Bring your disappointments to God (Narnia movie)

lion

Have you ever been really excited about something and then when it happened, you were just disappointed? Well for weeks now, I’ve been waiting with much anticipation for The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie in 3D. I went tonight with Ray and Leah, and yes, I was disappointed – the first one was so much better!

Now don’t get me wrong. I was still glad to see dear Lucy and Edmund again (and Susan and Peter briefly). Yes, I was happy this time around that  Edmund made the smart decision to leave the Turkish Delight candies alone and to not join the white witch (although Edmund and I share a mutual love for the sweet, sugary Turkish Delights! Ray surprised me with some at home a couple years ago, and I ate nearly the entire box!).  But I digress now! 

Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy, was – as always – a delight with her freckles, accent, and sweet nature.

I was so glad that the movie addressed Lucy’s struggles with her identity, in particular her physical appearance and her attractiveness.  She stared into the mirror, envying her older, pretty sister Susan, who Lucy imagines looking like (who wouldn’t want Susan’s flawless skin and those thick red lips–they are Angeline Jolie lips!!!)   Aren’t we girls all this way, wanting what some other woman has, and NOT wanting something we already DO have that God so graciously gave us?  

Lucy asks the age-old question that all of us girls ask ourselves and other women —- but mostly we ask it of our man:  “Do you think I am beautiful?” Only one answer from him will do for her and will make her completely happy, maybe for months or years – or even a lifetime!  A different answer will destroy her heart, her very life.  And satan never wants us to discover how beautiful we are to God!   (You can read more about this interesting discussion in Staci Eldredge’s great book Captivating.)

So, no romance in this new Narnia movie…what are the writers and producers thinking? We can rest in the knowledge as women that God says our voice is always lovely to Him and our face is so beautiful to Him. That can make a girl’s whole day, ladies! (Song of Solomon 2:14)

It had been awhile since I had seen a 3D movie and our youngest daughter Leah told me that it was totally different now than the last time I’d gone to a 3D movie, acting as if I am centuries old!  I did about SCREAM when  a ball was thrown toward me from the screen during one of the commercials and I wasn’t expecting it. Ye-uh, this is definitely much more real! 

The 3D glasses are different now, too. I am telling my age now by admitting the last 3D pair of movie glasses I wore were quite flimsy, almost like paper or cardboard.  And you left the movie not quite sure what really just happened – it was kind of blurry. 

 But these are plastic frames  today, MUCH harder than the paper 3D glasses  – these are big, ugly, square, plastic glasses. Can’t the 3D glasses creators at least try to make 3D glasses in a Third-Dayish fashionable style?

Toward the end of the movie Edmund has made his righteous decisions, Lucy has come to her senses about accepting her own identity and helping another younger girl accept hers, the Narnians disappearing to the evil green mist are recovered, and the 7 lords’ swords are intact and returned as they should be.

I didn’t think I was going to get through the first part of the movie, though.  Initially I couldn’t stomach that whiny, complaining cousin Eustace and nearly wanted him to drown when the ocean water came pouring into the room from the Narnia ship picture. I didn’t feel sorry for him either, when he turned into a dragon and cried on the beach  – he almost deserved turning into a scaly, ugly dragon, being such a brat and then being so greedy for all that gold! He was very lucky to be turned back into a boy by Aslan at the end, after all!

Also, loving chic flics as I do, I was hoping for a little romance in the movie somewhere. Maybe dark-eyed Edmund finding a good woman to really love him and to help him overcome this little obsession with the witch, or Prince Caspian noticing that little Lucy is now growing up into a pretty young woman!  Lucy was begging for romance anyway, staring into the mirror all the time, wishing she was beautiful.  But no romance at all – a man must have written this one, sigh!

Then there was the bald sea captain in the movie, who I never quite trusted. He seemed to be a composite of the old Captain Kirk on Star Trek who had hair and a lot of arrogance, the new bald Captain Kirk on Star Trek with just as much arrogance, and the bald male captain who smoked cigars and yelled a lot on Top Gun.  This sea captain acted like he was almost going to EAT the poor, little innocent girl who snuck on board to desperately find her mommy, who’d been taken by the green evil fog . Or I thought he might throw the little girl overboard. But then suddenly he let her stay and gave her an orange. 

But he gave occasional hints of his emotional instability by dropping comments like, “The sea can play nasty tricks on a crew’s mind!”  (Obviously! ) and “If we don’t hurry up and find land soon, my men ARE going to eat the dragon.”  Of course since I didn’t like the whiny-complaining-bratty-cousin-boy-turned-into-dragon, I probably wouldn’t have cared much at all about that part, except that the crew might have winded up with severe indigestion after eating someone like him with his awful personality!  :O

But I just never really did like or trust the ship captain. I kept expecting him to to turn on the royal family and use them as kidnap bait to pirates who might sail by.

