That's the Deal

Austin and I were sitting on the couch one day last week. A thunderstorm - or "thunder-boomer," as Austin likes to call them - was beginning to roll through. We were playing a who-can-hear-the-thunder-first game. He was grinning and laughing, so I asked him, "You really like the thunder, don't you?"

"Yepper-doodle!" he exclaimed with excitement. The he became very serious. Lifting Blankie (his beloved blue flannel square) up, he announced, "Blankie likes only the lightning. He doesn't like the thunder. He gets really scared of the thunder."

We kept playing our game for a while, and before we new it, the storm had passed. But the Blankie comment reminded me of something. Some things just can't exist without the other. Thunder and lightning. Joy and pain. Mountaintops and valleys. Happiness and heartache.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I'm a lot like Blankie. I like being on the mountaintop. I like being happy. I don't like the valleys and the heartaches.

But life is like that, I guess.

The movie “Shadowlands” is about the life of C.S. Lewis. In the movie, Lewis falls in love with the American poet, Joy Gresham. Later they learn she has terminal cancer. There is scene where she and Lewis are talking her imminent death. C.S. Lewis says he can’t imagine life without her; he can’t imagine the pain of going on without her. She tells him, “The pain then (after she dies) is part of the happiness now... that's the deal.”

Later in the movie after her death, he is grieving. A friend asks him why take one should take the risk love if it hurts so much. Lewis responds:

“Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I've lived. Twice in that life I have been given the choice - as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then.... that’s the deal."

Thunder and lightning. Joy and pain. That's the deal.