Life Lessons from Lord of the Rings: Gandalf Is Moving To Portland

This autumn, Mahon and I pulled out our copies of the Lord of the Rings DVDs (bought for $2 each last year during Amazon's Black Friday week sales!) and, over the course of about two weeks, watched them all. As always, I was struck all the way through by the many powerful principles addressed in the story. I started scribbling down a list of ideas for what I envisioned to be a week of "Life Lessons from Lord of the Rings" on my blog, probably during the week that we were in North Carolina participating in my family's much-beloved Lord of the Rings big-screen marathon. My plan had been to get all of the blog posts written before we left for NC and have them automatically post every day for five or six days.

But then I got sick right before Christmas. And then my life and brainpower got completely taken over by moving. And then we got to North Carolina and I realized I'd left my list of insights at home and besides, we were way too busy playing with the family for me to do a lot of in-depth blogging. So it didn't happen. And, as much as I'd love to dedicate this week to my list of interesting insights from my favorite movie trilogy of all time (okay, not that I actually know of any other movie trilogies off the top of my head except for Star Wars!), we all know that there's still quite a bit too much going on in my life for that. So, the rest of the insights are gonna have to wait.

But I'm going to share one of them (dare I say my favorite one?) tonight. Because yesterday evening I logged into my e-mail and found the draft of a blog post that my mom had sent me. As I read it, my jaw sort of dropped. Hang on, I thought. This is the blog post I was going to write! Turns out, when I had shared this insight with my mom while we watched The Fellowship of the Ring a few weeks ago, she had completely missed the part where I said "and so I'm going to write a blog post about this", and so she had gone on to write a post about my idea herself! I told her she could still post it, but only if she waited until I had mine ready and then posted it at the same time. So yes, my friends, you can hop over to her blog right now and see a very similar post there, if you like.

Anyway.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment in the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, the company of nine central characters (the titular Fellowship) runs into a little more than they bargained for in the Mines of Moria, the former stronghold of a band of dwarves. Instead of a warm reception by the Lord of Moria, the Fellowship encounter instead a host of warlike goblins and—most terrifying of all—a demon of "shadow and flame," called the Balrog. As the company runs through the deeps of Moria, trying to get away from the army that vastly outnumbers them, the Balrog draws closer and closer. Finally, the wizard Gandalf the Grey turns back to confront the Balrog on a narrow bridge that spans a fathomless chasm. Gandalf is able to delay the Balrog long enough for the eight other companions to reach the other side of the bridge. In a spectacular feat of wizardry, Gandalf strikes the bridge with his staff and the bridge breaks. The Balrog begins to fall into the chasm below. Gandalf, weary from the fight, begins to turn away, but at the last minute the Balrog's whip snakes back up and catches Gandalf by the ankle, pulling him off the bridge.

Gandalf manages to grip the edge of the bridge just long enough to tell the others to run. And then, in a moment that's had me scratching my head for years, he lets go. It's pretty clear that he doesn't lose his grip; the scene is much more intentional than that. Ever since I saw this scene for the first time nearly ten years ago, I have been left wondering: Why would Gandalf let go?


This fall as we were watching Fellowship, a new thought popped into my head. 2011 was, in many ways, a very difficult, trying, soul-stretching year for me. There were a number of days where I distinctly thought, I just can't deal with such-and-such anymore. If I have to deal with this for one second longer, I will explode. And yet, of course, I never did. I kept trucking on—and as I did, I (sometimes grudgingly) realized how much each of those episodes of deep hardship were teaching me.

I am a different person now, in the fledgling days of 2012, than I was 365 days ago. I like to think I am a little wiser, a little gentler, a little more patient, a little more loving. I like to think that I have learned things, in the past twelve months, that are leading me ever closer to being the woman that the Lord knows I can be. Although I do not always like this truth, I know that Heavenly Father uses the difficult experiences in my life to shape me into the kind of woman He wants—a woman who is powerful, pure, strong. A woman who will have the chance, eventually (let's face it, a long time away eventually!) to become perfect.

Maybe, I thought this autumn as we watched Gandalf make the choice to let go of the bridge, Maybe this is what Gandalf knows. Maybe he knows that if he allows his friends to run back to him, to pull him from the abyss, to run with them out of the depths of Moria and into the light—maybe he knows that if he does that, he will forever remain only Gandalf the Grey, a mediocre wizard who is neither wisest nor most powerful of his order. Maybe, somehow, Gandalf understands that if he lets go—if he lets himself to fall, to engage the Balrog in a battle that will be so searingly difficult that it will change his very nature—he will have the chance to become something more than he is. He will have the chance to become Gandalf the White: Wise, powerful, pure. Maybe Gandalf understands that it will take a trip through purgatory (which, after all, is a state of cleansing) to allow him to reach his full potential.

When I mentioned this theory to my mom during our post-Christmas marathon, she said, "Huh. Kind of like moving to Portland, I guess." A few hours after we had arrived in North Carolina, my dad flew back home from a job interview near Portland, Oregon. The interview had gone well—well enough that, even then, we all had a deep-down feeling that he would probably be offered the job. My parents, who have lived in North Carolina for 16 1/2 years, were heartsick at the thought of leaving their home—but they knew that they would take the job if it was offered them, because my dad had been out of work for several months. Today, they found out for certain that they will be moving to Hillsboro, Oregon. Who knows? For them, a move to Oregon may be what they need to reach their potential.

The "Balrogs" in my life are less concrete, less easy to define, more difficult to express in words. 2011, though, contained plenty of them—and these first eleven days of 2012 have had their share as well. But perhaps, as I confront these situations I'd really rather not deal with, I can learn from Gandalf. Instead of doing everything in my power to avoid them, to run back to safety and comfort, I can choose to let go. To accept the circumstances I'm given. To trust that the Lord puts things in my lives for a true reason; to trust that, through these difficult moments, I am experiencing my refiner's fire.

And that it is making me into a woman God might be proud of.