Why Jennifer believes in miracles

MANILA, Philippines – Jennifer Garner is in the news a lot these days and it’s about something that, if she’d have her way, she would rather not talk about. The beautiful actress recently filed for divorce from her superstar husband Ben Affleck after 10 years of marriage. There was no indication that their marriage was shaky and, in the absence of direct confirmation from the ex-couple, gossip swirled that Ben was involved with their children’s nanny. Jennifer and Ben kept their silence and never addressed the cause of their separation.

It all changed when Jennifer finally decided to confront the questions surrounding the divorce in a bombshell cover interview with Vanity Fair that came out this month in the magazine’s March issue.

In her interview with writer Krista Smith, the former Alias star finally acknowledged the rumors but indicated that the nanny had nothing to with the divorce although she confirmed that the nanny in the middle of the scandal no longer takes care of her kids. “We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny. She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes. It’s not great for your kids for (a nanny) to disappear from their lives,” she told the writer.

Jennifer talked to the magazine to primarily talk about her current movie, Miracles from Heaven, but their interview veered into the actress’ personal life, which in some way mirrored the trials her character in the movie had to go through.

The actress stars as Christy Beam, the real-life mom who wrote the memoir upon which the movie was based on and who experienced personally her daughter’s courageous fight against the disease and the miraculous healing that came after.

“The relationship between mother and daughter, this family going through something and coming out the other side, the very real marriage and Christy’s discovery of her own strength,” was how Jennifer described what drew her to the story.

Miracles from Heaven is a deeply moving adaptation of a best-selling memoir of a mother who discovered one day that her middle child is sick with a disease with no known cure. Her story tells of the struggle that every family goes through when confronted with a heart-wrenching, life-altering diagnosis. How it tests the family’s faith in God, how it tests the bond that ties the family together, and how it reminds each one of us to acknowledge the many miracles that God performs every day if only we are willing to open our eyes and our hearts to see all of it.

Jennifer also met with this writer for a roundtable interview during the junket for the movie held in Los Angeles last weekend. She was paired with Australian actor Martin Henderson who played Christy’s real-life husband Kevin Beam. Our interview was less personal, we did not talk about her divorce but she opened up about her faith and how, like her character, she sees small miracles in life that we would normally just ignore.

“I believe there are miracles everywhere all the time totally,” she said. “I always have felt that way. My mom hammered that into my head with a miraculous hammer and I grew up going to church and to Sunday school and have always considered myself to be a person of faith.”

“I must say it’s odd because my family is not one that talks about it. I never would see it as my place to tell anyone what to do or  what to believe or what to see and so for this movie to have to even talk about it at all makes me feel very exposed.”

Later in our interview, she did open up and revealed that making the movie has somehow made her reassess how she practices her faith.

Roundtable picture with Jennifer and Martin Henderson. The author is second from right. —Photo by Jorge Armenta

“Living in L.A., it just was something that I felt like, yes, I am still that person, that’s who I am. I don’t really question it, I don’t talk about it but I certainly have no issue with anyone’s beliefs or lack of beliefs. It wasn’t something that I was actively practicing. When we would go home to West Virginia, I would take my kids  to the church where I grew up. They were baptized there.”

“Being on this film and having church faith and all these things, kind of, reminded me that religion isn’t political,” she continued. “Religion is just something that you give your kids so they can have it to hold on to no matter what happens in their lives. They can rebel against it, I don’t care, that’s their business or they can hold on to it and use it in the ways that Christy does.”

Jennifer shared that when filming ended on this movie, she had a brief chat with her kids of what the movie was about and she was happily surprised of what they told her.

“I briefly put it out there and they said, ‘You know mom, we’re ready to go to church anytime,’ and we started going that week and we were immediately embraced by the community.”

In the movie, aside from being a mother, Jennifer also plays a wife who found in her husband a steady rock who did not abandon the family in times of trouble and who selflessly took on mothering duties while she keeps their sick daughter company in a hospital thousands of miles away.

“Having played the wife of someone so many times, it’s so easy for that to become almost a secondary role but you never let that happen,” Jennifer said addressing Martin directly. “And we are always aware that you are a man taking care of your family, taking care of things.”

Whether she meant anything more than complimenting Martin in the film or if what she said was a subtle indication of her personal feelings of what she expected from a husband, we will never know but her comments caught Martin by surprise who could only muster a brief reply.

“Hmm, well, that makes me feel good,” was all Martin could say after breaking into a self-conscious laughter.

“I really have so much respect for the man,” Martin added referring to his real-life character. “I said to him, ‘I would like to grow up into a man like you.’ His devotion to his family and his girls, his sacrifice — and it’s a willing sacrifice. He really understands that that sacrifice pays such huge dividends in the most sometimes intangible ways — maybe in his own heart, in his own feelings about what he values. But he has invested in it and I saw the fruits of that. I seldom meet people like that in this town.”

Martin and Jennifer bring a certain dynamic to their roles as husband and wife that when we see their characters arguing on what’s the best course of treatment for their child or when they have to start selling their properties just so they could afford the expensive treatment, members of the audience find themselves with them. They cry with them, they laugh with them. In the screening I attended, not one eye was dry when the lights came up. It’s a highly emotional but uplifting film that’s perfect for the Easter season.

“It was a draining role but we were very aware that it was pretend,” Jennifer stated after one journalist commented how dramatic their roles were. “We were pretending and real people go through this and are going through this right now.”

“It was challenging to calibrate the emotion because the stakes always seemed high enough to have a complete meltdown but Christy didn’t so I couldn’t.”

In preparing for her role, did she imagine her children going through this?

“God, no, no, no! I didn’t have to and I wouldn’t. But I don’t have to look far to think of a real mom — how many moms are sitting next to their kids in hospital beds and how many moms are in that moment of ‘What’s it gonna take? What can I do? Please God, please God, please God…’”

Jennifer was trying to explain more when Martin’s dog ran into our room and interrupted our interview.

We resumed our interview soon after and Martin apologized.

Miracles from Heaven opens today in theaters.