In addition to being an all around great person, I love and adore old movies. You know…the ones that were filmed during the good old days. 🙂 They don’t necessarily have to be black and white (but, don’t you just love the drama!), but how can something from the 30’s not capture you’re attention. (Psst…that’s the 1930’s. Like 80 years ago…)
The movie “The Lost Weekend” is a Billy Wilder movie that won 4 Oscars at the 1946 awards show, including Best Writing in a Screenplay, Best Leading Man, Best Director and Best Picture. (Check out http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037884/awards for the other awards it won!). It stars a bunch of people that most young’uns haven’t heard of, but should.
Here’s the plot: Don Birnam, long-time alcoholic, has been “on the wagon” for ten days and seems to be over the worst; but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother Wick and girlfriend Helen, he begins a four-day bender. In flashbacks we see past events, all gone wrong because of the bottle. But this bout looks like being his last…one way or the other. (Thank you IMDB…my summaries would be pages!) And, who doesn’t love the name Wick???
What occured to me about this movie this weekend (and, don’t worry…I didn’t go on a bender this weekend. Just the opposite…sort of…) is how sometimes we just have to ‘get away from it all’ to see what’s really happening, to see the pictures, the flashbacks and uncover the path behind you. Instead of just letting what happened inform me, I had been fighting the present, struggling where I was now with no idea why. This was my last weekend. And, I got un-lost. I don’t know if found would be the appropriate word yet. But, locating the bread crumbs to follow is definitely helping.
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been struggling lately with so many things. Disjointed, split down the middle and double-minded are the things that have come up during prayer time. There have even been some physical manifestations of this. A friend of mine told me she heard I need ‘confidence and clarity’ and I almost started crying, because it was so true! As I was trucking along the Race preperation, I have gotten completely tied up in scrambling to please God. It started to feel like if I chose wrong, He wouldn’t love me or shower me with His favor. That He would turn His back on me because I didn’t do what He wanted.
What a cool, fresh breeze when I realized yesterday that those words are a BIG FAT LIE! That fear was operating at a level that I didn’t even know. God creates us for special purposes. And, He does it in a way that we get to do what makes us happy ~ because it makes Him happy! We may resist at first and come up with a million earthly reasons why we shouldn’t. But, as another friend of mine said ~ if God has something planned for you, there’s nothing you or anybody else can do to stop it from happening. I suppose that’s one benefit to being the Creator, huh??? 🙂
So, no answers yet for me but at least I know where I’m coming from now. Thankfully, I can now stop fighting the ‘wrong’ choice, abide in my Lord and know that all will be well.
~with joy!~
