Following Jesus = Hating my Mother and Brother???

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" Luke 14:26

I've known this verse for a long time since I've been in the church since I was little. I've always had a relative idea that it didn't really mean that you had to hate your mother, but that it meant that following Jesus had to be more important. But I don't think I really grasped the concept until Ben and I decided to go into missions.

By going into missions, we will be leaving all of our family and friends that we have ever known and loved to go around the world to live with and love on people that we do not know and do not understand. That is hating your mother and brother.

By going into missions, we will miss births and birthdays, weddings and funerals, Thanksgivings and Christmases with those we love most. That is hating your mother and brother.

By going into missions, I recognize that it will most likely mean living apart from my children in the future as either we will remain overseas or they will continue on in their own mission work as many missionary kids do. That is hating your mother and brother.

By going into missions, we continue to build friendships during our training with many whom we will have to again say good-bye to. That is hating your mother and brother.

By going into missions, we are taking our children away from the comforts of America as well as their extended family and taking them into an environment and culture that we are unfamiliar with. That is hating your mother and brother.

When Jesus commands that you must hate your mother and brother, he isn't being literal. But when I think about our leaving all of these things behind, I understand why he uses such a strong word to emphasize his point. Because when I really think about leaving these things, I feel such a strong urge to jut stay and not leave them. And when I have these feelings rise up in me, I know I must put them aside for what I know to be true even though my feelings don't always reflect it... and that is that following my Jesus is more worthy than being with my mother and brother, father and sister, and even [husband] and children. And when I make this choice, I feel like I'm turning off all emotions I have toward these people that I love the most. Essentially, I feel like I'm hating them.

We love these people and are sad... in our human hearts... that following Jesus means that we will miss (and have missed) special moments with them. We know, even when it is hard, that there is no one more worthy of giving our lives to than Jesus. In fact, when we really grasp it, we know it's the least we can do.

We are also thankful for modern-day technology that will allow us to stay connected with these loved ones in a way that past missionaries never were able to: planes and skype and telephones and facebook and blogs.