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Overrated

I don’t enjoy watching movies. There. I said it.

I don’t like movies. I don’t!

If given the choice, I would rather be outside hiking, sitting around a table sharing good food and conversation with friends, or reading a book in bed. Movie watching is not high on my list of priorities. If I must watch one, I’d prefer it to be because I am stuck at home with a fever and a snotty nose. Even then, I will probably have a magazine in my hand at the same time so I don’t become too invested. And that’s the problem. I. Am. Invested. Watching movies, like everything else in my life, is an emotional endeavor. After the credits roll I am usually a snotty mess of tears, ready to take up arms and fight a militia, or still laughing over jokes from the first scene. And of course, I want to talk about it all.

Ryan doesn’t like this. One of his biggest pet peeves in life is people who immediately analyze the movie for the whole world to hear as they walk out of the theater. He likes to wait and process the movie in the car, not giving any emotional indication to our fellow patrons about whether the movie made us laugh or cry. I find this infuriating. At the end of a good movie, I want the whole audience to stand to their feet, applaud, and give each other handshakes and hugs as we acknowledge the movie’s brilliant ending! But this gets me to the real reason I don’t like going to the movies. I don’t like how most movies end.

One time I paid money to watch Tom Hanks survive a plane crash, spend four years on a deserted island, fight his way back out to sea, go nearly insane at the loss of his best friend, Wilson (a volleyball, which left even grown men weepy), and finally get rescued, only to find out his one true love had gotten married and there were now cell phones. As the credits roll, Tom Hanks stands pensively at a crossroads debating his uncharted future. Ryan thought it was a brilliant ending. But I sat there dumbfounded. Listen up, Hollywood: I don’t have enough emotional energy to dream up my own endings, much less yours. Give it to me all figured out, with a bow and a happily-ever-after, please. Because if I am going to sit down and watch something for ninety-five minutes, I need it to end properly. My kind of properly. No guessing games, mystery, or poetic interpret-it-yourself endings. I like a movie that ends with snapshots on the screen during the credits, still shots complete with subtitles telling you exactly what happened next and how the characters’ lives all worked out. “Jack and Jill got married. Had three babies. Traveled the world and died peacefully in their sleep at age eighty-seven.” Aaaah, and thank you. An ending I can live with.

Wrap it up in a pretty bow. I don’t care how cheesy, inartistic, or unrealistic it is. Give me a happy ending with no question marks. This is the kind of movie I want, because truth be told, this is the kind of life I want. Everything in me longs for happy endings and pretty bows—a life without question marks.

My pastor friend Jackie had some thoughts about how my movie might end. I swear they were some of the worst thoughts a pastor has ever offered up to me.

We were sitting in her living room one night when she asked, “What do you want God to do?”

Translation: How do you want this to end? What answer are you looking for? Where do you hope God shows up and makes Himself known in your story? Our community was big on story and big on God showing up in the story. And I knew what the happily-ever-after of my story should look like.

I spoke without hesitation: I wanted money.

I didn’t need to be rich. Or even upper middle class. I just wanted enough money to pay the bills. The lack of money issues would give me the freedom to focus on my music and writing and loving people well. Things I felt created to do. I just wanted to go a month without secretly trying to sell my fancy china on Craigslist. For a while, my only prayer had been, God, I want to be financially restored. I want to be the kind of grown woman who can pay the bills at the end of each month. Not big bills for fancy cars or even a house. Just rent on the apartment and insurance. Not the lottery, just wiggle room. I told Jackie that was how the movie was supposed to end for me.

The picture book at the end of my movie would reveal snapshots of a couple who came home to a cute little house. There would be pictures scrolling through the credits of grown-up cars and a house full of sparkling appliances. The big red bow was money. And money, deep down, meant security. That was the happily-ever-after that I really wanted. A safe and secure way to live out the rest of my days, completely void of ever having to truly trust God for my manna again. Because the whole “trusting God for manna” bit? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Lesson learned, humility taught. Now let’s move on to, say, learning the gifts of hospitality or generosity with my newfound exorbitant wealth, shall we?

My pastor’s voice broke in: “Jenny, what if you never have money?”

You could literally feel the air being sucked from the room. My husband looked down at his feet. Jackie’s husband, Steve, looked at us with compassion in his eyes as if he knew we were being confronted all over again with the letting go, the death, the burying of it all. I was filled with anger. I still remember feeling physically angry when she spoke those words. Ryan just felt sad. It had never occurred to us that it might always be this way.

“What if you never have money, Jenny? What if for the rest of your life, you live paycheck to paycheck? What if each month you find yourself wondering if you can pay the bills or not? Then what?”

I was crushed. I wanted God to swoop in, intervene, and bring to pass what I really needed and wanted the most. Wouldn’t God get more glory if this story could be wrapped up with a big, shiny red bow? Wouldn’t it be amazing to get to the other side of the loss of our finances and the end of my first career and be able to say, like Job did, I’ve been restored over and again? I thought the happy ending would come when the finances were resolved, the career was restored, and I got back to chasing the same dreams, perhaps in a nicer car. Problems solved and pathways made straight and big, shiny red bows stuck onto my happily-ever-after.

