My Body is a Cage

Friday I was a grumpy mess. At work I was pleasant and kind and everything that a good assistant ought to be, but inside I was off- majorly. Seriously, my name should have been Frazzled Franny. I could exactly put my finger on it, but as it turns out I desperately needed some alone time. I am a very social person so sometimes I forget, but that is what happens to me when I go more than a week without having a couple of hours by myself. I am irritable and quickly annoyed and generally unpleasant.

After spending a couple hours cooking and cleaning and being alone I felt more in the mood to go out to a movie with Alli and Sarah. Honestly I didn't even watch a preview for the movie, but the draw of friends and popcorn was enough. Thankfully this time we got to the theatre in time to get a seat.......hahaha. (Actually there were only a handful of us in the theatre at all). I was just so grateful that neither me or the popcorn was on the floor! :) Before the movie started all this classical, new age kind of music was playing -- including Sarah Love's "My body is a cage." As I was using the washroom before the movie started an older woman who looked like she was probably homeless and seemed to have some mental handicaps peeked in at me through the crack in the stall. She just waved. I wasn't sure whether that was the most awkward experience I have ever had or the most endearing.

The movie was called Everlasting Moments. It is a Swedish film with subtitles.


The movie was good- well made, true to life, interesting-- but it was also beyond sad!I am undecided though whether it was completely hopeless. It gave a sobering picture of a marriage gone sour. Jesus was not in it, so ultimately that eternal hope was a missing element. It was sad that something intended to bring such delight and to paint a picture of Christ to His Church was the source of such pain and brokenness and sorrow in this movie. Her husband was an unfaithful, violent alcoholic that (for whatever reason) she patiently and sometimes desperately endured along with their children. I ached for what their relationship could have been- you saw glimpses of it surface when they would dance together and yet they never could seem to stay there. The song would end and then they would return to the tragic roles they had both being playing. It made my heart hurt to watch it play out on the big screen in front of me...Incapable of stopping the maddness of their life and love.
That wasn't the way either of them wanted it to be. It wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Yet nevertheless, it was... day after day. I kept waiting for something, for someone to change but it/they never did. Their love went on like the last ember of a fire ready to go out- just barely surviving. The cosmic "WHY??" inside my head is still not settled- maybe it is my youth and idealism but I felt like something should have/could have been done to make things right, but it seemed that this couple was resigned to living that way...no hope of the other changing... too in love to leave and too miserable to stay.
So this woman copes in a beautiful and courageous way by taking pictures of the precious details around her. She was preserving those good moments, those small joys-she had to- to keep all that hardship from spoiling her. She chose to live in those moments instead of the harsh reality. Even though those moments occured in the past the pictures allowed them to remain in her memory... everlasting. That is hopeful, well almost hopeful I suppose.