Thanks-Giving.....Alone

It's the season of Thanks-Giving......a time when many struggle to find even one thing to Give Thanks for.....and try as they may, it simply doesn't come to them.  They sit quietly as the fog of life envelopes them....just waiting...no, BEGGING....for this time of year to be over with already.  And I just want to whisper to them.....'Hold your hand out....hold it out and let Him grab it...you're not alone."

But they can't.  

It was a day ago I learned that my good friend, Brian, had killed himself.  Drove his car straight into the house I first met he and his wife in, and shot himself.  Tragic.  No one knew the pain he was going through....but amongst the 7.125 billion people in this Whole Wide World and the 196 friends he had on Facebook and the 84 followers on Twitter and his ginormous family who loved him, he was alone. 

A-L-O-N-E.

Sometimes it feels like the earth is cracking.....and people are falling into the cracks.  And as we carefully step over the cracks, we say "What a shame about your friend Brian or Robin Williams or Cici Paris......." and we move on, shaking our heads as we turn our eyes away from those who are barely hanging on before falling into the darkness of this world.   And we convince ourselves if we didn't turn away, it would mess up our holidays.

May I suggest that maybe....just maybe....if we worried less about our holidays being messed up with a messed up person and more about inviting that messed up person to share a seat at our holiday table, that maybe....just maybe....it could turn our holiday into the PERFECT holiday.  That the greatest gift we could GIVE and RECEIVE would be to extend our hand and pull that person out of the darkness that is closing in around them....to open the door to hope.

Look around......grab a hand.....and Give Thanks.