Monday night I went to see the movie Enough Said starring James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It is a charming smart little movie with good humour and clever twists. It was Gandolfini’s last movie and it underlined how tragic it was to lose such talent.
The movie is about the bittersweet up-and-downs of relationships. It has left me thinking about just that – the challenge of relationships and how easily things can get off track. In the movie Eva, played by Louis-Dreyfus, finds herself attracted to Albert. He is fun, kind, and charming, but Eva is influenced by another and begins to notice, and point out, his faults and their relationship begins to spiral. The movie showed us regret, anger, apology, forgiveness and reconciliation.
In my ministry I have often sat with someone struggling to sort out their marriage. Too often people have an ideal and their relationship doesn’t meet it. I have often had to remind people that life is not a movie or TV show; they are fiction life is real. Relationships can be hard work sometimes and they cycle up and down somtimes warm and rewarding, sometimes challenging and difficult. Just the same, we were not created to be solitary beings. The first story of scripture tells us that God created two people because one was lonely and needed another for companionship and completion. As the divorce and break-up rate has continued to increase in recent decades many accuse people of just not trying. I think most often people do try and, thanfully, the freedom in our society has allowed people to get out of troubled and sometimes abusive relationships. Indeed I have sometimes counselled people to get out before it is too late. What I think the increase in dissolved marriages shows us is that relationhips require work and we can easily be influenced into thinking that leaving is easier than staying and working things through. That said, I still believe a good realtionship is worth the work no matter how hard the work is.
