Get the tissues ready for this one…

And I thought It’s A Wonderful Life got to me.  (And that is a great movie that I basically watch once a year and still get choked up.)  But here’s a real life story that’ll getcha for sure.

Safe Haven Shelter, a domestic violence shelter in Texas, shared a letter that a seven-year-old boy wrote to Santa Claus that his mother found in his backpack.

The boy wrote “We had to leave our house. Dad was mad.  We had to do all the chores.  Dad got everything he wanted.  Mom said it was time to leave and she was taking us to a safer place where we don’t have to be scared.”

The boy continued the letter to Santa with “Are you going to come this Christmas?  We don’t have any of our stuff here.”  The boy, named Blake, then asked Santa for “some chapter books, a dictionary, a compass, a watch, and a very, very, very, good dad.”

It’s easy to take for granted the goods things and decent people we have in our lives, but then youhear about something like this.  One positive I find in this story is that the kid knows he needs something better.  The tragedy in a lot of abuse cases is that no-one is there to tell the kids that this is not normal, and they end up carrying it to the next generation.

One more note:  If you or someone you know needs to escape domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.