There were times in this Twilight journey when I would feel as though my heart would bleed. When I found myself curled up on my bed, crying as I read, similar to how Bella finds herself curled up on the forest floor, a thought occurred to me.
Maybe this is what the vampires wanted.
Maybe it was exactly like Edward said in Twilight. They would draw me in with their beauty and their scent until I couldn’t get enough, until I was close enough, practically begging them to finish me. And then maybe I’m just being a tad dramatic.
Again, the convictions for me started early in the book.
Bella is dreaming and she hears a voice. “I didn’t have to look to know who it was; this was a voice I would know anywhere – know and respond to, whether I was awake or asleep…or even dead, I’d bet.”
There was a woosh of my breath as I read, “…this was a voice I would know anywhere – know and respond to…” To know the voice of the Father is one thing but to know it and then respond to it is quite another. I want my life marked with this kind of obedience.
If you’ve read the book then you know what happens in the first chapter so let’s fast forward through the disastrous birthday party with the six ravenous vampires, the stitches, and the last real kiss Edward ever plans to give Bella. Fast forward to Bella making plans to leave Forks with Edward as soon as he finds the courage to ask her to leave with him…or at least that is what she thinks is bugging him.
She runs every scenario in her head and makes the emotional plans she needs to in order to see each of them through. Every scenario save one, because who could have seen that coming.
Finishing this book was unadulterated torture for one reason alone…Edward leaves her. And as if that weren’t enough he makes it as though he never existed, as if that were even possible.
As I grieved my way through the book for the first time I remember thinking, “There is no way Bella is going to let him get away with this. She won’t let him leave. She can’t let him leave!” But she does and I realized that I am so like Bella in that I walk away from the Lord often for the very same reason she let Edward walk away from her.
While the Lord doesn’t lie to us as Edward lies to Bella, when he told her he no longer wanted her, our enemy does.There are also seasons of silence when we do not hear from the Lord that speak to us as well.
Whether it is the enemy whispering his lies to us or the seasons of silence that scream to us we believe them, regardless of the thousands of times God has spoken truth in our lives contrary to those lies. We are not so far removed from our mother Eve when we realize it is still that whispered lie that makes us doubt the heart of God towards us.
One whispered lie makes Bella doubt Edward’s heart toward her.
Just look at what that lie did to her. When Bella had her first delusion of Edward’s voice she was trying to make sense of it so she threw out some options for her psyche to wrap itself around. The option she settled on was distressing because there have been times in my life where my enemy’s lies have lead to this sick sort of rationalization where the Lord is concerned.
She said to herself, “This was wish fulfillment – a momentary relief from pain by embracing the incorrect idea that he cared whether I lived or died. Projecting what he would have said if A) he were here, and B) he would be in any way bothered by something happening to me.”
Such a distortion of the truth. Sadly, I let the same thing happen all the time.
But there is good news…God’s truth is never returned void and in the world of Edward and Bella the same is true.
When they are reunited and reconciliation is initiated Edward gives us a glimpse into what was going on in him when he was trying to leave her.
“’…but still, for you to believe…so quickly.’ He winced. ‘That was…excruciating.’” He thought she “would be so sure of the truth that [he] would have to lie through [his] teeth for hours even to plant the seed of doubt in [her] head…how could you let one word break your faith in me?”
The last question is one that I have had several conversations with the Lord about. How can I let one word from my enemy break my faith in Him? It is preposterous and yet it happens all the time when I get lazy and am not intentional about guarding my thoughts.
This excruciatingly convicting conversation continued when Edward asked Bella “Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?” She responds with, “It never made sense for you to love me…I always knew that…I don’t trust myself to be…enough. To deserve you. There’s nothing about me that could hold you.” The way I see myself at times in light of God’s holiness is so much like Bella. Every day I have to say no to the lie and receive the truth and the truth is that whether I deserve Him or not Christ chose me anyway.
So much about Bella changed when Edward left or maybe it would be more aptly put to say that so much of Bella disappeared when Edward left.
The emptiness of the pages in October, November, December, and January scream with pain. During my first read through I had a hard time breathing for a solid minute. Meyer has such a way of allowing her readers to experience the character’s pain in a visceral way. Bella, who is full of words, thoughts, and dreams had nothing to tell us…How well I could relate to that pain. Even still, the love I grieved over in such a similar way was shallow and superficial at best so to put my feet solidly in Bella’s Converse shoes was almost impossible to imagine.
There was a break in her fog when Charlie’s fist came down, literally. Well that, and the threat to send her to Renee in Jacksonville. To get Charlie’s helpless and suspicious eyes off of her she planned an ill advised trip to Port Angeles with Jessica. Who knew this is what it would take to wake her up?
In a night of bizarre behavior, Bella started things out by running out in the middle of the movie she and Jess went to see. Coming face to face with the reality that she was no longer the heroine but the monster she thought to herself, “It was depressing to realize that I wasn’t the heroine anymore, that my story was over.” As far as she was concerned the adventure was over and she had been replaceable, so what was left for her?
