Pretty Woman...

I have a handful of movies that I could easily watch five or six times in a row and still love every moment, and Pretty Woman tops that list. Today I started to contemplate what it is about certain movies that makes me eager to watch them over and over again. Then it hit me..why would any woman love this story? Because Pretty Woman is the Cinderella story of our generation, the rags to riches saga on screen. It's a story that centers on redemptive love, and isn't that what we all want? The kind of love that we think only happens in fairytales, the kind of love that has the power to transform.

John Eldredge in his book Captivating puts that longing like this: Eve possesses a bottomless well of longing. Jesus alone is the never-ending fount, which can slake her thirst. No other source, no other relationship will fully satisfy. God made us that way. On purpose.

I know we've all been there. We long for romance, we thirst for it. Some of us go on to be married, but we quickly find out to our shock and horror that prince charming isn't always as "charming" as we thought he was. The honeymoon period is over quickly and reality sets in and what seems to be true is that there is no prince charming, there is no fairytale. And what of the prince? He feels like a failure, like a sinking ship that can no longer float under the pressure the princess puts him under. Love becomes forced and unnatural and suddenly both prince and princess are dissatisfied and disillusioned.

The reality is that we love those movies because God made us to crave romance, but no man can be the perfect knight in shining armor. No ordinary mortal can fill the God sized hole in our hearts. That longing is there for a purpose, to turn us back to Him.

So while I may never give up my cheesy romance movies, I know that the prince that my heart longs for is none other than the man that rescued me from the grave. I mean, it really only makes sense. Why settle for a Prince when you can have a King?;-)