I know I am a bit late, but I finally got around to viewing the Lemonade video. Besides the cursing, and inclusion of same sex couples at the end, I felt that it described very well the journey of many women. One thing about Beyonce’, she has always associated her music with the woman’s struggle and journey for love and acceptance from men.
She cleverly and artistically went through the various seasons that many women find themselves going through within their lives when we face disappointment from men.
Disappointment and the Inability to Control the Actions of Men No Matter How Good We Try to Be:
The beginning showed the disappointment of betrayal from a man cheating. She had started out in the video as a good girl, who was trying to be a good wife that pleased her husband; despite this the man still cheated on her.
She fasted, prayed, wore white, and yet still got the short end of the stick. Like many women who face disappointment while waiting on God, trying to live holy, and yet expectations for an appropriate man have not been met. Things sometimes get so hard, that we begin to question if it will really make a difference to live for the Lord or not because either way we experience terrible pain.
We want to control the situation as women. We want to bring it to something that we feel we can handle. Beyonce’ mentioned that she was not too perfect for her worth to be brought so low. The truth is no matter what we do; some things will be outside of our control.
Natural Reactions to Disappointment:
Anger was the only next natural expression after so much disappointment. She yelled, and cursed as she complained to her crew. She dropped the brother, and hung with her girls putting on a shell of hardness like women do even to the point of acting like a man in ways. Sounds familiar.
Also, like many women she drowned her disappointment in work. There is a song in the video that talks about a woman hustling Friday through Sunday, and crying Monday-Friday. While she was out hustling, drowning herself in her career her house was burning down. This segment was called emptiness. No matter how fulfilled she appeared chasing her dreams and career, she still was empty on the home front.
Forgiveness is the only resolution to be free from Disappointment and Jesus Christ will help us with that:
She had to come to the point of forgiveness. During this revelation, she showed other women who had faced hard things such as the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown; who had also faced heavy betrayal’s by the law and the government that even after those hard trials they still had to find within themselves to forgive so that they would not become slaves to their experiences, but that they would be free enough to use those experiences to make lemonade to serve to someone else.
There was so much in the video. Even the point where an excerpt from one of Malcom X’s sermon’s was used to show how Black women lack protection in many ways. Despite the many hard things endured, an emphasis was placed on Jesus Christ to find strength to forgive. She showed herself dying to old ways of thinking and old perceptions, perhaps that of trying to be so hard in a sense to protect her self from men like the one who hurt her.
She became in a sense born again, and her love for her husband was resurrected. Reconciliation had taken place. In the end, her and her love seemed to be happier. She ends the video with a song that talks about rebuilding trust before intimacy is encountered. You know I am feeling that ideal. As a single woman who has experienced disappointment, I am not quick in the lest to allow a guy to be too affectionate with me right away. His love and ability to display trustworthiness knocks down that wall of hardness and guarded-ness that has been built up as a single woman just like in the video.
A beautiful depiction of the woman’s journey. Job well done!
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