You would not believe the amount of pivoting my family and I experienced last week. What started as an international vacation to Old Quebec quickly changed course to a Disney vacation within 24 hours.
I was invited to join my cousin and aunt on their yearly vacation. My aunt planned this vacation over the course of eight months, booking lodging, discovering local coffee shops and attractions, and a spa day—an incredible way to vacation in my book. The three of us loaded into the car, checked our bags for our passports, and that’s where the plan started to unravel.
I grabbed my expired passport.
My heart sunk into my stomach and started racing, and I bravely announced my error. I felt awful knowing that I derailed plans. After all, I was invited on their vacation. We strategized and looked into any possible way we could still make the trip happen, and then it hit me: I have airline points! I can book a round-trip flight home for the same day and, with the help of my parents, get my passport.
The trip is still on!
We decided to check out a local craft fair to kill some time before I had to be at the airport. We perused the vendor booths, smelled the most incredible food from the different cultures represented in this suburb of Cleveland, OH, bought a few things to commence the trip, and grabbed authentic Mexican food to take home.
We sat around the table enjoying a late lunch when I exclaimed, “I won’t keep saying it, but I’m so sorry. At least we discovered this before we were at the border.”
Then one of us, I won’t say who, decided they should check their passport’s expiration date.
That’s when the second pivot happened.
Her passport expired in November, and she had no clue. I had to get up and look with my own eyes to believe it. Sure enough, her passport expired.
To give a little more context to all the pivoting, the week leading up to this moment had already required a lot of flexibility. I originally planned to drive my grandparents to Ohio from South Carolina, but a few days before we were supposed to leave, my grandmother had to go to the hospital. Thankfully, she’s okay, but this meant I had to book a flight. At the same time, my aunt and cousin lost their dog sitters and had to piece together help at the last minute. By the time we discovered the expired passport, we were all a bit stretched and tired, and we had to start strategizing fast.
To make the situation even more challenging, we couldn’t get refunded for everything we’d prepaid for. We needed to figure out a feasible way to still take a vacation, and it just so happened Orlando, FL, had some manageable rates.
We’re very familiar with Disney, so it didn’t take much to get excited about a vacation somewhere warm that also had palm trees. Plus, Mickey Mouse lived there, and we really like Magic Kingdom.
I reserved a room at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort for the first night. That was all we needed to get the trip started. We decided to drive through the night on Saturday, go straight to the resort, and figure everything else out on the drive down.
After fourteen hours, a Buc-ee’s stop, and a couple of driver changes later, we arrived at Coronado Springs!
We were excited to get to the resort, to say the least. But to make the moment even more exciting, the hotel was absolutely beautiful. By the time we grabbed an early lunch, our room was ready. We took a quick nap and visited the pool near our room to start some R&R.
On our drive, we planned to go to Magic Kingdom the next day. If you don’t know, if you stay at a Disney resort, you get early entry before Rope Drop—it’s pretty epic.
As we made our way from the resort to Magic Kingdom, I started thinking about something Disney does remarkably well: it creates worlds where broken things can be restored. Problems have solutions. Wishes come true. The impossible becomes possible. Characters who experience loss, disappointment, rejection, or fear eventually find some version of restoration.
There’s something deeply appealing about that.
Maybe it’s because, underneath all the magic, we recognize the longing.
We want broken things to be made whole too.
I’ve been bouncing between Jeremiah and Nehemiah in my Bible reading. Something struck me as I read Jeremiah a couple of weeks ago leading up to vacation. In chapter eight, we see God speaking against Israel, specifically their wise men. God asks the question, “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the Law of the LORD is with us’?” God declares their decree erroneous because they have rejected him, so how could they be wise?
After all, wisdom comes from truth, and if you reject truth, how can you be wise?
In verse 10, we see everyone from the least to greatest, even the prophets and priests, practice deceit. Then, in verse 11, God says, “They have healed the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace.”
Let’s practice good hermeneutics and ask ourselves: What does this passage say about God?
If you’ve read the Old Testament in any capacity, you probably understand that God gives his people instruction, telling them to follow it and they’ll flourish, or don’t and they’ll perish. Why?
From the very beginning of Scripture, we see that God is holy. He designed everything with perfect wisdom, but humanity chose to follow a lie that led to the ruin of that perfect design. The even greater emphasis is God’s response to sin and rebellion.
