(Time With God) Christopher Robin

[copied out of my journal: Thursday, November 7, 2019 | Note: some spoilers to the movie Christopher Robin are included below]

I just finished the second half of the new Christopher Robin movie, and I was greatly blessed to watch it with God.   Through this movie both the full watching of it and now the two half-watchings of it, I have had a fair amount of emotion.   It seems to me that there is some emotional strand of something entangled deep within this movie and the memories that it resurfaces.   

Frist of all, Pooh Sticks.   This lovely game that Christopher Robin use to play with Winnie the Pooh on the old bridge, where you drop a stick off the side of the bridge, watch it land in the water below and float under the bridge beyond sight.  Then you rush over to the other side of the bridge and wait and watch for the stick to float past.   It’s a fun, yet simple, game in The Hundred Acre Woods.   I have what I believe  is a fond and fun memory of playing this with dad, and sometimes by myself, on grandma Baurer’s old bridge by their country house just outside of Princeville, IL.   Sometimes I would drop the stick off the edge and sometimes I would drop it down the bridge water drainage holes and then rush to the other side to try to beat the stick and watch it float out from under the bridge (and often watch it float away, sometimes even as far until I lose sight of it).   Within this particular memory, I remember being with dad, and it being a very enjoyable time – being with him and playing Pooh Sticks.   I do not remember much of the details, but there is a joy in this memory.  

I guess I had figured that the emotion that surfaced within this memory was for hidden negative reasons, and while that still may be true, I see it now for positive joyful reasons.   What fun I had with dad those days.  What joy I had playing with him on the bridge and out in the front yard of our Princeville house playing ball or wrestling.   What fun I had with him in and with the tree house and on winter hikes to the creek.   What fun I had with him in the big red barn and out in the pasture.   Oh, the great fun and joy I had playing Pooh Sticks with him on that bridge at grandmas!    Thank you God!!!  That is such an enjoyable memory!   The thought of it and trying to recall the details and image of it, I just want to laugh with joy – that was a ton of fun for me.  I know it may be very weak comparison, but it reminds me of my great joy in the presence of God now, I see a great joy in that memory and in my heart at the time, whether I knew how to express it or not.  

I also have an emotional tug when Madelyn slips on the steps and falls, losing all of her dad’s papers.  She was so close to completing her expedition and doing something that would hopefully truly please her father.   Yet in the rush of urgency, she slips on the steps and all her father’s important papers fly into the air and blow away, that is all but one, which she was able to grab before it flew away too.  The deep pain she must have felt in that moment that she not only failed, but also lost her chase to please her dad (in hope that he wouldn’t send her to boarding school).   I feel the pain and sadness and just the emptiness that she must have suddenly felt, the feeling that she was just going to burst into tears in not knowing what to do or how to feel or how to express that feeling.  Suddenly I, now, typing this, feel that urgency and emotion flowing through me just as I did growing up; I do not know what to do or what to say or even what to feel but I just want to burst out in tears and run and cover myself in my bed and cry, and cry and cry.   I do not want anyone to talk me through it or be there, but I want to cry and be comforted by my crying.  I do not know how to express my pain or my sadness or my sorrow, but I want to let it out; I want to be comforted; I want to be filled with life; but I need an outlet – and I do not know how to find or use an outlet.  So all this build up of confusion, emotion, pain, sadness, sorrow and anger even a little, get buried within me and I run and hide and cover myself and cry and cry and cry.  

I feel Pooh Bear.   Pooh, one of whom I think I have always related to personally, carries deep emotion and heart with little understanding and knowhow, yet carries great wisdom and life.   I saw myself there growing up; I saw myself as the calm bear that did not feel like he fit in always like he should; that did not understand much and struggled to comprehend things that others comprehended.  I saw myself in Pooh in how he spent time with Piglet caring for Piglet and doing just the simple things with.   While I had lots of ideas and enjoyed adventures and energetic playing, I seemed to have related to Pooh’s whole of being in great want of others yet not always knowing how to express it; deeply desiring to feel loved, yet not knowing that is what I wanted.   I seemed to have wanted the presence of other people close to me deeply, yet I did not know how to express it.  So in order to do something with all of this want and need I felt within me, I ran, not knowing what to do, trying to hide and cry out my want and need.   Expressing feelings and emotions was a terrible struggle for me, because I had no idea how to process and pinpoint what was going on inside me, and the idea of trying made me want to squirm - for it pushed me beyond my comfort zone.   I think I did not want to deal with my emotions and feelings and my inside because it was too hard and painful and lonely and sad and in later years in school (middle school and especially high school) I had experiences that magnified these feelings within me and made it all the harder to process and deal with them.   Feeling behind and not understood; feeling neglected, and not cared for as I needed; feeling alone and behind; feeling unequipped and not able to do what was being asked of me within the timeframe I had.   I felt lost and alone and frustrated and hurt and in emotional pain and confused and I just wanted to burry myself deep within and cry and cry and cry.    I often concluded that I could not do it and thus I would not do it.  I built walls inside and would not let anyone it, for often I did not even know how to get in myself.   I did not know how to process and deal with and express what I was going through and feeling; it hurt, deeply.  It felt horrible and miserable and painful emotionally.   And I did not know how to let it out.   I cried and cried and cried.   I cried inside and I tried to explain in my head (as if I were talking to teachers) why I was behind, or why I was struggling or what I was feeling, but, I do not think, anything barely ever came out.  I was lost, but, praise God, I am found.  I was living with deep past pains and hardships that were inconclusive and incomplete and left undone and a mess, yet God, in His great grace and love, is walking me through them!    Oh, Pooh Bear, my love – whom I wanted to be and whom I so related to, in so, so, so many ways.   The cuddly, loving, tender-hearted, calm-spirited, curious, simple, often misunderstood, slow processing and thinking, in need of others and time alone, bear.  

Growing up I pictured Jonathan with all his energy, excitement, great ideas and quick thinking and processing as Tigger (T – I - Double “Guh” – Err), David as the one who seemed to be in control and wanted to have things his way and just the way he wanted them as Rabbit, and myself as Pooh.   I did not have a clear distinct character that stuck out for Abi.   Given all of these connections and the characteristics of each figure within Winnie the Pooh, I was brought to the realization tonight while finishing the last hour of Christopher Robin, that the animals of The Hundred Acre Wood are very much like stuffed, more emotional-friendly and -entangling, and lived out versions of the characteristics of figures in the film Inside Out; where each character is a different emotion or characteristic or aspect of a person.  

Tigger is the energy, adventure, and thrill;

Rabbit is the control, order and organization;

Piglet is the hidden fear and timidity;

Eeyore is the gloomy, negative, and depressed;

Pooh is the positive, calm, mellow, and simple;

Kanga is the reasonability and caution;

Owl is the wisdom, and knowledge;

Roo is the child-like behaviours;

(& Gopher is the hard worker (with a little pride));

And Christopher Robin, a human, brings reality, wisdom, and someone to talk to.  

Thank you God for the most wonderful experiences you have given me and for all that you have shown me through this movie!  I greatly look forward to continuing this walk and I anticipate expectantly what you will reveal to me through the next film, book, word, or song that you choose!    Thank you GOD!!!   I love you!!!!