So what is your favorite movie genre? Comedy? Romance? Drama? Science Fiction? Mystery? Or a combo like Rom-Com or a Dramedy? I would venture to say that most people have a favorite that they will gravitate toward when picking a movie. As for me, I have a great affinity for a very specific category when looking for a movie to invest my time into….the epic narrative. The category that houses films like The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Marvel Universe, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, The Patriot, Braveheart, and Gladiator. Basically, the tried and true “Good versus Evil” story, where in the end, justice prevails and those oppressed by the villainy are set free. Contained within these types of films are all the other movie categories in a one stop shop. To me, they are truly magical stories.
Whether it is the science fiction of Star Wars, fantasy of Harry Potter or the eerily possible dystopia of The Hunger Games, what draws people to stories like these is that we see our shared human experience in them. We can relate to the genuine internal and external struggles of the characters in them….whether it be within families, friendships, or romances….perhaps even all of these relationships at the same time. And in spite of where each of us fall in our beliefs, when we take time to pause and think on it, we yearn for justice over evil and want to do our part to help that happen. Desire for eternal goodness is planted in our very DNA.
Sadly, in the world we live in, justice seems to be illusive. From my vantage point, it often seems as evil has the upper hand and that darkness might swallow us. Human trafficking is an exponentially growing and thriving business, our wars on drugs and terror are still raging, people continue to die from starvation and disease, families fall apart, and race, ethnicity, and choice of faith continue to be reasons to hate our fellow human. In my roles as a daughter, wife, mom, sister, friend, and human, I struggle daily as to what I can do… to not only “hold the line” against evil, but to take ground from it. But how?
Over the last several years by God’s amazing grace alone, I have been enabled to develop the habit of waking up early before the rest of my family is awake. This habit has been truly transformational in how I live my life. Does this bring a charming picture to your mind….like the Folgers coffee commercials from the 1980s where the person waking up to drink the coffee looks like the most joyful person alive? Birds are starting to chirp, a beautiful sunrise in on the horizon, a steaming cup of coffee sitting in front of a woman who couldn’t be happier that another day is dawning. Cue the song….”The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.” While the chirping birds, sunrise and steaming cup of coffee are accurate parts of the picture, the picture of this woman isn’t.
To be bluntly honest, when the alarm goes off every morning, my first thoughts are usually filled with either grumbling, complaining, anger or just outright sadness and despair. I’m not thinking “Thank you Jesus for another day”. After snoozing for the first time, I lay there in denial that another day is ahead. I know by the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time the alarm has gone off that it’s actually happening. It’s time to get going. I begrudgingly get out of bed and make my way to the coffee pot before heading into my chosen quiet place. And this is where the war begins…the war over my identity and allegiance.
Most mornings I end up a snotty, blubbering, and weeping mess with my face to the ground surrounded by a slew of used tissue….a classic case of our modern term “the ugly cry”. For the longest time, I believed that something was truly wrong with me because this just kept happening morning after morning. I just couldn’t seem to move past this mountain. I greatly desired to wake up and truly be thankful for the day and all the many facets of life that are beautiful. My desire and my reality were not on the same page….heck, they weren’t even in the same library. But one morning, the lightbulb went off and I heard the still small voice of Holy Spirit whisper “Your weeping is your weapon”. While I didn’t like it, that truth gave a deep purpose and profound hope to the storm raging inside. There wasn’t something wrong with me, this storm was my part in the unseen war of good versus evil. Because of Whose image we are created in, every human in history has taken part in this war. It’s the ultimate battle between truth and lies, between justice and oppression, between freedom and slavery between love and hate. The choice we face with each thought we have is “Who’s side are you on?”. As C.S. Lewis so adequately put it, “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”.
Without doing a formal survey, I would guess most people would be on the side of truth, justice, and freedom and would want lies, oppression and slavery to be exposed punished, and abolished. But the proverbial “Million Dollar Question” is WHO determines what truth, justice, and freedom are? We now live in a time where these have become relative to each individual person. We have taken the saying “Beauty is the eye of the beholder” and applied it to truth, justice, and freedom. The problem with building on the foundation of relativism is that the issues that plague us can never be solved through it. It is a house built on sinking sand because it is built upon the limited understanding and continually shifting priorities of mortal, non-omniscient humans.
I lived in that sinking house for years. I yearned for truth, justice, and freedom in my own life. As the only child of divorced parents, I had many wounds that I instinctually knew could be healed. Joy and peace were real and valid desires encoded into the very genetic code of my being. So I determinably set out to make that a reality. There was just one problem that was infinite in size …..I was using a faulty map to get there. In fact, it wasn’t just faulty in the “innocent mistake” sense of the word, it was produced in a factory of lies I had been told and followed as truth.
Dallas Willard has defined truth as reality and then went on to say reality is what you run into when you are wrong. And in 2008, I collided with reality when my first child was born and the economy crashed. These two life changing events were like having a head-on collision with an immovable stone wall at 100mph. The map of lies had led me along a destructive road encouraging me to believe I was capable of determining the outcome of my life’s circumstances. And there is nothing quite like parenting and financial stress to destroy the lie of control, the lie of self-realization. Utter destruction brings immense pain and with immense pain comes a flood of tears.
So here we are almost 15 years later and the tears are still flowing…the Kleenex Wars continue. But unlike the warfare of our seen world where the intent is to conquer your enemy by annihilating them, the Kleenex Wars are about intentionally surrendering to my perceived enemy in order to uncover the real enemy. And just like darkness submits to the reality of light, once the real enemy is exposed, it falls under the dominion of the exposure and the battle is instantaneously won.
These tears are born out of pain and suffering that came from family, friends, strangers as well as from a multitude of my own choices. And as bizarre, foolish, or Polly-Anna as it may sound, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t trade one of them or the circumstances that made them possible. They have been the water source to grow the victorious garden of surrender. From this garden comes the fruit of supernatural, transcendent peace and infectious joy that can be used to feed other weary and hungry warriors from the table of Christ’s radical, redemptive grace.
“The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4
Isaiah 61:3, Psalm 23:5, Psalm 62:8, Proverb 3:5-6, Psalm 126:5-6, Isaiah 12:2-3,
Jeremiah 17:5-8, Matthew 7:24-27, John 8:31, John 15:5, Hebrews 4:15-16, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 147:3, Revelation 12:11, Psalm 126:5-6, Isaiah 2:4