Life has never come easy for Tom. His friends have thinned out in recent years, mostly tired of his cheery manner of disguising so many problems. I don’t know what his childhood was like, but his successes these days are few. Tom failed at two separate business ventures in ten years, both of them hurtling him deeper into debt. Some people were never meant to be self-employed, but they don’t yet know it. Tom’s wife knew it for him, just as she understood that one too many broken promises and years of secretly borrowed money do not make for marriage.
Now a divorced and broken man, Tom checks in with me about once a month. It was during these office visits that I learned of his stealing from his father. With power of attorney for Dad, who resides in a memory unit, Tom incrementally removed more than $150,000 from an account he had no business touching. His two out-of-town siblings are now aware of the theft. While his intent to repay the debt is sincere, the plan to get there could take the rest of his life. Tom is in a dark place and, for the first time since I’ve known him, isn’t carrying around the hail-fellow-well-met face that has been his trademark.
Christmas can’t come soon enough for Tom this year. That’s my perspective, not his. As far as he’s concerned, Christmas without gifts under a tree and a family to surround them must seem like the most dreadful experience. But I have a plan. I’m going to open our next conversation contemplating that lovely excerpt from the Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:78–79) “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” I hope to ruminate with Tom on what it means to cherish a God who spends more energy binding up broken hearts and attending to wounds than crushing the world with an iron fist.
