Annie loves Gilmore Girls--as, I've found, do a lot of women I know. I'm generally not so fond of the show. My main quarrel with it is that many of the "conversations"--especially those between the two main characters--seem to be races to see how fast they can get the lines out. They sound like they're just saying lines really fast rather than actually talking to each other, and the frenetic pace gets under my skin a little.
So the other night, I was wanting to do something that Annie likes to do. Usually, in order to do this, I have to think of something that she would want to do, propose that we do it, and then convince Annie that I actually want to do it. Otherwise she won't do it and we have to do something that I like. Few men have to suffer so much to do things for their wives :)
On this particular night, I proposed that we watch Gilmore Girls and managed to convince Annie that I wanted to do it. So we did. In the first episode we watched, Rory was having a hot affair with a former boyfriend (Dean) who had since married Lindsay (I think), who appeared to be a lovely girl.
Immediately I wondered why so many women that I know and admire, including my wife, talk about loving Rory so much. Rory's a tramp who breaks up a marriage that the wife was clearly trying desperately to save! Seeing later episodes only made it worse--yeah, Rory feels bad about it for a while, but ultimately she and Dean establish that he would have left his wife for Rory even if the wife hadn't kicked Dean out, and he and Rory date.
So my opinion of Rory was quite low.
To my astonishment, Annie had forgotten that the affair even occurred. She had an "oh, yeah..." moment as we began watching and were immediately confronted with Rory's adultery. How could something so big as a flagrant violation of the seventh commandment escape her memory?
My conclusion was that Annie had seen all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls multiple times, and thus she knew Rory a lot better than I did. Maybe Rory learns, at some point, that adultery is still a horrible thing no matter how much you happen to love the other person. Or, more likely, maybe Annie, knowing more of Rory, was able to balance everything out and still love her.
That would have some comforting implications. I tend to look at my mistakes one by one and internally castigate myself for each mistake relative to its severity. Because I make a lot of mistakes, some of them quite serious, I'm almost always mad at myself about something. This is extremely frustrating to Annie, who frequently has to assure me that I am a good person and that she loves me even though I keep screwing up. She looks at me as a whole, and miraculously is able to see good.
For God, who can look on the totality of my existence, perhaps that ability is eternally magnified. Perhaps that is why He can have billions of children who rape, murder, steal, and commit senseless acts of cruelty, and still love each of them more than we can comprehend. And perhaps that is why every time I pray saying "Father, I messed up again," He's there to help me pick up the pieces.
