So I'm watching the movie "Frozen" for the first time right now. My cousin bought a subscription to Disney+, and she wanted to share the magic with me, so she gave me her password, and this is the first thing I thought of watching . I've watched almost the entire movie through with clips and previews, but I've never just sat down and watched the entire thing from beginning to end, and a lot if things struck me.
First, it must be terrifying to be like Elsa, to have powers that you don't understand. Everything she touches freezes. That must he horrible. She is taught she can create beautiful things, like snow covered frozen trees and fields. These are beautiful. But also she can hurt those she loves the most. She can freeze them and effectively freeze them to death, kill everything she touches. Conceal your powers. Don't feel the pain, learn to control it.
And what does she get? An empty existence where everything around her is cold and frozen, but she's gotten used to it, and the cold never bothered her anyway. So what has she lost? Nothing, if she really had nothing to begin with.
Last week I tried to talk to some people in my church. I tried to make them understand why people like me, broken people, might be afraid of church, might be hesitant to go to church at all, because we've only seen the worst that the world has to offer, and we know nothing of grace and the beauty it could bring to the world. It went badly, I'll say. I didn't say it right, and I don't think they understood. Sometimes I think I don't understand either. I know abuse and fear and timidity and pain, but not much that gives me hope.
So if you'll remember, a million years ago, I started writing about a writer called Robert Dunbar and his books, and how though they're full of horrible things, they give me hope, because they point toward something bigger than my fear and my horror, something good, something worth fighting for.
My cousins and I, we know of fear and horror and bad things. We know of all the bad the world has to offer, but we used to play together in the fear and the muck when we were kids, and we would always hope for something better. I remember once wading through a swamp with my cousins Nikki and Derek and Tommy and having a long conversation about how so many things were horrible in our lives, but as we stepped on leeches and snakes and rotten things, we hoped to come out on the other side and find something better. Something better than we ever hoped we could find in our worlds of darkness and poverty and pain.
So now, as a 30...almost 40 something, this movie means more than it ever would have meant to 10 year old me, who could never hope for anything bigger than the tiny world I had known. Today my cousin told me about how she felt hopelessness as a kid, but when she met me she learned to hope for more than she could see, because I had a whole imaginary world I played in where anything was possible, and she said that thanks to me, she viewed something she couldn't see before, some future and some hope.
Jeremiah 29:11 is a promise that God has a plan for our lives, a plan to give us a future and a hope. At one point in my life, I remember lying naked on a floor in the dark, and I had nothing, literally nothing to live for, and I couldn't even pray, because all I could see was darkness, and I couldn't find any words to say, but I remembered Jeremiah 29:11 and a future and a hope, so I said that, over and over, rocking back and forth and hugging my knees to my chest.
I want to write more about these experiences, but before I can even do that, I feel like I have to lay the foundation for why it's so important to me. Horror movies and books and stories have always resonated with me, because I knew so much dark and evil, but in those stories, people would try to fight the evil with whatever they had. Maybe they lost, but at least they tried. I've been given so much crap all my life for loving horror movies. I've even been told that in my heart I know Jesus doesn't want me to watch those movies, and I try to make excuses because I don't really love him.
First of all, fuck you. Second of all, did it ever occur to anyone that sometimes people like horror movies because their life experiences look more like a horror movie than anything else? Maybe we need to see that people can fight evil. No one is saying everyone has to like horror, or even understand it, but it would be nice if people didn't shit all over the only thing that has helped me through the darkest times in my life. Even before I had words to explain why, I loved seeing people fight monsters. It gave me hope that I could fight them, too.
When I was little I did that, I created worlds in my mind where people were strong and where people stood up against evil and won, because that's what I hoped would happen, that people would fight the evil and win. I had to believe there was a parting between me and the evil, that there could be a way out. I saw the evil, the bad things I could do, that we all could do, and it made me afraid, but I had to believe there was a possibility that I could do good too, or there was no hope, and I should give up now.
So when Elsa sang this, I felt it in my heart:
The snow glows white on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I'm the queen
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I've tried
Don't let them in, don't let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know
Well, now they know
Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don't care what they're going to say
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway
Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
Let it go (go, go, go go, go go, go go, go, go, go go)
Let it go
Let it go
Let it go
It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I'm free
Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry
Here I stand and here I stay
Let the storm rage on
My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I'm never going back, the past is in the past
Let it go
The cold never bothered me anyway
Let it go, let it go
And I'll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand in the light of day
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway...
Girl, tell me about it! I got so used to the cold at some point that I'm sure these could have been my words. And those who should nurture and protect me had gotten so used to the cold that they saw nothing wrong with providing me gear to survive the cold instead of trying to make it warmer...
See, in therapy we hear the warnings about this. Trying to learn to like the cold instead of trying to warm things up. See. The abused people try to learn to like the cold as it is, instead of trying to make it be warmer. We try to learn to adapt to the cold around us instead of trying to change it. It's a whole big thing, learning to identify in our lives things that need to change instead of letting them stay awful and being stuck in our past patterns of abuse and horror. So anyway, I've heard this song before, how I should learn to use who I am to get me through the bad, instead of letting who I am make me stronger and protect me for whatever is to come to change the bad and make it better.
It's scary, leaping into the unknown and trusting that who you are will guide you through, no matter what happens.
So Robert Dunbar (remember him?) Wrote this whole long story across three books that I'll hope you follow me through to read about, because it's horrifying and yet beautiful in its horifyingness, but one thing that it says above all else is that sometimes horrible things happen, and we are hurt, but we can find beauty in the brokenness. This is why I see a pattern between all the frozen brokenness and all the good that can come after, when all the broken pieces put themselves together and people can weather what remains of the storm together.
I know, I'm nuts. But I've lived 38 years with this broken beautifulness, and if I've learned anything, it's that God is bigger than me, and he can shine his truth though the darkest night. That's probably a messed-up thing to draw as a conclusion between myself and the unknown, but I'm trusting that god is bigger than me, and that God can reach through the darkness and find light where I don't see any light. He's good at doing that. So let us trust God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Eileen and Robert Dunbar, and all of us. The God that is bigger than us is capable of everything, so let us trust that And read and write, and not be afraid.
Amen.