Weren’t these the things a good pastor should scripturally promise me? Abundance and restoration and prosperity! Didn’t God want me to be prosperous?

If I were a pastor, I would hand this answer out like candy to any broken, hurting person who walked through my office door or sat in my sanctuary. If I ran a game show, I’d do the same thing. I would rig the wheel. Anyone who spun my wheel-of-fortune would land on the bonus spot AND get the dream vacation to the Fiji Islands. There would be no bankrupt, double-or-nothings, or blank spots on my wheel—only happy, predictable endings. Good thing I’m not a pastor.

I believe God is all-powerful, holy, and completely sovereign. He can do anything He wants whenever He wants. But God’s sovereignty in my life has always played out in a chorus of free will, sin, and the state of brokenness in which we live as humans. That means sometimes I see God show up in profound and divine ways. Other times, I can’t see God’s hand changing or shaping the situation at all; I only feel God’s presence standing strong with me, carrying me, as I move forward. It’s very Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”1 The valley doesn’t disappear and sometimes the healing doesn’t happen on earth in the broken body, but the presence of God draws near. The constant presence of God, leading me with His very Spirit, is capable of overcoming the pain of now. The constant presence of God, dwelling within me, is capable of guiding me into a peace that passes any understanding. Peace that comes without all the answers and shiny red bows.

My friend Jennie Allen says it beautifully in her book Anything: “The story is just not over yet. All the battles aren’t fought and tied up with pretty little bows. God is still blowing through this world on a mission, securing his people, establishing his kingdom, reconciling the hurt and the damage the enemy has caused.”2

That night Jackie was speaking the hard words that a good pastor speaks. She was reminding me that I would never find the ending I was looking for here, because the story does not end here—on earth. She was asking me to wrestle with what every saint must wrestle with: If God doesn’t step in and divinely change where I find myself on this piece of broken earth, do I still trust Him? Can I still live my story well? Perhaps, she suggested, an answered prayer is not the answer after all.

Perhaps Jesus Himself is the only answer we will ever get. The living, breathing embodiment of all things being made new in the midst of a really broken world. The Bible, if nothing else, is the most epic story of redemptive beauty ever written.

But even with Jesus, the redemptive beauty didn’t come the way the Jewish people thought it would, all battle cry and king-like. The beginning and ending of Jesus’s life didn’t happen the way anyone expected, with pretty bows and happily-ever-afters. His story, all backwards, has surprised people ever since.

My favorite retelling of the story of Jesus comes from a wild bunch of unruly, unchurched siblings in the beloved children’s book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The Herdmans were the worst kids in the whole history of the world, and yet when they finally came face-to-face with the story of Jesus, they were appalled that Mary was sent to the barn and Jesus was wrapped up in dirty sheets and stuck in a feeding trough (much like their little sister Gladys, whom they stuck in a bureau drawer). Once learning about this completely backwards story, the Herdmans spent their time in church trying to rewrite the Christmas pageant.

You would have thought the Christmas story came right out of the FBI files, they got so involved in it: wanted a bloody end to Herod, worried about Mary having her baby in a barn, and called the Wise Men a bunch of dirty spies. And they left the first rehearsal arguing about whether Joseph should have set fire to the inn, or just chased the innkeeper into the next country.3

The answer God gave us was Jesus. And Jesus came as a defenseless baby to a young, poor, newly married couple in the dark of night. Why should our answers look any different? More often than not, the story works itself out like Jesus, all backwards, without shiny bows and the happily-ever-after we originally dreamed up.

Jackie was right. I am no longer grieving, burying, and wandering through the wilderness. New life has come. But we still struggle to pay the bills. Maybe we always will. And that’s okay. Maybe my restoration has nothing to do with money or security. Maybe God is in the business of restoring in ways that are completely other. Maybe the answer isn’t ever getting the answer, but getting the Savior. Emmanuel, God with us. The Way, the Lamp unto my feet and Light unto my path, the One who is teaching me joy, peace, and purpose in the midst of my broken pieces of earth.

Once we have arrived, with answers in hand and pretty bows, we no longer feel the urgent need to abide in the rich nourishment and companionship of the Savior. And what a loss it would be to give up rich companionship with God because I “arrive” and no longer find myself in need of the vine. I like it this way, the not-quite-arrived way. It is here that I have learned how to live alongside Christ—free and full.

If I have come to know anything new during this season of becoming, it is this: more often than not, we do not get the answer we want. It is in the midst of those less-than-perfect endings that my pastor’s question stands as a stark call to faith.

Can I live my story well even if _____ doesn’t happen?

Happily-ever-after is overrated. The frayed pieces of dreams and unanswered prayers are reminders that sometimes things work themselves out the way that Jesus Himself did, in dirty barns, in darkness, on the run, and completely unbecoming.

Turns out, in the unbecoming moments, we are becoming.