the Junk Lady

The Labyrinth is one of my all time favorite movies (yes, that's the one with David Bowie in spandex).  Through the years people have asked me why, oh why do I love that movie.  I cannot understand why someone would NOT love it... I mean, come on, really... the bog-of-eternal-stench, biting fairies, the junk lady, goblins and trolls, and... David Bowie in spandex. 
But above all of the wonderful Steven Spielberg creativity that emerged from the Labyrinth, I love the life applications. 
It's a story of a young self-centered girl, Sarah, who takes a journey through a dangerous journey to save her little half-brother from an evil goblin king, Jareth, and finds herself in the end.  While it's not a "Christian" movie, I love the Christian parallel themes that emerge and apply to life.
One of my favorites is the Junk Lady.  She is a goblin who lives in a junk pile.  Sarah falls into the junk pile, into a den deep in the pile that looks and feels exactly like Sarah's old bedroom.  It is a trick of the goblin king to make Sarah forget her journey to save her brother.  Jareth figures that if Sarah is preoccupied with her own "stuff," she will forget her little brother and the journey that she is on through the Labyrinth.  The junk lady is with Sarah in her faux bedroom, reminding her how much she loves her little toys, her music boxes, her stuffed animals "everything in the world you've ever cared about is all right here," the lady says... but something isn't right.
Sarah starts to remember Toby, her little brother. 
"It's all JUNK!" she screams.
The walls starts to cave in and she realizes that she is actually standing in the middle of a trash dump.
"I have to save Toby!"

Sometimes I feel like Sarah.  I'm sitting in my bedroom, safe and comfortable, surrounded by my "toys" and the things that I love... I wonder if the "goblin king" is simply distracting me with my favorite things to keep me away from the journey, the fight.

And when I step away, traveling to Haiti or just downtown Wichita, the fog is lifted and I remember what I'm doing.  I remember my sojourn. 

When Eric and I took a trip to the Dominican Republic we encountered poverty for the first time in our lives.  I had never seen anything so real.  I will never forget what Eric said about that trip:  he said, "it's like America is Disney World.  We all live in Disney World and think that princesses walking around in big fluffy dresses is just normal and everyone lives in castles.  But Disney World is a fantasy, not a reality.  This is the real world."
Those of us who live life well should be thankful for what we have worked so hard for and the blessings that we have received.  Life has been kind.  Fortune and fate have been kind. 
God has been kind.  He is always good.

All of our toys will become junk one day. 
Remember the journey and the purpose.  Remember what we're here for.

Think about it,
b.