Just keepin' it real...

Here's a blurb from one of my favorite movies, if not my favorite, that I'd like to share. I think I've shared it previously, but I recently watched the movie again and was reminded of why I like it so much...it's a scene between Dustin Hoffman and Will Ferrell after Hoffman's character, a literary professor, has just read a masterpiece written by Emma Thompson, a depressive, fatalistic writer, prior to going to print. The book is about the life of Ferrell's character, with everything Thompson writes coming true...

From: "Stranger Than Fiction"...

DH: I'm sorry, you have to die.

WF: You're asking me to knowingly face my death?

DH: Yes.

WF: Really?

DH: Yes.

WF: I can't die right now...it's just really bad timing.

DH: No one wants to die, but unfortunately we do.

DH: You will die. You will absolutely die. Even if you avoid this death, another will find you.

DH: I'm sorry but it's the nature of all tragedies...the hero dies, but the story lives on forever...


I checked out "Stranger Than Fiction" from the library a couple weeks back(check your local library...we can get all new releases and all the old goodies for free!). Jason had gotten it from the library shortly after Noah died, but hadn't seen it since. For me, the timing in my life and the content of the story were interwoven, not to mention Thompson's character that I loved because I literally am 'commentating' life as I see it on a regular basis. It's actually frustrating sometimes because thoughts or commentaries will pop into my head that I know I should write down but either I don't have paper, I'm just drifting off to sleep, or I actually convince myself I'll remember it later when I do have access to paper or a computer, and, it mysteriously disappears from my brain cells, trapped in there tangled with all the other lost thoughts! ANYWAY, that night when I went to bed, after I had taken the time to pause the movie and scribe the above scene, I was lying there letting my brain chill out. It takes a while for me, unlike Jason who sweetly lays his head on his pillow like a little snuggly baby and starts dreamily drifting into 'Neverland'. Well, the lights had been off for a good ten minutes, Jason was out, and I yanked the chain on my light. I had a thought and had to write it. Of course, none of my journals or notepads were near my bed and I was too cold to get out to find one, but found an old envelope in my bedside table and wrote the following thoughts...

Some people have asked me if I've always been so bold...I've lost a child. Does that give me the liberty to say or do whatever the hell I want? Strangely enough, it does. It's given me license to live freely and fully, the way I was intended to live...free from other's opinions of me...focused on the eternal.

Now in sharing this, know that I don't think I can just plow over others' feelings and differing opinions. I'm not saying that. I try not to make that a general practice! But what I am saying is that death, Christ's death for all who believe, has given us all the freedom to live the way God intended us to live. Noah's death has helped me walk in that. When Jesus said that in order to live we must die, He really, truly, sincerely meant it.

I know and dearly love a woman that fears death with all of her being. She has lived in fear of so many things, not only death, and it has physically manifested in her body. It's not just old age because there are still 90+ year olds out water skiing and playing shuffle board. She is gripped by it, and the years of fearing it and her hope to live beyond 100 (not for abundant living purposes...) have literally incapacitated her. I don't know about you, but if I near 100 and am shut off from the whole world, existing, not living, I hope you won't confuse my longevity with a beautiful, long life.
Yes, people will talk about how this woman lived to over 100, but the details of the how she lived won't be the part that lives on forever.

So, since we all die, what will it take for those still out there that fear it to accept it? Will we willingly lay down at Christ's feet with our own lives, dying to ourselves, in order to begin living...I mean really, truly, sincerely, passionately, boldly, purposefully living?!

...just some random thoughts I get when I'm trying to sleep at night...