The other day, I found myself in my recliner watching Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. (It’s funny how the Lord uses “non-spiritual” things to capture my attention.) But while I watched, the Lord began stirring something in my heart.
In the movie, Alice follows the rabbit-in-the-waist-coat down a hole, where she lands in a wonderfully colorful and strange land. Shortly after arriving, she comes upon a group of talking animals arguing about whether she is the “right” or “wrong” Alice. Confused, she’s immediately led off to consult Absolem, a wise caterpillar with a smoking problem who apparently will be able to tell them who she is.
Come to find out, the “Right” Alice has the destiny of slaying the evil Red Queen’s Jabberwocky and therefore freeing everyone in Underland from her tyranny.They all look to the girl standing before them.
And Alice denies that it’s her.
Absolem concludes that she is “not hardly” the “right” Alice before disappearing behind a cloud of smoke, leaving Alice all the more confused as to how she can possibly be the “wrong” Alice when it’s her dream. Regardless, she continues on and goes through a series of events where the different characters tell her who she is (or is not) and what she should do and how she should be.
Enter the Mad Hatter.
He starts to take Alice to the White Queen, (the good queen in the story), and it’s while their walking and talking that the Lord quickly grabs my attention.
The Mad Hatter is telling her about how it’ s been foretold that she would kill the Jabberwocky and Alice says that she “couldn’t if she wanted to.” The conversation continues:
The Mad Hatter: You’re not the same as you were before. You were much more…”muchier” You’ve lost your “muchness”.
Alice Kingsley: My “muchness”?
The Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice’s heart] In there. Something’s missing.
Suddenly, I became Alice, and I knew the the Hatter was talking directly to me.
I’ve been noticing for a while that I have changed over the past several months. I’ve been slowly slipping, becoming a dormant version of myself. I’ve been reading old blogs and seeing past notes from dear friends and I’m finding that the person that I see described in those words is no longer me.
I used to be bold, confident, and free. I’d be willing to share about the Lord and all He has done in my life openly and freely. I’m not seeing those qualities in myself lately.
Just like Alice, I’ve lost my “muchness”.
Even though Alice denied that it was her destiny to go into battle on behalf of others, I think there was probably a small part of her that knew it really was. She tried to deny it, tried to convince others that she didn’t have what it takes, yet throughout the rest of the movie she continues to be put in situations where she has to make a choice whether to fight or not.
And with each step forward she takes, she unknowingly steps into her destiny.
Some of the characters try to tell her which path to take and warn her that if she diverges from that path, she will not succeed. But step away from their path she does and come to find out, that the path she chose was the path she needed to take all along. Because that’s where she finds the weapon that will help her kill the Jabberwocky, and if she had listened to the others, she wouldn’t have been equipped to fight the battle they all so desperately wanted her to fight.
It’s an amazing thing when we choose our own path, even when things don’t make sense, and everyone else is telling us to go a certain way. It’s funny how we can end up exactly where we need to be, becoming more equipped for what lies ahead, by taking our own path.
Finally, Alice is dressed for battle with the Jabberwocky, and she daces it alone. But the battle has already been foretold and she had only needed to accept her role as the champion to know that she would be victorious.
With a mighty swing of her sword, she lops off it’s head and wins the battle for the White Queen. *cue cheers from the people of Underland* After her long journey and her doubts, Alice found her “muchness” at last, and it led not only herself into freedom, but an entire country. She was the “Right” Alice after all.
Now I may just be realizing that I’ve lost my “muchness”, but like the foretelling of Alice’s destiny, I have a foretelling of my own story. The Author is amazing and He makes my story perfect. He has already won the battle for me. But I’m learning that victory is not automatic. It’s guaranteed and a for-sure solid truth that I can stand on and believe 100%.
But it’s also not just handed to me.
No, victory is a choice. It’s a choice to move forward, even when things are hard, even when things seem impossible. It’s in the journey of constantly choosing to move forward, where our destinies are fulfilled. And it’s with each choice that we find that we really do have that “muchess” after all. It was always there, we never lose it, we just have to be brave enough to choose it.
So today I’m making a choice, to choose muchness. To choose to keep moving forward, and to keep believing. And this path that I’ve been on, that “slipping” I’ve been feeling, who knows, maybe that’s the path I needed to take to be more equipped for what lies ahead.
