Dialogue That Hits Home

What line in a book or film has resonated with you?

Yesterday my son and I watched the film, Shadowlands, about the love between author C.S. Lewis and poet Joy Gresham. Two pivotal, related bits of dialogue stuck with me.

Lewis, the famous author and scholar, is unaware that he always hesitates in risking the vulnerability of fully loving someone. Joy challenges him about that and he drops his guard for her. But their love is cut short by her terminal cancer.

Once the couple learns that Joy has a short time left to live, Lewis expresses frustration with finally finding happiness only to have it now threatened. Joy says, "We can't have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today. That's the deal." So they try to resign themselves to accept today's pain in the light of the happiness they have already had together.

After Joy dies Lewis struggles in his faith. But his healing is shown by his final comments: "Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've 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."

My son's next comment wasn't as flip as it sounds, and it gave me such a strong word picture of Lewis' point. He said, "That's like when you get a dog."

He had made basic the loftier point Lewis stated. When we invest our love in a dog, we pretty much know we're going to outlive him. We know we're probably going to go through pain and grief when that dog dies. Yet we dive right in and risk that pain because we know we'll experience happiness before that time comes. Love is like that, on a grander scale. If we lose love through death or through other means (divorce, for example), loss "now" is part of the happiness "then." That's the deal, and Lewis reflected that his suffering was worth the love he had with Gresham, brief though it was.

That hit home for me, from where I sit today.

How about you? Has a line in a book or film hit home for you recently? Share the line in a comment below, and I'll add your name to our drawing Sunday for Amber Miller's Quills and Promises. Leave your email address (so I can reach you if you win) like so: trish[at]trishperry[dot]com