Let's Go Fly a Kite

Maya must have known what I needed today.  When we finished errands, she asked if we could watch the "spoon full of sugar movie".  I thought she meant Mary Poppins, but instead she showed me this one...Saving Mr. Banks.  I love movies that teach us lessons, that allow us to see a little bit of ourselves in them...that show us that the rose colored glasses we once viewed Mary Poppins through is actually a tragic story.  It was one that caused a sweet little child, so innocent and loving, to go into a hiding place...a refuge from any other kind of pain when she grew older...it became her protection to have things just as they were, as she thought they should be.  The people at Walt Disney, and Walt himself, tapped into an incredible amount of patience to allow a piece of happiness and healing to enter her heart when they exercised a diligent love with her in the making of her very real story into a most hopeful and healing movie.  My favorite part of this scene is when Miss Travers taps her foot for the first time--a flood of emotion runs through me--probably because I understand her.  Those looking on stand in awe, and they work with that little clue, the clue that says, "I'm allowing you into my heart, I trust you."

I can relate to Miss. Travers.  I can see the lifetime of pain that built walls around her so that she could live with only the pain she had to endure and not allow anymore in.  The greatest courage we can exercise is in allowing even one peep hole to enter into one of those walls, and the greatest wisdom we can follow is in doing it when the time is right.  To trust is to love, and to allow yourself to be loved.  To feel the pain of instilling trust in one and being let down is not avoidable, but hope tells me that if it is infrequent, there is still reason to believe that vulnerability is good and allows growth.  The frequency of betrayed trust leads to those walls that most people view as hardness...it is merely protection.

My sister posted an article about vulnerability recently, and I wasn't able to read it until I saw it in a  comment this morning, though I intended to read it all day long yesterday.  How beautifully vulnerable the people at Walt were the entire time to Miss Travers in this film, and how great that risk was in allowing that vulnerability to again take root into Miss Travers heart.  To love and be loved takes pain, strength, courage, trust, diligence, and unselfishness--I'd say that is vulnerability.

The title alone is beautiful "Let's Go Fly a Kite"--or as Miss Travers says, "Let us go fly a kite!".  There is always an "us" in exercising vulnerability with a child, spouse, friend, etc.