This article is from our Spring newsletter. We are sharing to let you know this movie will be streamed tonight (Friday, May 1) for free on Facebook at 8PM central. I wouldn’t recommend it for kids under 12, but it is not hard to watch. It is a beautiful story that will leave you looking at your life and your family with more imagination and creativity.
In February I went to see the movie Free Burma Rangers. The movie is about a family of five who are missionaries in Burma (Myanmar), as well as Iraq and now Syria. When this movie comes out for rental, please be sure you watch it. It affected me in many, many ways, but one image continues to replay in my mind.
There is a scene where the father helps rescue a child caught in the middle of ISIS gunfire. The mission seems absolutely impossible, but he prays and then you get to watch a real-life hero in action, brave and courageous in the Lord. The mission is a success and an absolute miracle. But it is what comes next that has me the very most inspired. After the rescue he calls his wife from the jeep on a satellite phone, telling her to meet him back at the base camp. He has the little girl. And then you see his wife sitting in a folding chair, holding the little girl just rescued, asleep in her arms. She narrates something about how she can’t do the tactical stuff like her husband, but she’s a mom, and she knows how to hold a child.
With all the chaos swirling around them, she sits quietly with her chin resting on the little girls head, her arms wrapped around this new orphan as she sleeps peacefully.
That scene continues replay in my mind because it is so obvious that a mother was needed in that moment. No man in camo was going to be able to comfort that little girl the way she was able to, simply because she is a mom. Other parts of the movie show their kids leading songs and games and skits in war-torn countries, trying to bring a bit of joy and gladness into very desolate places and despairing people. The whole family is in mission together, each one using their very unique gifts, each one of them stronger because of what they all are able to accomplish together.
This may be the most exciting part of being a family. To look at each member and to see how they bear on the whole. With each pregnancy I have had a conversation with Rory about how we will not be the same after this baby arrives. The baby will bring a new personality, new gifts, new strengths, new creativity, new likes and dislikes… and it will affect all of us. It is a wild thought, but once those babies arrive, it is easy to see how our family changed with each arrival.
Since watching Free Burma Rangers, I have been inspired to take a new inventory, looking at each member of my family at this age and stage, trying to recognize all the gifts each one brings to the whole of our clan. And with that information, to then consider what we may be called to because of all of these gifts, passions, interests and loves.
