Iron Man

Last week, Superman decided he wanted to go see Avengers: Age of Ultron. No, we didn’t take any of the kids with us. Just the S-man and me, on a date. To see a superhero movie. I guess somebody needs to keep an eye on the competition. I gladly said yes to the opportunity to snuggle in a dark theatre and share popcorn with my hero. But there was one teensy little problem. I’ve never seen an Avenger movie. Or any of the movies leading up to the Avenger movies. Or anything featuring sledge-hammer wielding, hair blowing demigods or big angry green men or ninety-year-old immortal war heroes. Why should I? I live with Superman. What more could a girl want? The evening went something like this: Me: (Knees to chest, feet in chair, hands covering eyes.) Make it stop! Why is everybody killing everybody? S-man: Shhhh. Just watch. Me: Why is that man green? S-man: (With expression of shocked disbelief.) Are you kidding me? And so went the evening. When we left the theatre, Superman drove straight to the nearest video store and bought the complete set of Iron Man movies. “We’ll start with these. Then we’ll move to Captain America. Then Thor and Hulk. That should get you caught up. “Now, I might have mentioned that I’d like a little more background information about the characters. Ask, and you shall receive. And receive and receive. The very next evening, we fixed a big bowl of popcorn and popped in the first Iron Man movie. And yes, it explained a lot. For those of you who, like me, aren’t really Avenger kinda people, I’ll fill you in as best I can. There’s this multi-millionaire-genius- playboy type named Tony Stark, who’s inherited the family business from his father. They build weapons. Lots of them. Big ones. And they sell them to the U.S. military. At the very beginning of the movie, Tony is on a trip to some far-away scary country, and he gets bombed and blown to bits. Next thing we know, he wakes up in a cave, where Dr. Strong Accent has saved his life by pulling the shrapnel from his heart and constructing an iron case, which he’s inserted in Tony’s chest, so the remaining shrapnel can’t work its way further in and kill him. After that, the genius doctor and the genius playboy work together to construct an entire iron suit—that can fly and shoot mega-bomb-bullets and follow Tony’s every command. Thus, Iron Man. Soon after, Iron Man breaks out of the cave and kicks tail while he fights all the bad guys. Don’t worry. No spoilers here. All that happened in the first fifteen minutes or so. God uses the strangest things to teach me stuff. I’ve recently been reminded of grenades that went off in my life, years ago. I thought I’d healed completely from those wounds, but it turns out, there were still bits of shrapnel in my heart. Those bombs hurt me deeply at the time, and the reminders brought up feelings of anger and bitterness that made the wounds feel fresh. And I realized I’d not truly forgiven the people responsible for those missiles. Oh, I’d tried. But I think forgiveness is more of a process than a single event. Every time a bit of buckshot works its way to the surface of my soul, I need to take the time to pull it out. It’s an agonizing process, but I need to get rid of it. Otherwise it will cause infection, and kill my spirit. I think that’s what forgiveness is. If the other person isn’t sorry, the forgivenessisn’t really for them. It doesn’t affect  them at all. But when I forgive, I’m making the choice to remove that toxic piece of pain from my life. Why should I carry that around, to cause more irritation and heartache? Forgiveness is just getting rid of the thing. It’s saying, “I choose not to hold onto this. I wish you well. I wish you happiness. I’m not angry any more. I’m done.” The cool thing is, when we choose to forgive, God will use those circumstances to make us stronger. Like Iron Man, He’ll turn the most hideous, hurtful experiences into the catalyst to make us into the superheroes He created us to be. After all, He made us in His image. And He’s even stronger than Iron Man.