It's A Wonderful Life

Strange isn’t it, each man’s life touches so many others. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?

     from the movie – It’s a Wonderful Life 

The tears welled up in her eyes, the emotional strain of the holiday season has been too much for her to bear (alone), and in the safety of our presence she finally let it all out.

I need to be honest with the two of you, in the last few days I’ve had serious thoughts, more strongly than ever before, about ending my life.

The words rolled off her tongue as if she had rehearsed them many, many times before. The drama of her life is anything, ANYTHING, but ideal for her. Her dreams of being a stay-at-home mom, mothering her two sons, sharing the joy and excitement of the season “with them”, is all but a dream and a distant reality. In recent years, she has become more and more isolated. Her sons, having grown up and moved on, friends and family having done the same, forces her to face the reality of her loneliness every day. It isn’t that people haven’t tried to reach out to her, inviting her to their own family dinners and gatherings. She knows that those gestures are thoughtful and well intentioned, and she is very grateful for them. But again, they are all far from the ideal. She longs for memories past. She remembers holiday gatherings when life was as our culture tells us it should be – family dinners, gift exchanging, enjoyment, child-like-wonder, no pain, just pleasure. As a mom, she yearns to be needed again, providing the care and support to her own family as only moms can do—as she once did.

Every morning I take my pain pills, and for the first time, I’ve had serious thoughts of taking the whole bottle, ending it all.

We wish we could say that this is the first time we have heard those words. But sadly, it’s almost become routine for us. Certainly, it pains and troubles us every time we hear them, deeply so. We so badly wish it wasn’t the case for those who find them uttering them out loud to us. But there are far too many people who find themselves in similar situations—and by God’s grace we have been connected to them—at some of the most challenging moments of their lives.

And so we hear them.

I don’t know why I’m here anymore, the pain is so deep.

Life is so very excruciating, every day seems worse than the last.

I’m scared to get out of bed every morning because I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, one more time, and I don’t know if I can handle it anymore.

“Strange isn’t it, each man’s life touches so many others. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

“Dear George:

 Remember no man is a failure who has friends.”  

Those words reverberated in our ears and in our hearts this past week as we watched the holiday classic with our families, It’s A Wonderful Life. George Bailey, the main character, is a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others. In utter despair, his dreams shattered, he contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve. His contemplation brings about the intervention of his “guardian angel”, Clarence. In order to show George that his life has meaning, Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born. That revelation keeps George from taking his life.

During this time of year we like to be intentional about giving thanks. We are purposeful about making the time to reflect on the many things that we have experienced throughout the year. At the top of our list are the relationships, the friendships, which bless us with encouragement, affirmation and love, and remind us of our worth, value, and significance.

Someone To Tell It To was born because of our own friendship, out of the encouragement, affirmation and love we shared during particularly challenging seasons of our own lives. As we came to appreciate and value the support that we could offer each other and the strength that we received from it, we felt called to model for others how that support could be shown by all of us –

When Tom felt overwhelmed living with his wife and two oldest children in the attic of his sister- and brother-in-law’s attic, sharing a single mattress between the four of them, Michael was his “someone to tell it to” in that dark season.

When Michael has needed to talk through the frustrations and challenges of caring for a son with severe disabilities, Tom listens and allows Michael to express his deepest fears, concerns and sadness, as he reacts to the responsibilities upon him.

There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t hear from someone about how lonely they are. Loneliness pervades like nothing else.   Staggering numbers of people are not connected to others in ways that bring them joy or peace. The number of people who feel as if no one really cares about them is heart-breaking. More people than we would ever care to know share that they have contemplated suicide; those thoughts are especially pervasive during the holidays.

When we are in especially vulnerable places in our lives we can all forget that our lives do have significance and meaning and that our lives do touch other peoples’ lives too—sometimes without us ever knowing it. During these times we need other people to remind us of our worth, our value and our significance.

The most powerful message of It’s a Wonderful Life, is that the protagonist, George Bailey, needed to be stripped down to his essence again – to be reminded of how his life impacted others’ lives. He needed to receive others’ encouragement, affirmation and love again. We believe that the movie has been widely popular because all of us can relate in some way. All of us have had moments in our lives that have almost been too much to bear, alone.

In the most dramatic scene in the movie, George Bailey, in profound despair, takes out his pain and frustration on his family and kids. In the midst of his ranting, declaring his anger and sorrow over his life’s circumstances, his wife stands by him through it all, promising,

I’ll love you to the day I die.

Even though she was afraid in the face of his anger, she could see through it, looking beyond it, understanding that something was terribly wrong with her husband and that he needed to be supported and helped.

She stood by him through his pain, alongside him as he worked through it.

We are moved by that scene, moved by its rawness, by George’s vulnerability and by the pathos it shares.   That scene speaks to the human condition, all too strongly, of the disappointment and despair all too many of us feel at some point (or many points) in our lives. And, we are moved by the climactic scene in which all of George Bailey’s friends, neighbors and associates crowd into his living room to tell him what a positive difference he has made in their lives. Those friends give him new life, new hope, and a new outlook again. They save him from himself.

At the heart of Someone To Tell It To’s mission is the desire to help others know that they are not alone. We want everyone to know that none of us is “an island”, out there in a vast sea all alone, and none of us should ever have to be.

We all need friends. We all need to know that we are in this life together, with all of its challenges and disappointments, and never need to go through it alone.

Friendship is all about sharing the journey with one another.

Friendship is about easing the burdens we all carry.

Friendship is about lifting one another up and showing one another that we matter and that we are loved.

Two nights ago we shared together in our annual December 23rd tradition. We met for the sixth time in the lounge of a local hotel to celebrate Christmas and to reflect on what the year about to end has meant to us. (We share this story – “Sacred Places” – in our book, Someone To Tell It To: Sharing Life’s Journey). The highlight of the sharing each year is reminding each other how we’ve made a difference for one another and for our ministry together. We are intentional about expressing our gratitude for all the ways in which the other has supported, affirmed, inspired, helped and influenced in ways that have made a lasting difference.

It is a sacred time, in a sacred place, where sacred words are shared and we are lifted up. That time is a sacred gift from God, as we reflect on how throughout the year we see God’s presence and activity in one another’s words, actions and presence.

And as we reflect, we know once again that in the end, with faithful friends given to us by a loving God it indeed can be “a wonderful life”.