In God’s holiness, he pronounced judgment, but it didn’t end there. He followed judgment with the promise of redemption.
This cycle is repeated throughout the canon, and we see that evidenced in Jeremiah. God’s people have rejected him and his law, again. The leaders, the prophets, and the priests are supposed to be wise because of God’s Law and minister healing to the people. Instead, they give false assurance of peace apart from truth and repentance. They call something healed that isn’t healed. They say there is peace when there is no peace, and God calls it an abomination (v. 12).
You may be thinking, what does this have to do with Disney magic and healing?
I understand the confusion. I’ll lay it out for you.
One of the things I appreciate about Walt Disney is his love for innovation and dreaming about what the future could be. He didn’t stop at the dreaming stage; he took action to put his dreams on display, inviting other people to dream with him and experience a possible reality, or a make-believe reality that is “wonderful.”
Regardless of your thoughts on the theme parks or movies, or any suspicions you may have about his beliefs, we can all agree he was highly imaginative and stopped at nothing to actualize his dreams.
So many of the stories Disney tells begin with some form of brokenness and move toward restoration.
Think about it. Mulan doesn’t meet her family’s or culture’s expectations. She has nothing to lose when her father, a disabled veteran, is drafted to fight for the empire. She steps in to save her family, and along the way, she saves China. Belle saves her father from a beast and prison, and in the end, helps the Beast break the curse over his kingdom. Ariel longs for a life different from the one she has and accepts a magical solution from Ursula that promises to give her what she wants.
The stories are different, and the solutions aren’t always magical, but the longing underneath them is familiar.
Something is broken, and the characters want it made right.
You and I are no different.
You may not know anything about Disney, but you know there’s brokenness and pain in your life, and you desperately want a solution. So easily, we look to the easiest, closest numbing agent around us to help bring some kind of relief, even if it’s only an escape for a few minutes.
Sometimes it’s a drink, a sweet treat, entertainment, another person, work, achievement, or some other source that promises it can provide everything we need.
And not all temporary relief is bad. Sometimes a vacation really is restorative. Sometimes laughing with people you love, eating something delicious, watching a movie, or walking down Main Street toward Cinderella Castle is simply a gift to enjoy.
The danger comes when we ask temporary relief to provide a kind of healing it was never capable of providing.
That’s what makes Jeremiah’s words so striking.
The leaders gave false assurance to the people that there was “peace,” healing the brokenness of the people superficially. God isn’t satisfied with superficial healing. He refuses to call something healed when it isn’t. He isn’t interested in soothing our minds with half-truths so we can numb the pain a little longer.
He is committed to truth.
Healing starts with truth, humility, and repentance.
The passage in Jeremiah tells us that the people were stubborn and ignored God. They suppressed the truth and numbed the symptoms with false assurances. Jeremiah laments, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?”
This is a rhetorical question.
God is with his people, so yes, there is a Physician. There is a balm.
The problem is that the people are committed to deceit.
Life is full of pivots, tragedy, disappointment, and brokenness. It’s only natural that we would reach for something to relieve the pain, like a crying infant who is cold, hungry, confused, or scared. We want something that will make everything feel okay again.
Sometimes we’re even willing to accept the quickest solution offered to us.
That didn’t work out particularly well in Ariel’s favor with the sea witch, Ursula. She had a real longing, but the solution she was offered came at a cost. What looked like the quickest path to getting what she wanted wasn’t capable of giving her what she truly needed.
We can do the same thing.
Scripture tells us that the truth will set you free (John 8:32). If we want to experience real healing, then we have to start with truth and allow the Physician to meet us with the balm that brings healing. We confess our hearts, our hurts, and our sin to God and to trusted people, allowing light to rush in and clear out dark spaces (James 5:16).
That doesn’t mean every wound disappears immediately or that every broken circumstance will be restored the way we want it to be. The road to healing isn’t fast. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes healing looks different than we expected.
But God will never offer us false peace.
He won’t call something whole when it’s broken or ask us to pretend something doesn’t hurt when it does. He meets us in truth and leads us toward the wholeness only he can ultimately provide.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a little Disney magic. I certainly did.
But eventually, the fireworks stop, the park closes, and we go home.
The good news is that our hope for healing doesn’t depend on keeping the magic alive. God offers us something better than an escape from reality. He meets us in reality, tells us the truth, and walks with us toward restoration.
Magic might give us a moment of relief.
But truth is where healing begins.