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Copyrights- 2002 Delores Christian Liesner
Richard was noticeable, even without his usual bright smile. Relatively new to this large urban high school, I knew little of Richard, except that he was active and well liked by everyone including my boss, the Directing Principal.
I had learned that Richard had suffered a sudden heart attack and might have to limit activities for the rest of the year. Everyone knew it would be especially difficult for Richard if he could not participate as usual in the commencement of kids he’d helped over the past four years.
I turned curiously from stuffing the mailboxes as I heard my boss greeting Richard, pale from surgery. I became alarmed at his unusual lack of spirit when Richard explained that his doctor had ordered immediate retirement. Although barely acquainted, I felt compelled to connect with him and I called out,
“Richard, I’ll be praying for you.”
Turning in the doorway he met my gaze.
“Thanks,” he drawled, “but I feel like my life is over if I can’t be with the students.”
I was shocked that he would share such desperate thoughts with someone he barely knew. His words ‘my life is over’ rang in my ears for weeks after. Uncomfortable to phone a “virtual stranger”, I begged the School Psychologist and my boss to call, but both sympathetically returned the burden. I finally accepted my boss’s offer to “guard” my closed office door from interruption, as I dialed Richard’s number.
A last-minute escape to talk to his wife instead, failed when Richard himself answered the phone. He responded with a melancholy tone that his wife and girls were out picking up a few things for their trip to see family for Thanksgiving. Dumbly, I replied, “OK. I will call back later.” Disgusted with myself, my heart clenched in fear reviewing his emphasis they are going rather than we are going. I was nodding my head in obedience when Richard’s dull hello released a wall of emotion buried memories of my Dad’s depression from a heart attack.
“Richard,” I confessed,
“I called a minute ago and asked to speak to your wife because I didn’t know if you would speak with someone you barely know, but your reaction to your surgery reminded me of my Dad and I would like to tell you about him if you would listen.” I shared how my Dad loved his job and made it his life until a sudden heart attack weakened my “superhero”. I recalled my Father telling me how he felt like he’d never be whole again, Richard was surprised to hear he felt that way too. Memories came of how the family felt helpless before the strange enemy of depression that literally locked my Dad away from our reach.
My voice broke recalling our desperation to reach Dad. I wondered aloud if Richard’s wife and daughters felt as we did (like failures) because they couldn’t seem to get through to him as we couldn’t get through to our dad. Richard’s voice slowly came to life, “Why I never imagined they might feel that way,” he said thoughtfully.
I told Richard how my Dad was touched when our 7-year-old wrote John 3:16 on a card and carefully printed that he could “ trust God to love him even more than any of our family could because he gave his Son to do what even Grandpa could not do for himself.” Once Dad found hope in God's message he was ready to listen to the doctor. I told Richard the doctor’s response that depression was a normal side-effect for many people after heart surgery and it is “nothing to be ashamed of”. This encouraged me to ask Richard to make several promises; to join the family trip for Thanksgiving, to write down all that he read and saw that God had done for him and given him and then to call the doctor and check in with me when he got back. Richard’s slow drawl responding that he ‘supposed he could put off his plans for that evening’, and his promise to ‘report in’ after vacation gave me added assurance, that he would be under his family’s watchful eye until he saw the doctor. The call ended and my office door opened, a speculative “How’d it go?” from my boss turned to astonishment that I’d requested promises, then assurance that if Richard said he’d do something he would keep his word.
The following Tuesday morning the phone rang and a jubilant Richard announced, “You were right, the doctor said I have a side-effect from surgery and I am starting a prescription today." But this wasn’t the only thanks I received, the first was in the form of a card from his daughter, saying in part “we don’t know all of what you shared with my Dad but that conversation changed his life. We have our Daddy back.” To think I almost missed out on that blessing by being worried what someone would think of a stranger calling!
The second came the next morning when my boss reacted in surprise as a familiar shadow filled the doorway with a smiling Richard. Richard had come on a mission, however, and quickly revealed it as he pointed at me teasingly, while querying the principal “Did you know about her phone call?” As he acknowledged the affirmative answer with a nod, Richard’s direct glance held us breathless as he continued,
“Well, what she didn’t know, was that I had a gun ready that night and I had plans to use it. It took a stranger to call me and wake me up.”
The three of us were locked in a moment of startled silence and the words that lay closest to my heart came to me, “but we are strangers no more.” These words, even today, still ring quietly in my ears.
The Thin Thread in this story is a moment’s decision
to reach out and call a stranger.
Editor’s note:
YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN COMING OUT OF YOUR ‘COMFORT ZONE’
& REACHING OUT TO A TOTAL STRANGER CAN IMPACT A LIFE.
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