Life is not like the movies, we don't have to settle for the ending

​My favorite movie is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I'm sure it always will be.

When the movie came out in 1982, I saw it half a dozen weekends in a row. It was a bit of an obsession. I understand that obsession today more than I ever could have back then.

I think I was deeply drawn to the relationship between Elliott and ET. The way they could feel each other's emotions and physical experiences. The way they accepted each other without judgment. The way they both felt isolated from the world, but could share that with each other in a way that forged a deep and vulnerable bond between them.

In many ways, Elliott and ET had the kind of relationship I unknowingly longed for.

At the end of the movie, there's this heartbreaking scene. As ET is about to leave and return to his home planet, Elliott says, "Stay," pleading for ET to remain with him. In response, ET touches Elliott's forehead and says, "Come," expressing his desire for Elliott to come with him.

Then ET flies away. Without Elliott.

I think I returned to that movie so many times holding hope the ending would change, hoping that one of them would change their mind and stay or go.

But they never did.

Movies suck that way, really. We have to go home with the ending, no matter what it is, and live with it.

Thankfully, life doesn't work that way.

I watched a documentary the other night. It was about 26 children and their school bus driver who were kidnapped in Chowchilla, California in 1976.

The kids and driver were taken from their bus by masked men carrying guns and then buried alive in an big trailer in a rock quarry. They all eventually escaped relatively unharmed, but the horrific experience had a deep traumatic impact on the children the rest of their lives.

One of the victims, Larry Park, was six years old at the time of the kidnapping. Larry would go on to suffer from schizophrenia and addiction and was at times incarcerated.

He described his life as a living hell.

But one morning, Park woke up and decided he was going to make peace with his kidnappers. He would later meet and forgive one of the perpetrators, Richard Schoenfeld, who'd been paroled after serving 36 years in prison for his role in the event.

Since meeting Schoenfeld, Park has gone on to become a Christian counselor and pastor, helping others heal through his experience with forgiveness and recovery.

The thing about trauma, and many of the hardships we face in life, is they are always trying to tell us THE END. They are always trying to get us to roll the credits of our life and crawl away into darkness.

Our traumas, they often leave us stuck in this battle between stay or go, which can feel like watching your best friend fly back home to his planet, isolated and lost again.

But life isn't the movies. With life, we never have to put down our pen. Sure, maybe if life ended today, this wouldn't be the ending you would have written.

Yet, if you're reading this, life hasn't ended.

You are still holding a pen.

And maybe sometimes life gets us so distracted by the endings and potential endings that we lose sight of one of the most beautiful gifts life has to offer us: once upon a time.

Every morning, lately, when I get up from bed, I try to remember to utter those words. Sometimes to myself. Sometimes looking in the mirror. Sometimes out loud while hitting start on the coffee maker.

ONCE UPON A TIME, I say.

Maybe I can't make Elliott go, or ET stay, but there's still an awful lot in life I can make.

ONCE UPON A TIME.

My story starts now.

So does yours.

Write it.