It seemed that the answer to that question came in the form of a delusion just later that evening. She found herself in a possibly dangerous situation and she heard that voice she would know even in death, as clear as if he were standing right beside her. As the delusions continued throughout the story I realized that this is similar to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Hang with me here for a second. Maybe the correlation cannot be fully made because Edward is not omniscient and omnipotent but we can still learn a lesson from Bella.
She was intentional about hearing Edward’s voice.
Once she realized the delusions occurred when she was in danger she began planning and arranging dangerous situations on purpose in order to hear his voice, saying, “I was addicted to the sound of my delusions.” A little nuts, maybe, but I had to ask myself the question, “How am I intentional about hearing from the Holy Spirit?”
While putting myself in dangerous situations would not be wise, maybe I should go a little nuts myself and start being intentional in this area, saying as Bella said, “I would do anything for that voice.”
She trudged up to her room the night after having her first delusion, knowing that since she was no longer numb, the pain was sure to find her there. It was no longer her safe place with Edward but now the place where her nightmares found her. But even when the pain caught up with her she found that she was strong enough to bear it.
Very quickly she found a new safe place in the garage of boy named Jacob.
If you are like me, the first time I went through New Moon, Jacob was nothing but a big nuisance. I was too busy grieving over the loss of Edward to even care that Bella was using him. However, I did what Stephenie asked me to do as she did to all of her readers on her website, and I read it again. What I found the second time was still a 16 year old boy who got on my nerves a little but I romanticized Bella less and saw that she was really using Jacob as a pain reliever even at one point calling him her “fix”.What kicked me in the gut the most was realizing that in the moment of my darkest pain, superficial as I know it was now, had I had a Jacob in my life, I would have been as selfish. Not an easy thing to admit to yourself…
Clearly Bella and Jacob have a connection. Even when I saw him strictly as a nuisance I couldn’t argue that. Bella describes their connection as “odd” in chapter nine and while the reader doesn’t truly discover how odd until two books later, it made me uneasy that she would feel the pull to Jacob as deeply as he felt it to her.
When Jacob admits that Bella is more to him than a friend she contemplates ending things with him to spare him, but she concluded that she couldn’t, saying, “I needed him too much, and I was selfish.” “He thought time and patience would change me, and, though I knew he was dead wrong, I also knew that I would let him try.”
I read that and yelled, “No!” at the page. It wasn’t right, Edward was coming back! He had to! She could wait it out a little longer!
In a recent interview, actress, Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella in the Twilight Saga movies, said that in New Moon Bella ignores the better option (Jacob) and holds out for the best (Edward). Even with this, Jacob gives Bella the adventure in her life back. She realizes she can live without Edward but she also realizes she doesn’t want to.
It was at this point that admittedly, I skipped ahead…how could I not? I had made it almost 200 pages without Edward and I found myself in the middle of a mild panic attack.
I HAD to know when Edward was coming back! I have very little patience for these sorts of things but as I read ahead I was reading about people I had yet to meet, like Jane and Aro, Demetri and Felix. I don’t know if it was by instinct but I didn’t like any of them. Finally I found the page where Edward reappears and it was still one hundred pages ahead…ugh! Did I mention my lack of patience?
So I head back to where I really am in the story and find that now there is something wrong with Jacob and with the distance between them Bella heads out to find the meadow on her own (she and Jacob had been trying to find it together, of course Jacob didn’t know the real reason Bella wanted to find it).
As providence would have it she did find it on her own and what she found broke her heart even more than being there without Edward.
“There was nothing special about this place without him…the meadow was empty of atmosphere, empty of everything, just like everywhere else.” This, the same meadow she described as spectacular during her first visit in Twilight.
Only the meadow wasn’t empty. Laurent was there. While fear should have been her first instinct Bella is excited when she realizes that Laurent remembers her. She is so desperate to have anything that is a part of Edward’s world that she ignores the fear.
Reminds me of something the Bible talks about when it says “to the hungry, even the bitter tastes sweet.”
Laurent is intent on killing her but the wolves save the day.
Shortly after this Bella finds out that Jacob was one of those wolves.
“What kind of place [is] this?”
Bella believed the worse about Jacob at first, but then what else was she supposed to think when there had been wolf sightings and then missing people with trails of blood in their wake? However, when she went to confront him and found him asleep she realized that none of it mattered.
She said it was illogical.
But I wonder if it really had something to do with her reaction to the danger Edward posed as well.
With Edward she was found and Jacob found her in the middle of her pain.
He walked right into the closet that was her pain, sat down, held her and waited it out, even knowing he would be her second choice if she even chose him at all. She knew deep down in her soul that Jacob was incapable of doing what she assumed.
Life without Edward continued on and Bella was starting to put the pieces of her life back together. But she still craved her delusions. In her last attempt to hear his voice she did the most reckless thing she had considered.
When Bella jumped from the cliff into the churning waters of what was turning into a hurricane she had no way of knowing that what was lying beneath the surface was more treacherous than what was above.
