Benches

One of my all time favorite movies is Steel Magnolias. I could sit here and dissect every single part of that movie. But, I have to say there is one scene that ranks right up there with the best of the best for me.

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Shelby has just died and M'Lynn is having a breakdown in the cemetery. Clairee grabs Ouiser, throws her in front of M'Lynn and says "Hit this! Go ahead M'Lynn, slap her!" All the other girls start looking around thinking that Clairee has lost her mind and Ouiser begins to pull away when Clairee continues with "We'll sell t-shirts that say 'I SLAPPED OUISER BOUDREAUX!' Hit her!" After the exchange of a few other words Clairee finishes up the scene by saying "M'Lynn, you just missed the chance of a lifetime! Half o' Chiquapin Parish'd give their eye teeth to take a whack at Ouiser!" At this point all the girls burst out laughing and Ouiser stomps off. Clairee finds Ouiser sitting on a bench and she makes her way to her old friend. As they exchange words Clairee hits Ouiser in the arm and Ouiser pushes back at Clairee and within just a few seconds they are attempting to push each other off this bench with Ousier shouting "Get off my bench Clairee!"

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Oh gracious, I'm sitting here laughing just thinking of this scene! I do believe this movie will go down in history as my all time favorite. There are so many one liners that I catch myself saying from time to time but this one scene just does it for me. Just at the moment where my eyes are burning from crying I always bust out laughing at this bench scene..."Get off my bench Clairee!" Oh I can hear Shirley MacLaine saying those words right now.

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Many times in life I think we are just like Ouiser. We are pushing back against something or someone yelling "Get off my bench!" We want the whole bench all to ourselves. We think we know everything, we think we have the key/solution to whatever life throws our way. Sometimes God puts our friends on that bench with us to guide us, hold our hands, tell us when we're wrong but then sometimes I think he just lets us sit on that bench all by ourselves trying to teach us a little humility. But, nonetheless we seem to always push and push yelling "Get off my bench!" the entire time.

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As I sit alone on my bench today I'm thinking...how do you pray when you just don't understand it all? and my thoughts roll around to what if I'm wrong? and then I have the occasional if one more thing sits down on this bench with me I'm not going to push it...I'm going to squish it. Ya'll ever have those thoughts while you're sitting on your bench? Sometimes instead of watching every angle of our bench we should just sit there and patiently wait...we should be still and we should be quiet. "Be still, and know that I am God!" Psalm 46:10 (NLT).