be-musings

Tonight I saw the movie Hitch. One line really struck me. The premise of the movie is that Will Smith's occupation is a "date doctor". He arranges for men to meet with women whom they are in love with, and coaches them through the first few dates, as they hope this will be the woman they are with forever. He himself is a commitment phobe, due to an experience earlier in life. In one scene he's talking to a woman while he's "stoned" on Benadryl and drifting off to sleep. She tells him about a near death experience she witnessed, when her sister fell through the ice on a pond. Those kinds of things change life forever, they agreed. In his stupor he drifted for a moment into his memory of betrayed love without really telling the details. She looked at him and said "It leaves a scar". There was that moment where they understood what wasn't said. He was afraid to love again and so was she. I don't remember the exact next line, but she said something like "Makes you not want to love again", and he mumbled "or not skate". Those lines struck me. It seemed perfectly logical for him to be afraid to fall in love again, but not so logical for her not to ever skate (at least in an arena).
Sometimes we get so afraid of what we have experienced that we close ourselves off to ever experiencing it again. And we trade in part of our sanity and part of who God has made us to be because we are afraid. Sometimes we cloak it so much that we aren't even sure why we have fears and we even forget specifically what they are. Occasionally we hear or see something that puts it all in perspective for us and we realize we have a choice. To continue to give in or to stand up and move ahead.