It was a quiet Friday night as I sat down on the couch with my dog to decompress after a long week. Sometimes I like to just kick back and watch a good movie. Navigating through the seemingly endless ‘on demand’ cable menus, I stumbled upon ‘Saving Mr. Banks’. The Disney theme was woven into my fabric as a kid and I always enjoyed watching Mary Poppins with my kids when they were younger. I even remember bringing home a tuppence for them on one of my trips to England.

I decided to check it out and here is what I discovered.

This movie highlights the battle between Walt Disney and P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, for the movie rights to Mary Poppins. Even though Walt Disney pulls out all the stops, Travers clings tightly to her story like an anchor to her past. As this battle plays out, the back story to Mary Poppins comes into full focus as the truth about the ghosts of her past are discovered.

If you haven’t noticed, life is filled with disappointments. As Travers’ story unfolds, it’s heartbreaking to watch the disappointments she had to walk through. One of the toughest was the loss of her father from influenza after a long battle with alcoholism. So many of us try to escape life by stepping in a fairy tale. For Travers, this escape was imagined as a little girl and penned into the story of Mary Poppins in her later years.

“M. Poppins” originated from childhood stories that she contrived for her sisters, and that she was still in possession of a book from that age with this name inscribed within Travers’ great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, and used to say, ‘Spit spot, into bed’ is a likely inspiration for the character.ⁱ

I watched at times with a heavy heart and it was tough to hold back the tears near the end. I discovered that I shared a similar anchor or a ghost in my past…anger and bitterness towards my own parents. Especially my father.

I share this moment in my book Heartstone:

I desperately searched for a warm embrace throughout my childhood, but somehow I ended up chasing the wrong things—coming up empty, which left me with many areas of unmet needs and love deficits. I remembered all the nights when, as a child, I would sit at the bottom of the stairs sick, scared, or just wanting a hug. I would debate myself with a crippling agony for hours rationalizing which was easier—sitting on my bottom step alone and dealing with it or waking my mom up, knowing what her response would be. My dad wasn’t present, because he was always working. My mom was there, but wasn’t always present. My parents were not physically divorced, but it really felt like they were emotionally divorced. I just wanted a hug—a warm embrace. Unfortunately, I would usually make the choice of sitting there alone in isolation, which set the stage for how I would deal with circumstances throughout my life.

It took me quite some time to connect the dots that my Heavenly Father was waiting for me to surrender these places into His outstretched hands so He could come and fill them with an outpouring of His love. Identifying with this learned isolation, I would take it upon myself to fill my needs and deficits with all kinds of counterfeit affections, not realizing what I was really looking for could only be found in Him. It would take years to understand this pattern and to come to a place of letting go and of forgiving my parents. God helped me understand that they couldn’t give away what they had never received.

For some reason we all throw out anchors in our past, don’t we? It’s these places of disappointments in our past that haunt us and we always try to find an escape. This was a place of deep disappointment for me and my escape was work. I had convinced myself that work was a place that never disappointed. In a sense my own fairy tale.

Let’s get back to the movie.

Near the ending as Walt and Travers are in the process of setting Mary Poppins free, Walt gently confronts her, saying: “I’ve come because you misjudged me. You expected me to disappoint you, so you made sure I did. I think life disappoints you. Mary Poppins is the only person who doesn’t disappoint you.”

As Walt unpacks the tough details and disappointments of his own childhood he shares this, “I’m tired of remembering it that way. Don’t you want to let it all go? Don’t you want to rewrite the tale and let it all go? Forgiveness, Mrs. Traverse, is what I learned from those books… George Banks will be redeemed. George Banks and all he stood for will be redeemed, because that’s what we storytellers do…we restore hope.”

Let me connect some dots here. George Banks represented her dead, alcoholic father and Mary Poppins was a tribute to Aunt Ellie, who Travers and her sisters became very close to after their mother’s failed suicide attempt. Mary Poppins was that place of escape, that fairy tale, that hope for Travers, in a world of disappointment. Poppins became that anchor to Travers past and it was time to let it go.

We all have our own Mary Poppins in life and if we don’t release them to God, the real Storyteller, we will never be released from our past. We will drag it into our present and it will define our future. In a way the past will certainly happen again, if we keep willing it to happen. Mary Poppins was the only thing life that didn’t disappoint Travers and was the very thing that prevented forgives and healing towards her father.

Wow, could I relate to this.

I connected with Walt because I too was tired of remembering the past in the same way. Never wanting to let it go with an ego that blinded me throughout my life.

God comes to us and asks us to place our past in His hands and then promises to redeem it. That is what He, the great Storyteller, can do. He can restore order within our imagination by instilling hope again and again and again.

We just have to let it go and give it to Him.

Winds in the east
Mist coming in
Like something is brewing
About to begin
Can’t put me finger
On what lies in store
But I feel what’s to happen
All happened before. ⁱⁱ

We can live only today, not the past, not the future.

Why do we like to keep the past present?

Why do we like to live in dreams that we once made?

Why do we like to indulge in the past while never being able to enjoy the present?

When Travers released Mary Poppins to Walt Disney, he redeemed Mr. Banks, he redeemed the story in the movie we all cherish.

Imagine how your story would end if you released your stuff to God?

Let God redeem you. Let Him change the ending!

The truth of God’s word is that He has already written the story of your life. It is time for you release your stuff to God and find your road home. He wants you to have a beautiful ending!