Where My Children Can Find Me

One of the most memorable movies of my childhood is Shenandoah - filmed in 1965 and starring Jimmy Stewart.

The thing that made it memorable as a child was the way it made me feel. I remember observing in wonder as both my parents wept at the ending. It blessedly gave me and my younger brothers permission to feel what we were feeling and express it. There the five of us sat, weeping at the restoration of a beloved, given-up-for-lost family member, knowing what it means for a family to be together.

As an adult, this film has become a type of what it means to live in this world, hoping to be unaffected by the ugliness and brutality of it, and learning the lengths to which I am trying to be capable of going to fight that ugliness and brutality.

In myself. I’m learning I can only fight the ugliness and brutality in myself, as I have zero control over the ugliness and brutality at large.

Jimmy Stewart plays the part of Charlie Anderson, patriarch of a Virginia farm family three years into the Civil War. Anderson doesn’t believe in slavery and doesn’t own any, so he has no intention of becoming involved in the war, even though it comes quite close to his land. He, his six boys and one daughter, work the land and try to stay out of the fray.

Until his youngest son, known only as Boy because his beloved mother died in childbirth before naming him, makes the momentous mistake of putting on a Confederate cap he finds floating in the stream near his home. Though only 16, he is captured as a Confederate soldier by Union soldiers, and the rest of the film becomes the journey of Charlie Anderson’s family trying to find their son and brother.

In a world where so very much goes wrong, the film depicts so very much going wrong. By the time Charlie Anderson comes home, he has lost three more beloved family members in his search for Boy, and still comes home without him.

There’s an unapologetic spoiler here to make the point of my post - so reader beware.

In all the confusion of the journey and return home, Charlie has lost track of the fact that today is Sunday, and while he was never an enthusiastic church-goer, he went faithfully out of a promise made to his wife that he would take their children to church. Charlie’s not even sure He likes God very much at this point, or even if he believes there is a God, after this devastation has befallen his family. But a promise is a promise, so off to church goes the grief-stricken family.

The last scene of the movie, set in the church during the opening hymn of the service, shows Boy staggering into the church with a crutch - dirty, bloody, having been shot in his attempt to escape and get home. Every person in the church recognizes Boy’s return for the miracle it is, and the singing becomes even more true praise, with the help of the invisible orchestra soundtrack joining the organ.

So here’s the thing.

Boy’s one goal was to get home, because he knew that’s where his family was going to be.

And once he got home and realized it was Sunday? He got to church, because he knew that’s where his family was going to be.

Besides the main theme of restoration and homecoming, the thing I love about this movie is the powerful message of being where you say you’ll be, and doing what you say you’ll do.

Charlie Anderson promised his beloved wife he would take their children to church. Despite the heart-wrenching emotion of grief, loss, and doubting the little faith he had left, Charlie took his children to church.

The longer I live, the more profound covenant making becomes to me. The hardest part of keeping covenants for me is - frankly - when I’m tired, or hungry, or overwhelmed, or afraid, or someone’s not been their best self with me. Maybe because they’re tired, or hungry, or overwhelmed, or afraid.

I think that's the point of the covenant. It's to strengthen us when our emotions want to take us someplace else. Particularly when the ugliness and brutality threaten to get the best of us.

C.S. Lewis wrote this about the promise of a marriage covenant, but he makes my point better than I can:

"The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true, even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry." (Mere Christianity, emphasis added)

If my children were to be taken as prisoners of war in all this ugliness and brutality, I need them to know two things:

I will spare no effort to find them and bring them home,

And if I fail, I need to be where they know they can find me.

And because of the ugliness and brutality of mortality, it won’t just be my kids bloody and injured when we’re reunited.

It’ll be me too.

Then Jesus can fix it all. Clean it all. Wipe all the tears, and restore all that was lost. That’s the place where Jesus WILL fix it all.

That’s why I love Shenandoah.