You’re My Only Hope
Last month I read Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist, a memoir that had been on my To Read list for a while. I’d heard it was funny, charming, and well-written, a behind the scenes look at the making of a classic movie that catapulted Fisher to a fame that bypassed her identity, immortalizing the character she played. And it was. But it was also incredibly sad for me as a woman and as a mother.
It broke my heart seeing her mother, Debbie Reynolds, offer such pitiful mothering. And it broke my heart even more realizing that Carrie Fisher, as a sixty year old mother, looking back on her teenage self, didn’t have any gained wisdom and perspective to offer. She was brilliant and vivid and funny…and could’ve had a life that was so much more than what she had.
I read and only felt pity. Pity for a woman who had what most see as real goals: beauty, fame, money, recognition. Pity for a woman who looked back at her younger self and still didn’t have hope to offer.
It’s funny-not-funny because one of Princess Leia’s most iconic lines is, of course, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” And yet, when we read the life story of the woman who portrayed her, there was no hope. Thirty-nine years after the fact, Fisher was still writing about what happened during the filming and release of Star Wars Episode IV, but without any ability to tell her younger self how much better life could be than what she’d settled for. She could dredge up old emotions, mistakes, and pain, but she had little to nothing new to offer herself at nineteen.
Sixteen years (and five kids) removed from my 19 year old self, I know some of the things I would say to her. And I think I would speak with tenderness but also, please God, with a smidge of wisdom and perspective that comes from actually learning something in that interim.
Realizing that I’ve learned something in that space of time is actually really encouraging. It gives me hope that I’ll maybe learn something in the sixteen years to come.
If nineteen year old Carrie could hear me, I’d like to tell her something: you are more than drugs and alcohol and sleeping with someone else’s husband. You are more than a job or a laugh or a cinnamon-bun-head princess. You were made in the image of a God who loves you, and He has far more than what you are settling for.
Don’t give up hope. There is far more for you than this.
And if nineteen year old Marian could hear me?
Well, the year I turned nineteen was the year I started counseling for my depression. It was the year I got my first real job. It was the year I fell in love with a guy I had no intention of marrying (reader: I married him).
What would I tell that lanky, awkward young woman, still uncomfortable in her own skin, still finding her place when her sisters were no longer around to break a path for her, still trying to decide if life was even worth living?
I’d say: keep on. Don’t give up hope. There is even more for you than this. You are more than your GPA, more than your sisters’ shadow, more than your doubts and your fears and your brokenness. You are more than your height or your big feet or your ability to make friends with half the campus. You were made in the image of a God who loves you, and He has far more for you than you can even ask or imagine.
But the truth is, nineteen year old me would learn those lessons because fourteen year old me had already learned something sixty year old Carrie Fisher missed out on: I’d already found my only hope, and He was worth living for.
