Today I watched this movie with Adam Sandler. I like his movies as he tends to be funny; however this movie is far from funny. This is the story of two men with very unhappy lives for different reasons. One, Adam Sandler’s character has turned to total isolation and denial after losing his whole family during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The other character played by Don Cheadle is a man who has a career, a family but it’s unhappy because he had lost his identity.

The thing that captured my attention about this movie was a scene where Charlie (Adam Sandler) is talking to a counselor and she tells him that until he tells his story nothing is going to change. He decides to open up, not to the counselor, but to his friend and although things got rough for a minute, that was the turning point of things getting better.

It made me think how many times out of shame and guilt we don’t talk about those dark areas in our lives. We’re afraid of being judged and think that some things are better unsaid. I don’t advocate for telling everything to just anybody, but we should always have someone in our lives who is safe for us to share our pain.

Sometimes we think that we should just tell God and things are going to go away, but God says “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”(James 5:16) So the plan was all along to bring the light into our darkness by sharing our pain…that’s the path to healing.

Food for thought

PS. Watch the movie, it has some language, but not to the extreme. It’s a very moving story.