hugo.

The beautiful blonde boys piled on the couch with their sweet parents on this Friday evening after a quite nice green curry dish made by their blonde visitor. I sat on the neighboring couch and admired the sweet family moment. We watched Hugo. What a heartbreaking, yet equally inspiring movie. I’d highly recommend it.

Hugo: Monsieur Labisse gave me a book the other night.
Isabelle: He’s always doing that. Sending books to a good home, that’s what he calls it.
Hugo: He’s got real…purpose.
Isabelle: What do you mean?
Hugo: Everything has a purpose, even machines. Clocks tell the time, trains take you places. They do what they’re meant to do, like Monsieur Labisse. Maybe that’s why broken machines make me so sad, they can’t do what they’re meant to do. Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose, it’s like you’re broken.

Hugo: Right after my father died, I would come up here a lot. I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason too.

What a powerful message. This trip has been an awful lot about finding my specific purpose (I think my overarching purpose is to love God and to love all others) and what it should look like. I like that it could be as simple as getting the right book to the right home. It could be to write a fantastical story for little ones all over the world. Ever since travelling to Liberia, I have felt a pull to spend time with orphans, simply loving on them and making sure they have food and shelter and comfortable beds. Perhaps I should be a foster parent and I will write books for the kids surrounding me daily. Or I’ll open a writer’s retreat center in the mountains somewhere with Mrs. Erica Young. I will serve pancakes and bacon and our favorite authors (like Mo Willems) will come speak. He will prefer to just be paid in pancakes, which will work out well.

Whew, good thing the trip isn’t over, I guess. Because I don’t know yet.