Emotional Torment

It's Christmas time.  It's a time for family, food, and all things holiday oriented.  That includes advent calendars.  Hannah has a couple.  One filled with chocolates that she will not share, the other filled with Legos...a Lego chain saw, a Lego tree and so on.  Who knows what will come out of the box by December 25th.  Steph and I have one, too.  It is a couples advent calendar from North Point, a church in Atlanta.  One of our guys at church snagged some of the leftover calendars they had.  It's been cool so far.  One day's challenge was to talk about your favorite Christmas memory.  One day you were supposed to have a picnic in front of the tree.  We are a little behind, go figure.  So, tonight we combined two to catch up.  We had a take out pizza dinner in the living room in front of the tree while watching a Christmas movie.  Now, that sounds like a great night to me.  Some pizza and breadsticks with some garlic butter dip paired with a movie and my girls!  What could go wrong?

As we were getting settled into the picnic, we started discussing whether to watch Home Alone, the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas, or A Muppet Christmas Carol.  The Muppets won the discussion.  In went the DVD and on to the movie we went.  I should have known better.  Let me explain.

My daughter, Hannah, will turn 9 years old next month.  She is very mature for her age.  And that's not just a proud dad talking.  She is a smart, well adjusted kid...except when it comes to movies.  When she was growing up, we watched lots of cartoons.  She watched Dora and the Backyardigans and all those great shows.  But, not movies.  Movies had too much angst and emotion.  One of the first movies she ever saw was Cinderella.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  That's a great movie for kids.  Its a classic!  Not for my kid.  When the wicked sisters came in and tore up Cinderella's dress before the ball, my daughter screamed and cried.  When she watched Lilo and Stitch, she did the same thing, in addition to standing on the couch while shouting "Get away from her!" at the bad guys at the top of her lungs.  At The Lorax, she sobbed for awhile when the Lorax went up into the sky.  Steph says she cried the entire way through Happy Feet. 

As I said, she is almost 9 now.  I figured she had adjusted to society and the angst of cinema.  We watch Cops all the time.  A Muppet Christmas Carol should be no problem at all.  Was I wrong.  By the end of the movie, my daughter is a sobbing mess.  She couldn't stop crying.  Even though the story resolved and all was well, the emotions of my little 9 year old had been shaken and the floodgates were open.  Needless to say, it took awhile for her to settle down.  It took her even longer to fall asleep, though the hot chocolate I made her after the movie probably didn't help.

I love the fact that my little girl has such a big emotion.  Soon after Tiny Tim was introduced in the movie last night, she was asking questions.  "Why does he walk with a cane?  Is he going to get better?"  She's like that with most things.  I think it is a good thing.  There is much compassion that runs through her.  I want that to stay alive in her.  Yet, I wonder how she is going to handle the world as she grows up and realizes that its a worse place with much more pain and anguish than Cinderella or Scrooge.  Should I desensitize her with more Christmas movies like Home Alone (the old man is scary) and cause her controlled emotional anguish or should I simply let her grow up in the harsh world one day at a time?

Beyond her, I wonder about myself.  How much emotion have I lost because of the environment I'm in?  Ministry is a place where you get to see people at their worst sometimes.  You grow calloused to what you see over time.  If you didn't, you would never be able to cope with the heart break.  What is the healthy balance?  Is there even a balance?  Should there be?  How are we to embody compassion and care through all the ugliness?

Maybe I'm simply seeing it wrong.  Maybe the challenge is to continually engage with the emotion of such things as movies and reality so we are continually feeling the emotions of hurt, compassion, and love so we can be the best we can through them.

God, give me the wisdom to know how to help my little girl grow up in a way that allows her heart to grow as big as it can with as few scars as necessary.