“If only life were like a Hallmark movie,” I thought as I sat riveted to the flat screen in my mother’s home. Two things one must be prepared for when visiting my parents: Late nights and Hallmark movies.
Life inside a Hallmark movie is like living in a snow globe – even when it gets shaken up – everything falls into place. The houses are always clean although none of the characters ever clean during the movie. The people are always kind and forgiving. If one parent has passed away, the children have no issues with the new spouse. People always look nice. They learn the lessons they need to learn. Accept criticism. Even the pets are trained and do what they are asked. Siblings do not fight. Adult children adore their parents and are respectful. And when the crisis of the movie life is at its very worst, everyone always pulls together.
If I could, I’d climb into the television set and live, right there, on the Hallmark Channel.
But life isn’t like that. It’s messy and confusing. It’s filled with ups and downs; highs and lows; good times and bad. It challenges us at the very point we cannot take another challenge and somehow we pull if off. Life is wonderful and at the same time awful all in the same day. Life is anything but a Hallmark movie.
I thought this as I picked up the trash my dogs knocked over and scattered across the yard. My phone started vibrating and as I jerked it from my pocket, it slipped from my hands into the water bucket. When I tried to retrieve it, I slipped and fell face first into the mud, just as my neighbor pulled into the driveway with a letter from the IRS addressed to me but accidentally placed in her mailbox. Ughhh, no one on the Hallmark Channel ever gets a letter from the IRS… or do they?
We spend a lot of time pretending our lives are perfect when actually yours is just as messed up as mine. And really, I think God likes us messy and confused because it forces us to depend on Him, to need Him, and to seek Him for the right answers. God is at His best when we need Him the most.
Life isn’t like a Hallmark movie because maybe, just maybe, it was never meant to be one.
