“It’s the hopeful, buoyant, cheerful attitude of mind that wins. Optimism is a success builder; pessimism is an achievement killer.”— Orison Swett Marden
The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, is my favorite movie. It is hilarious and heartwarming. In it, Canadian Margaret Tate, a famous and infamously cruel book editor upon threat of deportation out of the US, commands her reluctant and subservient assistant Andrew Paxton to marry her to make her legal to stay in America. She and Andrew travel to his home town, Sitka, Alaska, to celebrate the ‘engagement.’ Margaret finds out that Andrew is the heir to a fortune. The very comedic love-hate relationship they hold turns into love-love. In the climactic scene, Margaret regrets putting Andrew in this dicey and illegal situation. She realizes that the pain of the loss of her own family (her parents died when she was 16) juxtaposed against the perfection of the Paxtons is eliciting very deep and uncomfortable feelings and reveals that grief, hurt, and pain lie beneath her crass exterior. Overcome with emotion, she dangerously commandeers Andrew’s speedboat and inadvertently throws herself overboard. Margaret cannot swim. Andrew screams at her to paddle over to a BUOY – an anchored float that serves as a navigation mark, to show reefs or other hazards, or for anchoring, in order to save her life. Then he pulls her back onboard to safety, Figuratively, to buoy or to be buoyant, means to keep someone or something afloat, to become cheerful or confident, to rise to or remain at a high level. It is not just Margaret’s physical life, but her emotional and relational life that is being rescued, by love, by trust, and by joy.
Proverbs 15:13 says, “A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit.” Proverbs 17:22 echoes, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.” Like Margaret, many of us have had excruciating situations in our upbringing or in adult life that have caused us at times to be sour, bitter, regretful, fearful, or angry. At times the pain spills over into home, work, school, and church relationships. When that is the case, it is difficult to summon up buoyancy, even when we know ‘the joy of the Lord is our strength.’ (Nehemiah 8:10) Christ still calls us to reach out to Him has our spiritual and emotional buoy. Hebrews 6:19 calls the hope we have in Him the anchor for our souls. The Holy Spirit gives us access to a joy that will keep us afloat in the storms of life. Do you feel like you’re drowning today? I pray you receive God’s love and rescue as you swim toward and reach for Him as your buoy.
