Ecclesiastes 4:10 “If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.”
On a recent kayak outing I found myself paddling alone. I had started out the day paddling along with two friends but after about three hours of paddling I was now alone. We had paddled the length of Park point to the Wisconsin Point light house. On our return trip we met with a sudden downpour and 25 mph headwinds. The storm lasted only about twenty minutes and the sun returned and the lake was again calm. Somewhere in that down poor I had put much distance between myself and my friends. I kept thinking I should slow down and wait but I just kept paddling. With about ten minutes left before our landing spot, I did stop and I waited to finish the day paddling along side of Willie and James.
When we had finished loading up our gear James said to me, “I found something out about Dave today, you either had someplace else you really wanted to be or else when you want to be done you just buckle down and say, I want to get this over with.” I have been pondering James words since that day thinking, “Ok God, what do you want me to learn from this?” I saw a movie this weekend titled “Hope Springs” that gave me my answer.
The movie is about a couple who have been married for thirty-one years. Their marriage started out much like our kayak trip, with the husband and wife paddling along side of each other, enjoying the journey together. They faced what life threw at them together.
Thirty-one years of marriage, storms came and they started to drift apart. One day they found themselves paddling alone. Each of them consumed with their own agenda’s. Each of them feeling hurt and alone. The wife decides she wants her marriage back, and she signs them up for a week long marriage counseling retreat. The husband is less than thrilled, but he gives in and joins her on the retreat. The counselor is very bold and has them work through some tough and very real issues. He has them look back and see when and where they started to drift apart and paddle alone. He has them look back and remember the love that brought them together. At one point the counselor says, “Some people should never have gotten married, you two are not those people.”
The movie was hard to watch first for it’s boldness and second for it being so real, so honest. Do I recommend the movie? With a strong word of caution (very frank sexual issues are discussed) I would say, yes. I recommend it for couples who want to take an honest look at their marriage and ask themselves, “Are we paddling together or are we paddling alone?”
