Blessed

It never seems quite like Christmas unless I see “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 James Stewart Americana classic, at least once. Though I first saw it over two decades ago, I’m still caught off guard by the power of the closing scene, the classic image of someone awakening to the life that had been happening to them while they were making other plans.

George Bailey had lived virtually his entire adult life wishing he’d found a way of getting out of Bedford Falls. He just knew he’d lost out on the life that could have been, the life to which he felt entitled. Instead, he’d been stuck in his Podunk hometown, taking care of the Building and Loan he inherited, while his younger brother, Harry, went out and saw the world, making a big name for himself at the same time. All along, while he thought life was happening somewhere else, George was busy taking care of the poor and disadvantaged, making more friends than money. In the end, he realized that a man with friends is truly the richest man in town.

The movie came on the other night, just about the time of the closing scene. So did the tears, but, this time, for a different reason. For perhaps the first time ever the movie had the impact its original author may have intended six decades ago.

As I watched all of George’s friends come to him at the time of his greatest need, I realized that the approaching New Year brings to a close my own “wonderful life” moment. A moment that stretches all the way back to July 7, 2007, when Nancy rushed me to the emergency room and I nearly died from a liver infection. A moment that stretched, like a bad dream that wouldn’t end, over the next 18 months. At the same time as Nancy walked with me through a long, hard recovery, we also suffered the loss of our church home of ten years. It was truly a bad dream from which, in many ways, I feel that I’m just now awakening.

This year, perhaps more than ever in my life, I’ve grown to realize how I must be one of the richest people in the world. In our time of greatest need, Nancy and I discovered like never before what it means to have friends. Friends who will come from hundreds of miles just to stand by you. Friends who stand faithfully by, even while you are not, literally, conscious enough to know of their presence. Friends who call and write and come by unannounced bearing gifts of food and wine. Friends who will listen to your story again and again, not because they haven’t already memorized its every detail but because they know how badly you need to tell it. How do you measure the value of friends like that?

Yesterday, I felt little two-year-old Adeline’s fingers grasp my left index finger as we said grace over the Christmas feast of glazed ham, medium-rare beef tenderloin, sweet potato casserole, black olives and home-pickled okra, broccoli and rice, hot rolls and iced tea, all spread out before us. It was nothing less than a parable of the sea of blessing this year has brought. I felt like a Pilgrim, without the hat.

Last night, as we said goodbye to family in the driveway, I looked up into the sky. Venus burned like a laser through the South Texas night sky, its ancient stones from the beginning of time reflecting the white light of tomorrow morning’s sun. The light that has come unbidden into my world, along with the blessing of being able to see it.

As this morning dawned, the day after Christmas, I took out the trash. No need in holding onto yesterday’s rubbish. Time to kick it to the curb and move on. New gifts wait to be given, and received. I turned back toward the house and looked up. Wispy-gray clouds of the new morning were sailing by in the warm breeze, carried by winds they neither created nor controlled. I felt something warm inside, too. What was that? What is it a new day dawning, a new light coming into the world, into my heart?

The deer came for the morning corn, just outside our bedroom window, too many to count. Sam and Beau pressed their rubber-black noses to the cold glass, wondering who these new friends might be in their world. Yellow-bellied Finches were feeding just above the deer’s heads, feasting on the seeds we gave them just for the privilege of watching them eat.

As these miracles of nature paraded in front of me, mocking all the times I’ve worried about how I’d pay the bills, I wondered how it was that I could have ended up in this house, in this place, on this day. Just one year ago I fretted myself sleepless as the long winter days stretched out unendingly in front of us, wondering where we’d land when all the dust settled.

Now, aside from Venus, Sam and Beau, the deer, the birds of the air, the little-girl-two-year-old fingers wrapped around mine and four generations of one family sitting around the same table filled to overflow, we have a new, first-generation church family to serve and to love. Nancy has a new, invigorating job, something to stretch her personally and professionally. I have Nancy and she has me. The boys are coming in just two days. I have them all to myself, for a whole week! All of that, not to mention the friends we have, from coast to coast. People who don’t measure us in terms of anything but the inestimable value of the laughter and tears we’ve shared together, and know we’ll share again.

Will I have all of this one year from now? Who knows? What I do know is what and who I have in this moment, right now. Is this me, standing in my world, with more blessings than I can count? Is God determined to love me, to bless me, no matter what?

Life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans, or while we’re regretting a past we can’t change or fretting a future we can’t control. Life-giving gratitude replaces soul-killing fear in the moment we stop to see the smiles in the faces of those who are genuinely glad to see us when we show up, those willing to hold our hands and share the feast. People God gave us, in this moment, just to be our friends. Nancy and I turned to each other last night just before we slipped off for a night’s rest. We said thanks to Eternal God, ever-present. Then, to each other, we said, “We are blessed.”