Swinging in the Father's Love

I am still thinking about the ending of a movie that I just watched. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a wonderful and well made movie about the journey of a young boy with aspergers who has just lost his father in one of the the Twin Towers on 9/11. The young boy's father had  been a  source of great wisdom with regards to knowing how to help his son overcome the particular challenges that he faced.

 In a wealth of creativity the father planned great expeditions for his son where he would have to use many clues to solve a mystery or arrive at a destination his father had picked out. The father played upon his son's strength by knowing that he thought in patterns, but challenged him in areas where he was inhibited or fearful.

It was a sad and grievous day when the young boy comes home from school to hear his father leaving a message on the home answering machine. The father reports that he is trying to get home but the towers have been struck and they are waiting for further evacuation instructions. The father calls one last time to say goodbye but his son is too swallowed by fear in the moment to answer the phone, a memory that will haunt him. The father never does make it out of the tower and the son is left trying to make sense of his death.

This young boy who sees the world through a lens of patterns suddenly finds himself unable to cope with this loss. He struggles to find some grid or pattern that he can place this death into but he finds none. In an attempt to cope the boy sets up his own expedition by setting out to find the lock box which fits a key that he discovers in his father's old things.

It is a long and difficult journey. In the end he does find what the key goes to but it has nothing to do his father. Through the journey though some life changing things have occurred and the movie ends with the boy going to a location where he and his dad used to go. He goes to a swing where his dad used to sit and talk to him.  Their time together would always end with the father showing him how enjoyable swinging could be. The young boy however was always too fearful to even sit on the swing.

On this particular day however, he walks over to the swing and flips it over to discover a note taped on the bottom of the swing. It was a note from his father to him. A note that he would have discovered at the end of the expedition his father was doing with him before he died. In a moment of sheer joy the boy reads the note and allows himself to relish his father's love. In this moment nothing is said in the movie but something profound takes place. The boy hops up on the swing and begins to swing. It is slow in the beginning but recalling all that his dad had taught him he begins to pump and go higher and faster. The movie ends with the boy swinging high on the swing with sheer joy across his face. No fear, no worries, just love.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Perfect love casts out fear. The boy had not made sense of his father's death. He never did find a pattern to place it in, but what he did find was affirmation of his father's love for him. And ultimately that love was enough. In that love the boy found himself able to relax, and in that resting place he found himself able to overcome his greatest fear.

I find that this is a wonderful picture for us of our heavenly father as well. We may struggle to find answers for our earthly suffering and sometimes we don't get the answers we seek. In the end what we can count on is the Father's love. In that love we can rest and can find the secret that this young boy did... perfect love always overcomes our fears.