Curses

"It's not the power of the curse - it's the power you give the curse."

I like that quote; but I like the movie it comes from for two reasons...

(First...)

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the quote, it comes from the movie Penelope. It's about a girl born with the curse of a pig-face (nose and ears like a pig). She does what most girls do, of course, and believes that the curse will be broken once she marries (the curse said it would be broken when one of her own kind --a blue-blood-- loves her).

Too many romance movies say at the end (just after the wedding), "they lived happily ever after."

It's a popular idea, and definitely an easier one to believe. Easier, because it requires little work on our own part; once we are married "life beings", everything becomes perfect, happy, better...

I am always reminded of what a professor at college once said in talking about marriage: "two halves, don't make a whole."

I correlate it to the idea of book-end. Like contacts, it's hard to say without the 's' at the end, but bear with me here...

I own a wonderful bookend. It's country-western themed with a beautiful cowboy boot, spurs and all, nestled against the wooden side. I love it, and it fits right on my book shelf, supporting the books against the side-wall of the shelf. It is surrounded by my other country-western and wanna-be-Texan themed nick-knacks.

I also own another bookend, a set of bookends actually. They sit on my "fantasy" themed bookshelf holding up the Lord of The Rings, Narnia, and other such books. In fact, it is a set from the Hobbit, the one end being Bilbo inside his hobbit-hole, heading towards the door to answer, because on the opposite side of the door--the other bookend--standing in the garden outside the door is Gandalf rapping the door with his stick.

Any of those bookends can stand alone. A little nicked, bruised, and well-worn (the point on Gandalf's hat has been re-wired on many a time), but they are still individual bookend (no 's'). As long as they are holding the books up against a wall or the side of the shelf, they can work, alone.

If one of the bookends was only a half, could it hold anything up? If it was just the bottom board, would not the books just fall onto the wood? Or if it was just the side board, would it not topple over with the books? Or just the figure in the middle (boot, Gandalf, whatever), could it be of any use aside from just another nick-knack on the shelf?

That is what, I believe, the professor meant in college.

We should not need another person to complete us. With God (the wall, in the bookend example), we are complete.

Yes, the Hobbit bookends are more complete, together. Separately they work, they can support books, but together they tell a complete story that they can not, separately.

"Two halves, don't make a whole..." when it comes to marriage. But two wholes, make a better whole.

We may not need the other person, but the other person makes us better for it.

We do not need to be perfect, but we do need to be complete. In other words, we can have nicks in our sides, be chipped, be used well, but we still need to be complete --in God-- enough to do and be who we are meant to be, individually. Then when we are united with other bookend, we can work together. Better. We can be even more complete.

Hence why I like the movie Penelope. Marriage is not the thing that solves her problems. The curse is not broken by marriage. In fact, she never marries in the movie. The curse is finally broken when she says "I like me as I am!" She was the one who had to love herself, accept herself, flawed face and all, before the curse could be broken.

Everyone has flaws, some of us just wear ours more obviously then others. Well hidden or not, the flaws are still there. Marriage is not the end-all or save-all.

It was never meant to be...only God can save us, heal us, break the curse, etc...

(Second...)

The other reason I love the movie is because of the quote. And the misconception, or power, we give curses. Real or imagined. Even the word 'curse' has an ominous ring to it that can cause one to want to run to the hills.

Rom 8:28 (NASB) "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

Jer 29:11 (NASB) "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

Ps 139:14 (NASB) "I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

All to often we look in the mirror at our pig-nose, our floppy pig-ears. We look at the flaws, the imperfections we carry, whether well hidden or obvious and outward, and we call it a curse. We shake our fists at God and wonder why we are not healed, delivered, whatever from this curse. This imperfection.

As you probably realized in an earlier post, I am no stranger to physical pain. Arthritis is not a blessing, and neither is pain, however...

(Let me say a side note real quick, before I get too into this. I am not, under any circumstances, calling disease and suffering a blessing...but...)

I see every 'curse', no matter what it is, as something more like the way it was for Penelope. It was just her face. It was outward. It did not change who she was as a person, it simply made it harder for her to find a suitable guy because most ran off screaming as soon as they saw her "hideous face."

It was outward.

Now, not all curses, or flaws are visible to the human eye. Not all are obvious as it was for everyone who saw Penelope.

However, all curses are just a wrapping on the present. If we are willing to look past the paper, the shell, the hideous-ness, we might find a blessing, a beautiful gift, inside the box.

Just as the one guy did who fell in love with Penelope.

Just as we do every Christmas morning when we tear through the paper to get to the gift.

On Christmas morning, when was the last time you held a wrapped gift up to the light and yelled at the gift-giver for the excessive amounts of tape? The poor folds? The ugly paper?

I like to think of the flaws, the curses, as a covering for a gift. Something that God wanted to give us, show us, but, sometimes, He allowed someone else (Satan) to wrap it. I believe it exposes true character if we are willing to look past the 'curse' and see what God has hidden in it for us.

I am not saying that you, or I, should ever give up on praying for the disease or pain or whatever to be taken from us. For God to heal us here on earth, just as He did when Jesus's stripes delivered us many years before we were even born...But

We should be the ones to look past our flaws (examples: the pig-nose or the poorly-taped wrapping) to what is within (examples: character or the gift).

To summarize: only God is the save-all (not marriage or another person) to every curse, flaw, etc, whether He is to show us the blessing hidden within or deliver us from it entirely.