John Fischer The Catch

Among the most popular holiday movies, and a family tradition for many during the Christmas season, It’s a Wonderful Life, is about a divine intervention by a guardian angel to help a man in distress. It opens with a fanciful depiction of angels in heaven discussing a problem that has come up. They are receiving prayers asking to help George Bailey (James Stewart) who is about to hurt himself, and they need to send an angel down to earth to stop him. They select Clarence (Henry Travers), a somewhat down-on-his-luck angel who hasn’t earned his wings yet, but the senior angels promise he will get them if he succeeds.

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Waiting. It’s one of the hardest things there is to do. Waiting can be joyful and full of wide-eyed anticipation, like a child trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve so the morning will come faster, or it can be excruciatingly painful like a patient receiving an urgent request to come see the doctor for the biopsy report.

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I am recalling a Christmas when our youngest son, Chandler, was a child. I don’t remember how old he was, but he was old enough to think of someone other than himself. He had an idea. He would wrap up a gift for his older sister, Anne, and not tell anyone about it. It was going to be his secret surprise, and no one would know — not his mother or father, not his older brother, and most certainly, not Anne.

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