every beat...

the other night i went and saw Blue Valentine. the following is a report of what it did to my heart. i should say there will probably some spoilers, but they shouldn't be major (although don't hold me to that). this is what i knew going into the movie: ryan gosling was in it (WHOO-HOO!), michelle williams was in it (yay for dawson's creek alum!), and it was getting tons of oscar buzz. that's it. that's all i knew. sometimes this is my favorite way to see a movie. my expectations were minimal and i just sat and absorbed the story. the theatre went dark and the music began and i had no idea where we were going (p.s. this is also how i like to drive).

here's the cliff notes version of the plot: the story follows this couple (dean and cindy) over a seemingly ordinary weekend. they're married, they have a little girl, and clearly their lives are void of the color that used to be there. cindy's tired of feeling like the only adult in the house, dean's desperate to get back the affection his wife once offered freely. over the course of the weekend the movie flashes back to how they met. you see them fall in love; you see how they came to get married. the writers and director do an amazing job of making you really root for these two people. as the movie progresses you realize that this ordinary weekend isn't so ordinary. this is the weekend that their marriage is ending. this is the weekend when their lives are falling apart. this is the weekend when their little girl's world is changed forever.

now any of you who have seen a movie with me know that i am a crier. it doesn't take much to get the waterworks started. but this movie didn't just make me cry. as i watched it a weight settled in my heart. dean loved cindy. cindy loved dean. and yet here they were broken. i kept wanting to scream at the screen, "don't give up! work through it! you're not really listening to each other! IT GETS BETTER!" i felt like i had this secret hope that they didn't know about. i think the most devastating part was that the director didn't "hollywood up" the plot. no one cheated. no one was secretly a vampire. they just lived their lives- flawed, imperfect. their love wasn't star-crossed or special for any reason. in the beginning they chose each other. in the end they didn't.

i walked away from Blue Valentine frustrated. i walked away wishing i could rewrite a happy ending. i walked away pretty sure that marriage is the hardest thing on the planet and thinking i may never want to sign up for that marathon (i admit that is probably a slight exaggeration). but i also walked away thinking it was a pretty good depiction of a relationship with God.

we go to camp in jr. high and feel this first blush of love. we accept Jesus into our heart and we are sure that nothing will ever be able to puncture the bubble loving him puts us in. but then we live our life and pain seeps its way into everything. we get busy with school, friends, jobs, kids, tv, whatever. suddenly we aren't listening anymore. slowly we're going through the motions of our relationship. and we try to get it back. we go on retreats or hear a good sermon. we try to feel whatever it was that first brought us to the throne room of Christ. but its hard. its work. HE ISN'T SPEAKING. or maybe we're not listening. either way our attendance on Sunday morning gets more sporadic. our Bible sits by our bed collecting dust. we stop bringing our decisions and our pain and our joy to Him. we take back our life.

when the credits rolled on Blue Valentine i remembered that i'm already in a marriage. i'm in relationship with the God of the universe. i don't want to walk away. i'm never walking away.