Living in the Tension
I had an insight into a friend’s life the other day.
She’d just come back from the Chicago International Film Festival‘s Opening Night showing of the movie Stone, starring Ed Norton (who starred in the first movie I remember that made me feel alive in a new way, waking up parts of me that had been asleep up until then: American History X) and Robert De Niro. And she was telling me that the movie was terrible… she would have left after the first 30 minutes, had she been there alone.
So I’m sitting there, thinking to myself, how could Ed Norton have made a horrible film? That’s just… not possible. And how could they have let said horrible film be the CIFF premiere?
Then my friend went on, explaining WHY the film was so horrible… There was loss, she told me… and emptiness. A void of good. Deception. Hate. And in the end, nothing got fixed– it all just left you with that awful feeling when you left the movie.
So I did some digging about the movie (which I’d been excited to see).
And it doesn’t end perfectly.
From what I can see, this isn’t a movie that people leave and go frolicking about in the pond. It’s not a movie that ends with restored relationships and pretty bows and promises of Happily Ever After.
And I love that.
I love it for the same reason my friend hates it.
I look around this world, and I see pain.
I see hurt people.
Wars
Hate
Broken hearts
Segregated peoples
Orphans
Prejudice
Injustice
Distant parents
Lonely widows
Homeless
The fearful
The lost
I see these things and it hurts. I can’t stick my head in the sand or in fancy parties or bigger houses or drugs to try to drown the wail of this wounded world.
And I have to stand up and face it. I have to look pain and hurt and brokenness in the eyes. And I have to do what I can to love. To reach across the barriers and to help.
Because frankly, not being able to go to bed at night because the brokenness in the world is haunting me and keeping me awake, is a fine price to pay, particularly when I choose to do nothing.
There’s power that comes in learning not to run from the tension, from the hard places. In learning to dwell there and breathe life into a creation that is gasping for air.
We’re in the middle of this jump… this jump from being dreadfully broken to being beautifully restored. But we aren’t meant just to float in this space between the two. We’re meant to struggle, to be frustrated, to DO SOMETHING.
As God is in the business of restoring all of creation, I shall not be any less so in the same business.
love this blog melinda. i wish you’d blog more often. you always have so much to say =)
Amen – I love that you’re an activist and that you’re doing something about the tens of thousands of bar girls stuck in the sex trade in Cambodia. We need to get upset in order to activate.
Did you ever see the movie?
This is beautifully written — Keep this up! Thanks for sharing some links too!
I love this post! I really connect with this and have tried to communicate similar thoughts in writing…but, you did a much better job! Thanks!
The tension is one of the things that makes the Gospel so appealing because it offeres hope in the midst of staggering hopelessness. Without the pain there would be no need to search for a Healer. Good words.