House on the Rock

An email popped up from this trendy little long-abandoned blogsite. Subject line: Writing Prompt. Message Text: What are your top ten favorite movies?

I sighed. That’s not really a writing prompt. I’m also not really a movie person. My fatal flaw is that I don’t like to watch anything I haven’t seen before, because the time feels too precious, and what if I hate it? That’s two hours wasted. I can’t get those back.

So I resign myself to the ones I’ve seen over and over. Nothing sad or full of death, for obvious reasons. Nothing that follows the all-too-common plot of a parent with cancer. Nothing with superheroes or forces or fighting — that bores me. No blood or gore, not raunchy, nothing scary, never new.

All things considered, this doesn’t seem like the prompt to get me back in the writing game. But after recognizing it’s been months since giving even the most basic of blog updates, I let the website have its way. I crack my knuckles and watch pink-painted nails skim Macbook keys as I think. Kicking and Screaming, because that was the DVD in the back of my parents’ minivan for every roadtrip from ages 7-12, and I could tell you not only every Will Ferrell line, but also the exact drumbeat of background music as Italian butcher-shop apprentices dominate the world of youth soccer. Then there’s The Proposal, a timeless classic that becomes more brilliant with every click of Sandra Bullock’s heels. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days — no explanation needed. And despite my typical aversion to action, Top Gun Maverick.

That’s it. That’s my list of ten. I’m not particularly proud of it, nor do I wish to expand upon it. I do not feel that my already-full life is yearning for such risk that I would willingly sacrifice an evening for a movie that, very likely, won’t become a regular in my rotation. Nor do I need to add complex feelings to my often-erratic emotional patterns. I can cry about plenty on my own, thank you. No need for a fictional dying dog.

And therein lies the heart of my movie-watching preferences: I love avoiding hard things. Other than the agony of Sandra Bullock leaving her executive assistant at the altar in Alaska, nothing in these movies puts me in any position to suffer. In a similar vein, I’ve been on a long streak of avoiding anything painful or unpleasant, likely due to an idolatrous love of comfort. I can so easily fall into two different ditches: 1) everything is pain, or 2) nothing is.

Lately, it’s been the latter, as I catch myself again and again ignoring anything mildly unpleasant — news of a sick friend, reminders of my mother’s death, betrayal or brokenness or lonely hearts around me. No sad movies — you already know this. No pictures of the past, Mom included or otherwise. No thinking of loss, grief, dying, death. No reading old journals. No hard conversations. No sleep-training or putting Luke back in the nursery — too hard. I don’t want to experience anything hard! I have been refusing to let myself consider the reality of a suffering world, so I mask every news I hear with, “it’s not that bad,” or “I’m sure they’re fine.”

While this might seem like a life of choosing joy, it also keeps me, often, from falling at the feet of Jesus and begging for mercy and help. It convinces me I can stride in my own strength. It fails to remember that I am completely desperate for God’s guidance and grace with every breaking dawn.

It can be so tempting to say, “It’s all good” and move on. But how does that beckon me to the fold of our Father?

I’m still not going to watch a sad movie. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll get back into that old practice of lament. I’ll cry out about injustice like the Psalmists. I’ll let myself feel all the weight and pain of a sin-cursed world and I won’t mask it with cheap euphemisms that seldom tell the whole story.

This got deeper than I expected (curse you, blogsite writing prompts!) but also served as a sweet reminder that all of life is a balance: mourning and dancing, and while there’s nothing wrong with dancing, I don’t want to run so far from mourning that I never run to God.

And with that, I think it’s time to go watch The Proposal.