***SPOILER ALERT*** If you have NOT watched the series finale of Parenthood and still want to...you may want to watch it first and read this blog post later...because I'm gonna talk about it!!!
If you're still here...welcome! I had the most incredible time last night gathering with about 15 other women and watching the last Parenthood episode ever. I can't remember ever gathering with people like this to watch a television program any other time in my life, except perhaps a sporting event. Thank you so much to Joanne and Bridget for thinking of it and hosting us all!
It was so refreshing to see other women just as touched as I was by this program and to have the opportunity to share our knowledge of it (Yes, I won a prize!) and support each other through our tears (Yes, there were many!) I was sorry when the show ended, but also sorry the evening itself ended. There is power in the sharing, I think...we collectively grieved our loss and were able to move forward. I love that about us as females...we do this emotional honesty thing really well most times!
After my last blog post, I have to admit that I was more than a little hesitant to watch the series finale of Parenthood last night, whether on my own or with a group. Admittedly, I was not a fan of the reuniting of Joel and Julia because of how unrealistic that outcome and their ongoing relationship felt to me based on my own experiences in marriage. As we entered the show last night, I wondered how the writers would resolve not only the whole series, but that one family in particular. I will admit that I was very, very pleasantly surprised, honestly. I truly did come away from the finale happy and here's why.
As I reflect, I believe the theme of last night's show was resolution and moving forward. THAT really resonated with me...that's my word this year, for those new to the blog. I'm pressing on, moving forward in life intentionally, rather than staying in the holding pattern I've been in for a while now. And it was very clear, from the first moments of last night's episode, moving forward and wrapping up were going to carry the day.
When Joel and Julia got the call about Victor's biological mother giving birth to a daughter - their adopted son's sister - and were given the choice to adopt her as well, I was pleasantly surprised by their initial response. They opted to work on their marriage, strengthen it and not stress it by adding the arduous task of parenting a newborn in that mix. That was a huge step into reality in my opinion...reuniting after being apart takes a LOT of work, hard work. Adding anything to that is difficult enough, much less something like a new baby! Eventually they did take the baby, but by the time that happened, my heart had softened.
And perhaps that was what I most needed last night...to soften my heart. You see, in my experience, problems in marriage are hard to bear day after day. Not every day is hard or bad. Many days are actually quite normal and low key, and on those days, you can easily recall the carefree days you used to have before the new reality of overwhelming stress in your marriage took over your existence. But even on the good days, and especially on the hard ones, there is always this program running in the background of your mind that requires a great deal of your internal operating system's memory and power to run, to borrow an analogy from my techie friends. That program fills your head and heart with silent messages such as, "Your marriage is hard right now. It's going to be a long time until you're happy again. Don't get too excited about these little successes. You still have a lot of hard work ahead."
And so you harden your heart, lower your expectations for happiness, and trudge on to start tackling the things you need to day to day. You take life in short chunks of time and forget to hope for anything more or better. It's survival mode at its ugly best. At least, that's my own experience. You don't look too far ahead, you don't worry about long range problems...you dig in and do the work that needs to be done to make one day at a time a win. It's sometimes a very emotionless existence, because if you let yourself, you could be completely swallowed by the depth of emotion that comes from having trouble in your primary life relationship, and then you'd never get anything accomplished...like the dishes, the laundry, your job. Heart hardening is an unwanted and unseen byproduct that can creep into your life while you're trying to survive.
Last night, though, was all about perspective. When life and death are on the line, what truly matters...and what doesn't. It was a triumph of hope, resolution, and moving forward. Seeing the entire family together and happy at Sarah and Hank's wedding, despite their ongoing fear for Zeek's health...the stress and hurt between Adam and Crosby...Joel and Julia's fledgling marriage...it just screamed priorities to me. There are some things in life that matter far more than others. When Zeek died shortly thereafter, although we didn't get to see anyone's reaction except for Camille, I can imagine that the Bravermans were completely rocked to the core. But the end...oh, the end!
The baseball game...the scenes of happy families in celebrations and everyday life a few years on...it was clear. The Bravermans chose hope. They chose moving forward. All of them. Including Joel and Julia. The happy shot of them with not three, but four, happy children during the closing song made me smile and softened my heart further still. They won. They presumably did the hard work in those intervening years and they were finally...FINALLY...happy. I'll admit, I shed a few tears at that scene! (I did cry at lot harder when Adam the headmaster graduated his son from high school...but you'd probably expect that given who I am, right?!?!)
I think that's what I forget most while traveling my own road - that actually doing the hard work that needs to be done eventually does make change happen. For so long, I feel like I've been stalled. Stagnant. That's part of why my word "forward" means so much to me. It requires me to keep pressing in to what God is doing in my life, rather than sitting back and withdrawing and allowing life happen around me without intentionally engaging with God and asking Him to make my path clear and straight like He promises to do when we trust Him. Last night's finale was a reminder that moving forward is where you find your happiness, your purpose, and your future. I could handle a little of that!
And so, all's well that ends well. Parenthood has been an amazing show. And my life has been an amazing ride so far. I have every hope that it will continue to be as I keep on pressing in and...
Moving Forward...
Angie
:-)
Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. And you know what, though, and this points exactly to the point that you made? At the baseball game at the end, presumably sometime not long after Zeek's funeral, there was laughter and fun, but before that, in the moments where they started to sprinkle the ashes, the Braverman children (Adam. Sarah, Crosby and Julia) all had tears in their eyes, and I recognized that look, the look of people who are grieving but moving on because they have to but are still moving a little slower than usual. And that release needed to happen to make the fun of the game happen, and to build the other experiences that we saw later. It gave me so much hope in that things can get better.
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