Skip to the end...

"Skip to the ennnd..." say Prince Humperdinck, as the impressive (and long-winded) clergyman drones on in the wedding ceremony to unite him and Princess Buttercup, in the movie, "The Princess Bride."

Later, Buttercup's true love Wesley asks her, "Did you say 'I do'?"  to which Buttercup replies, "No, we sort of skipped that part."  

"Then it didn't happen.  If you didn't say it, you didn't do it."

When I first got into this process of healing I wanted everything to happen at once. I wanted God to hurry up and fix me so that I could get on with my life, maybe even so that I could point to that healing and tell others He could "zap" them too.

But it didn't work like that.  Inner healing was a slow process for me, a long road of unlearning all the faulty beliefs and old patterns of thinking that had gotten me to the place I was in.  It was clear to me - I needed help.  But instead of skipping over the hard stuff, the messy stuff, I learned (to my chagrin) that I was going to have to go through it instead.  My sole source of comfort was that I wasn't going through it alone.  God would be with me, and He had put someone in place who had been through the same process before me, so that I could get free of the things that had bound me for decades.  

I like mythic tales - the kind that pit good against evil ... and where good always wins.  I watch things that build me up inside, give me hope.  I need stories that build up faith.  I think everyone does.  The great ones are those in which the foe seems insurmountable but in the end, the villain is vanquished. I need to be reminded that (as my daughter tells me) everything will turn out all right in the end - and if it's not all right, it's not the end. 

I saw a rather strange movie about 2 years ago or so.  Little did I know it would be heraldic in my life as I lived through some of the things I've gone through in the last 2 years.  It was called "Click."  In it our hero is given a remote control which he can click if he is in a situation he wants to skip over.  He has done this a few times when he starts to realize that when he does this, his life goes on "autopilot" and he misses the one thing that could have made the difference between a mediocre life and a great one.  He misses the opportunities along the way to live "intentionally."  To go through the experience and learn.  To feel the pain, yes, but to experience the joy as well.  He learns - almost too late - that life is to be lived through, every day cherished.  

The joy of living through it, of feeling those feelings, of walking the path, is that one can reach back into that place where others may be still stuck, wondering if there's any way out, and in compassion say, "I know what that feels like.  It does get better."

And it does.