Sense & Sensibilities

This is a screen capture of my favorite scene from the movie Sense & Sensibility.

I have never related to it more than I do now.

In this scene, Elinor has just found out that the man she has longed for, for quite some time (Edward), in fact loves her and does want to marry her. After what I presume is many months if not a few years of longing, deferred and dashed hopes (he was swept away by his family to prevent him from marrying her then another woman entered the picture and they became engaged etc.) she is told that, all along he has loved only her and been longing to be with her and feels exactly the way she does. He says, "My heart is now and always has been...yours." She is overcome and begins to cry...and cry...and cry. The reality of this hope, thought impossible, now fulfilled was just too much. It was as if every bit of emotion that had been kept in check and corrected and had the truth she knew applied to it now burst forth all at once, with no reserve or principle or will to stop it.

He understands her tears...and gets down on one knee to ask her to be his wife. She accepts and the movie ends with their joyful, simple wedding.

This is the stuff of great movies. As I watch it, I can't help but feel her longing, feel the need to stifle my own emotion, and also the need to let it all out at that very moment with her. That emotion and those tears say what pages and pages of words cannot. Yes, it makes for great movies...but (at least momentarily) it makes for a painful and difficult life.

Right now, I am in that painful and difficult spot. A few months ago, I met someone... someone different... someone that was almost instantly special to me...someone I began to hope might become my Edward or Mr. Darcy or Boaz. Like Elinor, I had no reason to set my mind on this as certainty...no promise...no declaration...no word from the Lord (except "Ask me. Trust me.)...only my heart, which I know is deceitful and treacherous. So, also like Elinor, I have had to keep the rising emotion in check, correct it, and apply God's truth, the only truth I know, to it. I don't doubt that, whatever the outcome, my response will be much like Elinor's. But I can also know that, whatever the outcome, there will be comfort, there will be peace, and though it is momentarily painful...the end it will explain. And the end...it will be wonderful.