters) told me they had never seen an infant cry as much as I did during the time my mother was gone.