There were a few good lines in the movie that I enjoyed. One was “You’re all about to be tested…be strong.”

Another was, “You doubt your value – don’t run from the noble one you are.  A noble warrior doesn’t run from fear – let’s meet our destiny head on.”

These lines were about the only positive review I could think of the entire movie, other than seeing Aslan the lion (who represents God). What was worse about the disappointing movie was the family sitting behind Ray, me and Leah. Later Ray said that he was going to drive over them in the parking lot, lol.

Please understand that Ray and I are usually very nice people. But this family was SO annoying. They had one decibel – LOUD. I finally began getting out  a pen and a piece of paper from my purse to record some of the things they were doing and saying to blog about this. It was just too unreal and funny. Things they were shouting in the theatre right behind us:

“That was AWESOME!!” (a kid yelling this during a commercial that played just before our Narnia movie. His parents shushed him because he was so loud.)

“You drank it ALL!” (siblings fighting over large coke, now gone)

“Stop hitting me!” (hopefully the kids talking to each other, and not the dad and mom)

“Mom, can I go to the bathroom now?”  (this whispered loudly just as the movie starts playing!)

They also slurped their drinks and loudly chewed their popcorn and food.

Now the people who had come to the matinee before us had apparently never heard of trash cans and they simply threw their used popcorn bag, candy wrappers, soda cups, and everything else on the FLOOR beneath us. It was quite STICKY. The family in back of us must have gotten up at least four or five times to go out the door, and of course each time they were having to step over, step on, and get unstuck from popcorn bags with sticky movie theatre butter. This went on at LEAST four or five times and they TALKED while they got up, causing the rest of us to not be able to hear what was said on the screen!

Granted, I had to get up once too, but it was because our oldest daughter Heather, her husband Kyle, their two little girls, and Kyle’s family left this morning at 8 am to travel from Missouri to Mississippi all day today (12 hours of driving almost, with MANY bathroom stops, gas stops, and at least one main meal stop).  Heather was calling to let me know she was there in Missisissippi SAFELY arrived – something I asked her to do as I am praying for them. They drive the rest of the distance to Destin, FL today. 

I had a good reason for getting up in the theatre!   The people in back of us did not have good excuses and were getting up for another giant box of POPCORN. They should be directed to the Walmart to the dvd section or to Redbox rental, where they can play dvds at HOME and be as loud as they want THERE.

Another time one of the kids loudly coughed coke into Ray’s hair/neck. I thought I was going to lose it laughing right then. Ray was gracious though. What a guy! (I hope he washed his hair today.)

At any rate, I loved seeing Aslan the lion again and love when he roars. It fills my eyes with tears to see him each time.

This longer than the movie blog post does have a point. You are wondering when I’m going to get to it. Here it is.

Maybe there is something that you’ve been waiting on and had such high hopes for.  Maybe something is going on in your life that you feel really disappointed about – even just crushed. It’s not what you wanted or you thought it would be like at all.  How can this be happening ? Doesn’t God care about you?

Maybe your disappointment is from:

• your marriage
• your kids not behaving
• your finances
• your relationship that is broken and strained
• your health
• your serious emotional issues that you thought you’d worked through already
• your debt
• your friends who really aren’t there for you
• your business
• your home foreclosing
• you losing your job
• your hair – you have bad hair years!
• your sheer boredom with life – is this it?
• your hurt and feeling of aloneness inside
• your frustration with other people
• your faith/church/church leadership
• a product sale
• a work of art you’ve been working on and it isn’t turning out the way you want
• you not being able to visit someone you love
• you not getting a promotion you’ve worked hard for
• you not being able to get a pet that you want or a pet dying
• your weight yo-yoing
• you making a lower grade than hoped for on a college test

No matter what disappointments you have been through in your life, you can count on one thing. God will never disappoint you. He will never let you down.

 In fact, God has a great, exciting plan for you in 2011. (Jeremiah 29:11) He wants to bless your Christmas socks off!  (Deuteronomy 8:18, Ephesians 4:28, Malachi 3:11).  He wants to pour out His goodness on you! (2 Corinthians 9:8 and 11- The Amplified Bible).

Today bring all of your disappointments to God in prayer.  He will take them from you. He will give you beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3).  He will give you new hope. He will give you fresh dreams and purpose.

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