2 posts tagged “brokenness”
I loved the movie Juno. It was simple. It was authentic. It was a glimpse of broken folks getting better. It had great music. (I kick myself for missing Kimya Dawson's concert a couple of weeks ago here in town.)
Still, the movie was troubling--as all good movies are, at some level. What about having babies out of wedlock? The movie addresses the complications, but not the convictions, of this notion--leaving the rest of us to pick up the conversation.
In a profound article in Slate, columnist Emily Yoffe writes here about the dangerous trend that de-links procreation and marriage. Citing one letter she's received along these lines:
My boyfriend and I have a 4-year-old son. We've broken up but realized that we truly are meant for one another. My father was diagnosed with stage four cancer last year, and I've made it known to my boyfriend how important it is for me to have my father with me when I get married. When I bring up marriage to my boyfriend his reply is we will get married, I promise, but he has not asked me.
And then, towards the end, she describes a scene from the movie and concludes with a significant challenge:
There is a scene in the teen pregnancy movie Juno in which the title character, a 16-year-old who has decided not to abort her unplanned baby but to give it up for adoption, is having an ultrasound. The technician, thinking she has on the examining table another knocked-up teenager planning to raise her child, makes disparaging remarks about children born into those circumstances. We are supposed to loathe this character and cheer when Juno's stepmother puts her in her place. But I found myself sympathetic to the technician. Why is it verboten to express the truth that growing up with a lonely, overwhelmed mother and a missing father is a recipe for childhood pain?
In an ode to suffering we all can relate to, John Mayer writes in one of his ballad tunes:
When you're dreaming with a broken heart;
the waking up is the hardest part.
Waking up is indeed the hardest part. Wake up, O Sleeper! Rise from the dead! And Christ will shine on you!
