The Dark Knight

Every superhero movie starts with a normal guy. Last night, I saw the much anticipated new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight." With hero Batman on one side and villain Joker on the other, both victims of pain and loss, the movie explores what happens to people after they suffer. It also suggests that we have a choice in the matter. If there's one thing Batman teaches us, it's that our pain never just disappears in a vacuum, the way we wish it would.

Towards the end of the movie, the Joker poignantly comments that madness is like gravity - it just takes a little push for it to come tumbling down. And as I watched characters in this fictitious world respond in very non-fictitious ways to loss in their lives, I felt glad that we have been given a way out of madness. And in the real world, it doesn't come down to me biting the bullets of pain that sometimes hit, it comes down to where I go with that pain. Though few of us process by wearing freaky makeup and engaging in sociopathic behavior, or donning an animal costume to fight crime, we all process in some way. What do we do with the pain of emotionally absent fathers, mothers who have abandoned us, loved ones lost in tragedy, estranged relationships, broken hearts or hopes completely dashed?

Lately I've been looking around and seeing a lot of rubble -- the remaining schrapnel of my own past and those around me. Gone are the days of youthful idealism, where the future is full of opportunity and possibility. Real life can leave some real scars, and even knowing that anything can happen, I have been aware of the surgery and stitches needed in some of the deeper places of my heart. And in real life with real God, pain is no less real and loss doesn't magically undo itself.

But miraculously, all things can be redeemed. I see it in my own life and I see it in good friends around me who are choosing to wrestle with God and let him give new hopes and new dreams to replace the ones lost. Though we are all mid-process, I'm hanging on the edge of my seat for the dawn that always follows a dark night. I hear it's better than any Hollywood happy ending our human minds can conjure.