In watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s I was inspired. Here is a woman, Holly, who is seeking true unconditional love, but doesn’t realize it. She thinks she just wants financial security or company for a night. While in the midst of being what she calls a free spirit, in walks George, a “non-rat” man. By non-rat she is referring to a good decent guy. They meet and begin a friendship. He is there for her at every turn. Anytime she needs help he is right there by her side. He is patient, loving and kind towards her. His committed willingness to be there for Holly is a
reflection of his love for her. Yet, she seems somewhat oblivious to his love. But, anytime she is in trouble, she runs to him, finds gentle love and assistance, and then runs back to her lifestyle. She goes from man to man thinking he’s the one she can marry and then be okay. She is searching. When she finds a man she thinks is the one who will seal her security he ends up marrying someone else. Her plans are dashed and her heart is fearful. She tries to find the next one while George is standing by desperately wanting to save her from what he knows is not what her heart truly desires.
He pleads with her, begs her, tells her he loves her. Once Holly sees he truly loves her she tries to avoid him because she is afraid of love. His heart is broken because he loves her so. He just wants to be with her and for her to have what she was meant to have: knowing love. She thinks she’s secured a potential marriage to a wealthy man when she is arrested for helping a prisoner pass criminal information along to the outside world. However, she didn’t know that her receiving an actual weather report from the prisoner was code for criminal activity. The wealthy man she is supposed to marry cannot risk a relationship with her now that she’s been arrested. Once again her plans are dashed. George breaks the news to her by reading the letter the man left at her doorstep. Holly still persists she will use the plane ticket that was to carry her to Brazil, the wealthy man’s native country. Once again George pleads with her, telling her “I love you, you belong to me.” She replies, “I don’t want to be put in a cage.” George calls her chicken, says she has no guts. That she’s afraid to actual admit people can fall in love, that she can love someone. He says to her, “You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing and you’re terrified someone’s going to stick you in a cage, well baby, you’re already in that cage, you’ve built it yourself, and it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas or on the east by Somalia land or wherever you go because no matter where you end up you’ll just end up running into yourself.”
How I was inspired is this: We think we know the way to our own happiness. We don’t realize it, but we have actually placed
limits on our search due to the cages we’ve built for ourselves. We run from here to there searching. All the while God is right by our sides, gently waiting with open arms, like George. We may run to Him for a short while and then we run back to our lifestyles. Yet, He is always there still waiting to accept us and reveal to us His love. He looks at us and what we are doing or where we’re headed with desperation in His eyes, with a pleading, like George did. Because He knows what’s best for us, just like George knew what was best for Holly. It wasn’t just financial security. Her heart was made for something so much greater even if she was terrified of tasting of it. God knows He alone can offer us what our hearts truly seek, true unconditional acceptance, love and security. We can reject real love as Holly did, avoiding George once she knew his love for her. We can be afraid, afraid to truly love, to give ourselves over. But, our hearts have been destined for a love encounter like we’ve never known. She thought she was staying out of the cage. But, in fact she was keeping herself in it.
How often does God throw us obstacles so that we are forced to turn to Him, and we try and we do, but then we go back to our old ways. He throws us another one, all for love. Holly’s arrest was like another obstacle to get her to surrender to true love. Once arrested, the man she was trying to marry, denied her. Things happen to us that break our hearts, but what we often fail to realize is that those very things are God’s design to set us free. George, like God, was still standing by, picking her up from jail and once again saying, “I love you.”
We put ourselves in our own cages due to experiences from our past. We often think if we go here or there or do this or that, we’ll
be fixed, we’ll find happiness. But, just like George says, we can’t run from ourselves because it is us that needs to be set free, it is us that needs to come out of the cage. It is us that have to realize that loving will not create for us a cage, but it will cause the cage door to open and for the bird to fly out, FREE. I heard recently that the deeper you love, the more you open yourself up to hurt. Because those that can truly hurt you are those that you truly love, not so much a stranger on the street you barely know. But, if you don’t choose to keep loving and open you heart deeper and deeper, will there be parts of love you can miss out on. All for the sake of playing it safe. Help me, us, not to play it safe. Continue to push us towards LOVE as hard as it is sometimes.
