Take Home Alone

I think movies are becoming my source of deep thoughts or something. Last week was "The Blind Side" which I watched for the first time. This week, it's a movie I've been watching since I was little..."Home Alone 2." Every Monday night, a group of my friends and I hang out and watch a movie or two. Last night, well you guessed it, we watched the first two "Home Alone" movies. Yeah, classic Christmas movie indeed. In the spirit of Christmas we often have alot of things running around in our heads. Whether it be all the things we need to get done before the holidays arive, the places we still have to go, the cards we still need to send out. Or sometimes when we slow down a little bit, the things we think about usually involve the many things we are blessed with and how we can bless others for the Christmas season. Perhaps, due to one year ending and one beginning, we think about the many resolutions that we've made and have never gone through with, or we think about the person we were a year ago and how much, if any, change has occured. We obviously want to be better people, or at least I would hope so, but sometimes thinking about the past brings up things we don't want to see. I digress.

The thought running through my mind from last night is a clip from the second "Home Alone" movie. Our favorite little Kevin McCallister is lost in New York, where the formerly known "wet bandits" have now escaped to. Throughout his journey of running, hiding, and pranking, he meets the Bird Lady. As intimidating or scary as she looks, she actually turns out to be a very sweet women. In this scene, she takes Kevin to the attic of an Opera house where she lives. And this discussion is had:

Bird Lady: The man I loved fell out of love with me. That broke my heart. When the chance to be loved came along again, i ran away from it. I stopped trusting people.
Kevin McCallister: No offense, but that seems like sort of a dumb thing to do.
Bird Lady: I was afraid of getting my heart broken again. Sometimes you can trust a person, and then, when things are down, they forget about you.
Kevin McCallister: Maybe they're just too busy. Maybe they don't forget about you, buy they forget to remember you. People don't mean to forget. My grandfather says if my head wasn't screwed on, I'd leave it on the school bus.
Bird Lady: I'm just afraid if I do trust someone, I'll get my heart broken.
Kevin McCallister: I understand. I had a nice pair of Rollerblades once. I was afraid to wreck them, so I kept them in a box. Do you know what happened? I outgrew them. I never wore them outside. Only in my room a few times.
Bird Lady: A person's heart and feelings are very different than skates.
Kevin McCallister: They're kind of the same thing. If you won't use your heart, who cares if it gets broken? If you just keep it to yourself, maybe it'll be like my Rollerblades. When you do decide to try it, it won't be any good. You should take a chance. Got nothing to lose...Your heart might still be broken, but it isn't gone.

That's pretty deep for a little kid, I'd say. But he was right. What is the point of having a heart if we don't ever use it? If we don't open it up for other people to see it? If we hide our hearts, it's the same thing as if it was getting ripped apart. I'd be on the same boat with the Bird Lady in saying that about a year ago, I did have a broken heart. And with that, I stopped opening up to alot of people. I hid my heart from everyone around me so as to not let it get broken again. While I'm still working with having trust issues, I have been able to open my heart to others alot more in the past few months. I know that I was given a heart to use for others and not to keep it for myself. Whether out of selfish ambitions or hidden motives, our hearts are not meant to be hidden from the world. Opening up ourselves for people to see the good that is within us and that can be shared to others is one of God's most important commandments. Kevin McCallister, as ornery and stubborn as he may be sometimes, has a great point. And although it may be hard to take advice from a child so young, I think it would benefit us all.