I've always had something of a strong reaction to movies and books.

Case in point: When I was around 12 or so I read "Knee-Knock Rise" by Natalie Babbitt. Well I guess I read more like half of it because it was seriously the scariest book I'd ever attempted to read. I remember just shaking uncontrollably in the bathroom at 1 a.m., trying to smother the sounds of my own sobs. 

It sounds overly dramatic, I know. But at the time it seemed that my irrational fear of fictional characters trumped the lack of sleep I would have to deal with the next day by spending the night in the tub with all the lights turned on.

 

It's the same with movies. "Marley and Me" was a disaster, but thankfully the witnesses to that breakdown were only my parents. 

I wasn't so lucky my sophomore year of college when "My Sister's Keeper" threw me over the edge. My poor roommates didn't know what hit them. Well, more accurately, what hit me (which I'm sure resembled a typhoon).

So tonight after a viewing of "The Ides of March" I'm feeling out of sorts. It wasn't a sob story, although in a way it really was. The waterworks didn't gush forth, but I'm just super bummed. 

"It's just a movie, Becca," my dad says. 

Yeah, I know. 

But what are movies and books if not truth bearers? Alright, so some are really only for entertainment purposes. But some, for example "The Ides of March", are much more. Human nature took a heck of a beating from this movie and I guess that's what has me in a funk. 

Imagine this for a moment:

One plaid- clad (poet and didn't know it) girl curled up in bed around her laptop, trying to pull herself from the depths her most resent film viewing has sent her to. Her feet are freezing and its way past her bedtime. She knows that if she stays awake for much longer, 6:50 is going to come around far too quickly. 

It's that dang movie. She's realizing, not for the first time, that truth can hurt. 

The last notes of "The Girl" by City and Colour fade from her laptops speaker and a silence ensues that makes this girls dark thoughts even murkier. But then behold! Yet another truth bearer appears, this time in the form of music. "Hope for the hopeless" by A Fine Frenzy. 

The characters in "The Ides of March" really are hopeless, and the ending gives no sense of redemption or comfort. But what I didn't find in that movie, I found in a song that wouldn't be considered lyrical genius by any means. 

But I guess that's the really awesome part. As well done as that movie was, and how well it portrayed a certain truth about brokenness, it did not convey the truth that'll get me to sleep tonight. 

A simple song that would have to be played over and over countless times in order to reach the length of "The Ides of March" is what pulled me from that hole to realize (again, not for the first time) that where the film ended is not where it ends for us as God's children. 

Yes, we are all the awful, horrible things portrayed in that movie. 

But thanks be to Him who doesn't leave us there. Him who takes us as we are and molds us into the vessels we were always meant to be. 

And for that, I am and will do my best to always be, a grateful piece of clay in the Makers hands.