Happily Ever After?

Rooster Cogburn: Boots, I got Hayes and some youngster outside with Moon and Quincy. I want you to bury ’em for me. I’m in a hurry.

Capt. Boots Finch: They’re dead?

Rooster Cogburn: Well, I wouldn’t want you to bury ’em if they wasn’t.

The above are famous lines from the 1969 movie “True Grit.” It starred John Wayne, Glen Campbell, and Kim Darby. It was the first movie I ever saw at a theater. I was seven years old. The Bellaire Drive-In, Tulsa, OK. opened in 1953 with Gregory Peck in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” It was a single screen with a 600-car capacity. It closed in 1979 and was demolished later. A car dealership now occupies the land.

I love watching movies. I gained that appreciation from my parents. I watched one last weekend and was shocked by what I said when it ended. I said, “Wow, I wish that was my life.” That’s the problem with movies, especially those dealing with relationships. We start believing that’s how life should be and when our real life looks nothing like a movie, we can get disgruntled, and some relationships have probably ended because one’s real life was not happily ever after.

It’s important to remember that movies have directors, scripted lines, and makeup artists, and the actors keep doing several takes until they perfect the scene. There is also a team of professionals to get the lighting right and the costumes perfect, and real life doesn’t have an Oscar-winning soundtrack playing in the background!

It can be difficult to accept “real” life sometimes. I have found trusting God helps. If you are living with his guidance, then you are most likely where you are supposed to be and doing what you are supposed to be despite what you see around you or how hard some of the relationships are that you are in. One must find peace in their situation and contentment, knowing that it is all part of God’s master plan.

And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you. Phi. 1:6 (AMPC)