FOR ANN ESPECIALLY

It's been a couple months but I had made a promise to Ann at Holy Experience that I would give her a quote from the movie Shadowlands that had to do with a post she wrote on contentment. At least, that's what I think the post was about.

Anyway, I thought others would enjoy the quote too so here's the setting. The movie is about C.S. Lewis and his wife who died of cancer. One day they decide to go find a place called the Golden Valley. There's a picture of it in Lewis' house. After they find it they go walking down the valley and barely escape a rain shower by ducking into an old stable. While it's raining they have this dialogue ~

Lewis: "You know, I don't want to be somewhere else anymore. Not waiting for anything new to happen. Not looking around the next corner, no next hill. Here now, that's enough."

Joy: "That's your kind of happy, isn't it?"

Lewis: "Yes, yes it is."

Then Joy, whose cancer is in remission at this point, broaches the subject of her impending death and her desire to talk about it with Jack. Lewis doesn't want to talk about it because he thinks it will spoil the time they're having. Joy insists though and says this ~

Joy: "It doesn't spoil it; it makes it real...The pain then is part of the happiness now. That's the deal."

Then Jack is so moved that he draws Joy into a passionate embrace. I love this movie; it has so many great lines and lessons. At the end of the movie, after Joy dies, Lewis compares his experience of losing his mother when he was a boy to the experience of losing his wife as a man. He says this ~

Lewis: "The boy chose safety. The man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal."

Even though Lewis made powerful speeches concerning suffering and the Christian before he met his wife, he had never chosen to experience it in more than a hands-off and scholarly manner. He thought he had all the answers to the 'why' questions. His wife made him get out of his shell and be real. He chose to be vulnerable and allow certain questions to go unanswered.