Man Up

Brad picked up a few movies for us last night and since the girls were using our larger screen TV in the basement, we decided to save the action-packed thrillers for a different night...so, we watched Saving Mr Banks.

I think I will be adding that one to my top 5!  What a story of genius, creativity, redemption through imagination, hurt and healing, love and loyalty....and it didn't even need a romantic element :)  It was, surprisingly, the perfect movie (in my opinion) to celebrate Father's Day and I didn't even know it until the whole story hit me.

We often complain about how our culture portrays women...how magazines make them look perfect or portray them as "wonder woman" in that they are highly successful, ultra thin, and "top-model" beautiful and how impossible that is for most people...how, if our daughters (or we) get caught up in trying to be that way, we will be miserable and probably will make everyone we love miserable in the process from what behaviors come from our low self-esteem.

BUT, culture and media also put pressure on men and it portrays them in ways that are generally unfair.  It tries to define for them what "being a real man" is all about..most of the visual definitions I see are either of the "macho man" or the "buffoon".

In Christian circles, we often hear the phrase, "Men of Courage".  While Brad and I were attending the Envision conference, one of the speakers talked about courage.  He said the word stems from the Latin word, cor, which means heart....and so to me this means, being courageous is living out of a strong heart and strengthening the hearts of others....not muscles...nor intellect (I mean those things are good too), but we often get hung up on that other stuff and feel we don't or can't "measure up".

Kenna was reading a story yesterday about the 1st man on the moon and it struck me that mankind has scaled mountains, explored the oceans depth, and even broken into some limits of space, but it still takes a real man (or woman) to conquer his (her) heart and use it to truly love others by living courageously.  This is a higher way to live...to "man up" :)

It was interesting because all these thoughts were spinning in my mind during the movie and after it was over we decided to watch the "extras"....one of the quotes from the author of Mary Poppins just brought it all home to me....she said something like, "Mr. Banks didn't have a change of heart, his heart was always good." He was just able to get out from under the pressures of life so his heart could shine.

COURAGEOUS - CASTING CROWNS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkM-gDcmJeM