Movie Night

Ben and I went to a movie this week.  It's the first time we've ever gone together.  Ben was funny about it because we were walking down the hall between theaters and he was holding my hand and saying, "I'm taking my girlfriend to the movies!"

"Girlfriend?" I said.  "Last I looked, we were parents already..."

"Oh right," he said.  "Guess that would be out of order, huh?"

We've been working pretty hard on the big computer project all week and Mom Turner's been keeping Grandma Lila company to let us be able to go do in-office work; so it was an especially appreciated bonus that she and Grandma spent the evening together also so we could go gallivanting.  We were originally going to see the movie "Monumental", which only was going to have one showing in our area; but even though there were still tickets available the day before, it suddenly sold out on the day we were going.

Now, the chances of there being two movies out at the same time that we would want to see are pretty slim; but there happened to be another one that I'd heard about that I was interested in seeing.  It was called "October Baby" and it was a story about a nineteen-year-old girl who discovers that her various health troubles come from the fact she was born extremely prematurely - at 24 weeks.  And she was born so prematurely because her mother had tried to abort her.  The story centers around her trying to find her mother and understand why her adoptive parents raised her without telling her this kind of important fact about her existence.  There were some pretty serious cliches in the movie - including the whole message about "letting your children go" centered around the girl's adoptive father - but it was way, way better done than any other overtly Christian film I've watched and I enjoyed going with Ben.  Even though I cried through the second half of the story.  

I don't think I'd watch it with the younger kids - there were some very disturbing things talked about even though no bad images were shown - but it was a story with some very interesting things to observe in it.  Oddly enough, the thing I found most interesting to watch was not the development of the storyline where Hannah (the girl) finds out about how she was born, but the relationship between her and her childhood friend Jason - who decides to accompany her on her spur-of-the-moment trip to find her mother because he wants to make sure she's safe.  There were things about Jason that reminded me of Ben in how he treats me, but as I thought about that I realized it's because good men have certain characteristics and they tend to be most visible when someone the man loves needs help.  

I've always really enjoyed seeing those characteristics, but now being married to Ben gives me a whole new perspective on them.  I now absolutely love seeing men display those good things and I see them easier than I used to.  A good man is a truly beautiful creation.  He has a calmness and a steadiness and an authority and a peace and a way of taking care of people that makes him beautiful.  I bet that's not what the filmmakers necessarily had in mind when they made October Baby, but I appreciated that little fraction of the verse in Proverbs that talks about things that are "too wonderful to understand": "the growth of love between a man and a girl."