Tyler Perry’s “I Can Do Bad” Does this Body Good

I felt lighter.  Walking out of the theater on Friday, shoulder to shoulder with friends and strangers who had just watched Tyler Perry’s “I Can Do Bad All By Myself”,  my chest felt lighter. Maybe it was because we cried just a little.  Maybe because we laughed out loud.  Or maybe it was just because “I Can Do Bad” was,  good. 

I Can Do Bad...

Actually I expected it to be.  I expected classic Madea madness and crazy Joe.  I expected the story of the damaged damsel in distress and her hero.   I didn’t understand though, why this time I felt lighter.

That next day, Saturday, I saw a play a friend of mine invited me to.  She played the part of the “other woman” in the storyline of the cheating, greedy husband.  Another couple in the play represented the good man with his ungrateful wife; the third brother refused to date black women because of his disintegrated relationship with his black mother; and the fourth was too shallow to love a big hearted “big girl”.  And I felt lighter.

This weekend I saw two stories that could have starred any one of my friends, or even me and I decided I didn’t want to be “that girl”.  The one so emotionally lost in the hurt, pain and disappointment of her past she couldn’t or wouldn’t be loved. So confused about her worth that she couldn’t recognize the love of a good man but runs to the limp “love” of one doing bad all by himself. 

I watched the shame of staying after the  first time an ex boyfriend hit me, float out of my life. And I felt lighter.  I  released years of guilt for not making it back home before my grandmother died. And I felt lighter.  I unhinged the hung up hate for the man who had shot and killed my little brother. Lighter.  I watched the emotionally crippling effects of the disgusting acts of my father, walk on by.  If I wasn’ t going to be that broken up girl, I  had to let the “issues” that made my heart feel “bad” dissipate.

All that from a movie? A play? No, not really.  God has been working on this lil ole heart of mine, ever since a very special lady re-introduced me to the love of Christ.  But this weekend was an AMEN moment of real forgiveness and I  feel lighter.   It’s amazing how much more of Him gets in, when you let the junk seep out.

A lot of men talk about how “bad” the black woman is.  Sneaky, mean, bitter, selfish, combative, loud; but she didn’t get “bad” all by herself.  Hell, a lot of sisters hate on sisters because of how “bad” (bad meaning bad and bad meaning good) she may come across. But she didn’t get “bad” all by herself.  But it is by herself, in Christ, that she (we) begins to stand up and get right.  

Tyler touches on it in his movies all the time; and in “I Can Do Bad”, Sandino, the movie’s Hispanic hero, was sent to the  April, the drunken damsel in distress, by the church to help her fix her house… and unknowingly her life.  But before he would love her,  he asks April to love herself enough to move past the hurt of who she thought she was, to be the woman God says she is. And in the play that Saturday, the young men were schooled by an elder –a God fearing man- to listen as God speaks to the heart of a man choosing his “good thing”… When a man finds a wife he finds a good thing.

Ok, maybe I am a bit over the top but this is what I saw this weekend.  I know the “happily ever after” was a movie but I still believe in the Sandino’s.  Strong men in God who want to love a good woman through “it”; whatever her “it” may be - abuse, incest, esteem, bad choices, generational curses, whatever.  Just  recognize that the happily ever after I’m loving, is not just in the movies, it’s in His Word.  Love never fails.   

And that, mi amigo, excites me even more than that sexy scene in April’s kitchen.  Ay Carumba!