“I never dreamed that the true menace was lurking far below me, under the heaving surf…I couldn’t even tell which way the surface was…the angry water was black in every direction, there was no brightness to direct me upward.”
This reminds me so much of sin.
We never expect it to be what it is in our lives. We jump in with no way of knowing where exactly it will take us and what it will cost us. It is enough to kill us…but like Jacob, our God saves.
“My head swirled with the memory of the black, churning water-of being so lost that I couldn’t find up or down. So lost…but somehow Jacob… ‘How did you find me?’ I rasped.”
“I was searching for you.”
I love this. Sin, pain, and depression has this same overwhelming affect on us but God is searching for us, even in the midst of the things He has no part of.
After Jacob saves her, Bella is planning emotionally again. She is tired of using Jacob and she asks herself, “Could I betray my absent heart to save my pathetic life?” She was actually contemplating compromising her heart with Jacob. It was gut wrenching, even the second time around, and I wanted to scream at the page, “What are you thinking?!?”
But in the time it takes to turn the page, in the time it takes to glance at a car, the compromise vanished.
One of the Cullen’s was back, but which one. I could barely stand to wait until Alice finally flipped on the light.
Charlie and Alice talked about what happened after the Cullen’s left, upon her return and he described Bella’s grief more along the lines of someone having died than someone having left her. As Bella was eavesdropping on this conversation she thought to herself, “It was like someone had died – like I had died.” The part of her she got to be when Edward was around. There was no one to call that out in her any longer. Not even Jacob could do for her what Edward could. But even still, the compromise was back on when Bella found out that Edward wasn’t coming back.
However, in the time it took for Jacob to hang up a phone, it was over again and thankfully for this reader this particular compromise would never crop up again in Bella’s imagination.
Fast forward past the terrifying truth that Edward was planning to get himself killed because he thought Bella was dead, past the painful goodbyes between Bella and Jacob and now we have Alice and Bella on a plane to Italy. Alice is on the phone with Jasper explaining why she is headed into a situation which will surely get her killed, only wait…Bella may be able to save the day, if they get there on time.
“I think Bella is the only chance – if there is a chance.” This is Bella’s irreplaceable role. No one in the Cullen family can do what Bella can in this situation because Edward can’t hear her. If he heard any of the others he would only assume that they were coming to stop him and he would just rush to finish the job all the more faster. But Bella could save him, if they made it in time, with her very presence.
And then the real panic attack ensued…with five minutes left on the clock I felt every second tick away with every seemingly insignificant detail that Meyer included.
It was maddening!
All I wanted to know is if Bella would make it in time. All I wanted was for that moment when Edward would finally see Bella and the world would again be righted on its axis.
And then she saw him. After 300 pages spent apart, I got to see him too!
“I’d never seen anything more beautiful – even as I ran, gasping and screaming, I could appreciate that. And the last seven months meant nothing. And his words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived.” In that moment when she collided into his chest pushing him out of the way of the fatal sunlight she thought, “I was perfect – not healed, but as if there had been no wound in the first place.”
Fast forward through the terrifying visit with the Volturi, through the screams of the humans who were the Volturi’s meal, through the silent flights back home to Forks, through Edward and Bella’s reconciliation where she has the epiphany that Edward truly does love her and let’s stop at the vote. The all important vote where Bella’s fate is decided.
Frankly I didn’t know what I wanted to happen here.
Did I want Bella to stay human or did I want her to be turned? In either scenario I could picture real problems.
If she stayed human then what would she and Edward look like as a couple in 50 years. Then when she died Edward would just make his way back to Italy. That was not an option for me.
If she was turned to a vampire what did that mean for Charlie and Renee and even Jacob for that matter? I couldn’t imagine Bella wanting to hunt humans. It was too much and not an option.
But then what else is there? To say I was conflicted was an understatement. Very rarely do I read a book and not know how I want it to end…just a little more of Meyer’s creative genius poking through.
This part of the Twilight story ends with an argument between Edward and Bella and Jacob. Lines are drawn.
The werewolf, the vampire, and the girl they both love.
Bella made her choice and while she didn’t regret it she still had to live with the fact that her friendship with Jacob was over as she had always known it. Even then she counted it as loss.
“Edward was here,with his arms around me. I could face anything as long as that was true. I squared my shoulders and walked forward to meet my fate, with my destiny solidly at my side.”
Her life was back, her love was back, and even when she had no idea what would happen next, her confidence was back.
My goal from here on out is to be this confident of the Lord during the times in my life when I have no idea what will happen next. When all I need to know is that He is here with me and I can face anything with the quiet confidence of a woman who knows He is all I need.
All I know is that was A LOT of cash.
On a more serious note, but some how connected (you would have to have had a Twilight conversation with me for this to make sense) I am anticipating eternity with my Jesus more now than ever before. I am also anticipating the Spring…don’t ask me why, I just have this feeling…
…spontaneously, passionately, unfailingly, unalterably, unconditionally, scandalously, irrationally, sacrificially, relentlessly, undeservedly, perfectly, immeasurably, beautifully, purely, completely.