My family and I was watching a movie Tuesday night on, the new faith-based T.V. channel, GMC! The name of the movie was "The Way Home"! If you have never saw the movie, I strongly encourage you to find it somehow and watch it! I am going to give you some details of the movie to share my story!
When I read the information about the movie before I watched it, I was so excited to watch it! Little did i know that I, and even my daughter, would be impacted as much as we were by the movie! When the movie first started, the opening scene was a man in the middle of an open area in the woods, down on his knees praying and crying out to God! Then the movie went back to several hours before this happened. The man on his knees praying and crying out to God was a married man and father to 3 boys! The father worked, worked, worked all the time (according to his wife)! They were getting ready to go on a family vacation so they could spend time together without work being involved. The father finally gets home from work and starts packing the van while the wife finished up some small things in the house. The 2 oldest boys are at school still and the youngest boy (2 yrs old) is outside riding his tricycle and playing with the dog (the dog was just a stray dog that showed up and the father was supposed to have been taken it to the pound, but hadn't had time because of work). The wife asks the husband to put the child in the van while he was loading it, but the boy wanted to play so the father let him play outside while he ran in "to finish getting the bags" (but ended up on the computer checking e-mails for work). The wife, of course, starting fussing at him and he closed it and went out the door to find that the boy wasn't out there. He looked everywhere, went back in the house to ask the wife if he had come in and searched the house and was nowhere to be found. The tricycle was still outside, but no child. At this time both parents began panicking and turning everything upside down inside and outside the house. They then remembered that the boy had been calling for "Papa", who lived right beside them through the woods with several of swamps and streams and ponds around. The father jumped on the 4-wheeler racing through the woods to his parents house and the boy wasn't there either. The grandmother began to call her pastor and people from her church to start a prayer chain. The little boys' name was Joe! They finally had to call 911 because they realized they couldn't do it alone. About 30 min after he was missing, the law were there asking questions and trying to get everything sorted out to start the search. People from everywhere began to show up and help with the search. I know there were hundreds of cars parked up and down the road, not including the neighbors or people that had walked over to help. There was a scene in the movie where a lady in the town had went to the store and came back home to her husband and son, who were working on a tractor, and told them that she heard about the missing boy while she was in town. She called Joe's name out to them, and the husband stopped in his tracks and asked her to repeat the name and when she told him the name again he immediately replied with "we need to go help with the search". The wife said "well, there has to be hundreds of people over there already helping so I don't think we would be of any help".
Note: the husband had only been a few weeks (maybe months) recovering from heart surgery. He insisted that he would be ok and that he really wanted to go help. They go on to help, the wife stays at the house where the parents, reporters, and some law officials were to help with anything there and the husband and son just fell in with one of the search crews and began to help. The movie kept going back to the father and son a lot and showing them, so I started to analyze. I knew something was up with these 2 men. Well the search went on and on and on, getting later and later into the day. 2 helicopters out, hundreds of community volunteers and law officials and no sign at all. Then the father, of the missing boy, remembers that the dog, that was out there with the boy before he got missing, had not been seen since then either. So now the law officials radio out to all of the search crews that there should be a dog with the boy. In the middle of all the searching, the mother and father (of Joe) were talking and then got into a small disagreement/argument that led to the mother blaming the father because he didn't put him in the van like she told him to and her also fussing with him about him never being there and being the father that he should be. The father runs off into the woods and begins searching himself and gets to the point of the scene at the beginning of the movie where he is crying out to God. All throughout the searching, you can see many of lives being changed through this tragic event. Some of the people were just in 'awe' of the overflow of help from the community. All of this goes on and the father and son (who were working on the tractor) go off into a thick brush of trees and woods searching for the boy alone, and the father is the one who hears the dog bark and finds the boy!!!!!!! By this time in the movie, I was aware of why this man was so determined to find this boy.
He had a brother named Joe that had gotten killed in a car wreck at a very early age when he was younger.
Now all of the emotions were flowing through me! The tears, happiness, conviction, thankfulness, etc. You think, why all of these emotions from this movie?? Well let me just tell you, God speaks through a movie just like he does through people, his word, and his music! Peoples' (that were involved in the movie and i am sure those that have saw it) lives were changed and impacted through this movie. Several people of the community were changed because of the love and support that everyone showed, the man that found the boy life was changed ( his heart had never healed from the loss of his brother, but him finding the boy {that had the same name as his brother} healed his broken heart and wounds and brought joy back into his life), the father of the boy life was changed to be a better husband and father and to put God and his family before anything! I was impacted from this movie to be a better mother, to cherish every moment that I have with my children, to be a better servant for God and to do something when he tells me to (no matter how much sense it doesn't make), and to thank God daily and constantly for my blessings and what I do have.
After the movie, my husband and daughter made the statement that the whole movie was them searching for the boy! So, then I had the opportunity to explain to them that there was more to it than just the searching. There may have not been more scenes in the movie that were not about the searching, but God had several of points for people to grasp and understand throughout the movie. I began to explain to them that the messages that I received from the movie were:
Going when God tells you to (like the man that was working on the tractor). The consequences, if the man had not went like his wife had suggested, possibly could have been that the boy had not been found.
Never take anything for granted (like the father with his wife and kids).
Always put God and your family first. God clearly showed us through this movie that he can take away just like he gives. We never know when our kids (or anyone)could be gone in the blink of an eye. Love while you have the chance, tell others about Christ before it's too late, spend every minute that you can with those that you love! God always gives us second chances. It's up to us to really take hold of these second chances and do things his way.
The movie ended with the father praying with his wife and asking for forgiveness for putting everything else before God and his family, and asking God to make him a better father and husband!
Now, if you're wondering why the title to this blog post is "Attention, Attention". Now you should know. God does things all the time to get out attention and to turn us back to him and to be all that he created us to be. Sometimes it may not be this serious, but this shows us that it can be. God can use whatever he wants to get our attention. So, will you wait until it's too late for God to get your attention? Will you make him do something similar to this to get your attention? If you're like me, you would panic and probably have a heart attack if something like this were to happen. But don't ever think it can't. God uses things all the time for his glory. We may not understand it at the time, but he will certainly show us later the whole purpose of it.
Be Blessed!
Rebecca
