Marvel Movie Commitment

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It was a Marvel Movie for heaven’s sake.  But like my friend Joe says, I am a  softie. 

The movie was about a bunch of misfits who are determined to love a very hard-to-love person.

That little unconventional community changed a life, it made it not only better, but through belonging, sweet.  How?  They went and found him in the midst of the mess he had made—and that was no easy task.  It was hard.  It took sacrifice. It was downright painful at times.  It forced the upbraiding of long avoided memories in the community.  The pain of the wounded was simply too familiar.  In Marvel Movie style, during a major, earth altering crisis, the entire group surrounds the needy one and refuses to let him go.

I wept for 15 minutes.

I just could not avoid the grief.  So many people have bought the lie that we are truly independent.  We aren’t.  There is no possible way to be successful doing life alone.  We are made for community.  Studies show that people who spend life alone live with less joy, cry more often, get sick more frequently and die younger. 

I know this from personal experience.  There was a time when I was utterly alone, both geographically and relationally.  It was one of the most difficult times of my life.  I remember longing for someone, anyone, who would simply sit and talk to me.  Lonely days turned to months, and I lost hope for much more than breathing.  People I thought would walk with me through messes and hurts didn’t, and I was left to navigate my pain by myself, with nothing but my prayers and my Bible to guide me.  My own pain nearly destroyed my ability to heal.  I had no one to take my hand and help me see through the fog.  I had nearly given up when I got a phone call from a dear mentor, who, to this day, is still in my inner circle.  That phone call told me one thing. . .someone believed I had value enough to love.  It was only one person.  But it was a beginning. Through that experience I learned to carefully monitor my world. From those days on, only those who are willing to attach to Marvel Movie thinking can be my people. 

In a world where people treat others as dispensable, especially within a mega member church, it is difficult to find a Marvel Movie community.  Society, as a whole, has traded the once expected sacrificial love of imperfect souls for personal rights and expectations that demand one’s own good feelings over commitment to others.  It makes for relationships that refuse to root.  Rather, they live in slippery limbo, often washed away like garden dirt when struggles come along.  

Finding a Marvel Movie community takes concerted effort.  There were only 6 people in that cinematic community of misfits.  I have lived long enough to know that finding 6 people who are interested in walking through the tough stuff with you is a near miracle.  I have found 3, and I am thankful for each of them.  I know people though, who have been wounded so deeply that they have none, for the hurt makes them side eye everyone with suspicious vigilance.  Trust is a hard thing in a world where relationships are considered entertainment, or worse, a source of services rendered. 

Please, though, don’t think it impossible.  There is hope. There are people who have suffered enough, often in the same ways you have, to understand true commitment.  These are the people who will show up at 2:00 am if needed.  The rest of the world will come and go, driven by the winds of selfishness.

God made us for community.  This is one reason he never leaves us.  The Triune Godhead is in eternal spiritual community with his beloved.  However, He also intends us to have physical community, with hands and feet and to touch and chase.  We are made for each other as well as we are made for him. 

I turned off the TV and grabbed the ball chuckers before calling the dogs out to play.  Heading out the door, I was grateful for those who came into my life after those lonely, broken days.  They are still my best friends, and I have zero doubt that I could fall completely apart, and they would band together and come find me.  They would not sway from their quest based on whether I made the mess or was dragged into someone else’s foolishness.  They love me, and they would not leave me to figure it out alone. 

Marvel Movie community.  Everyone needs a couple of relational superheroes in their life.