I tear up every time I watch the trailer for The King’s Speech. The Academy Award winning movie follows George VI of Britain’s rise to the throne alongside his working relationship with Lionel Logue. King-to-be George, also known as Bertie, has a major problem: He stutters his way through public speeches. Most of us get by without exposing our fear of public speaking, but Bertie cannot hide in his royal line of work. His dilemma further intensifies as the Nazi regime threatens his country, and Bertie knows a scared nation waits for his voice.
In attempt to meet their need, Bertie hires and subsequently fires speech therapist after speech therapist. Finally he finds connection and momentum with a man named Lionel Logue. Bertie’s last hope (Logue) happens to be just what the doctor ordered, only, Lionel isn’t a doctor, and he lacks the credentials worthy of working with royalty.
But Logue knows something preceding speech therapists did not: Bertie’s stuttering speech connects to a heart with an unspoken story.
Though he does not highlight his lack of credentials, Logue, with the patience and skill of a sculptor, takes the king into his interior world and rebuilds Bertie’s crumbled self-confidence. For the first time, the king meets someone who draws him out as a man. His confidence grows along with his ability to speak.
Toward the end of the movie, Bertie awaits his inauguration speech at Westminster Abbey. Awaits doesn’t quite capture the trepidation he feels. He has embarrassed himself in public up to this point, and the pressure builds as the evening approaches. Having built trust and friendship with Lionel, Bertie invites him into the monastery so they can practice the acceptance speech together. The Bishop of Canterbury, angry at Logue’s presence and holding a grudge, delivers a message to Bertie in private: Lionel is not in fact a doctor of speech therapy, but merely a failed actor that works with people who stumble with words. Upon hearing the bishop’s discovery, this conversation ensues:
Bertie: I’m not here to rehearse, Doctor Logue. True, you never called yourself ‘Doctor’. I did that for you. No diploma, no training, no qualifications. Just a great deal of nerve.
Lionel: Ah, the Star Chamber inquisition, is it?
Bertie: You asked for trust and total equality.
Lionel: Bertie, I heard you at Wembley, I was there. I heard you. My son Laurie said “Do you think you could help that poor man?” I replied “If I had the chance”.
Bertie: What, as a failed actor!?
Bertie blasts Lionel at the core of his deepest hunger and greatest disappointment using his shattered dreams as ammunition: A failed actor: that is who you are and all you are. Most of us would fold here, like a defeated fighter cornered in the ring. Indeed Lionel could quit, simply drop to the floor and splash into a pool of his own blood and sweat. TKO. Or he could attempt the illogical and insane: fight the king. Society worships the grit and guts of the hero who never says die. But only a fool steps out of line to overpower the king.
Lionel neither quits nor fights. He chooses option three: Surrender. He surrenders, not to Bertie, but to the story he has lived, the story he and God have written.
Lionel: It’s true, I’m not a doctor, and yes I acted a bit, recited in pubs and taught elocution in schools. When the Great War came, our boys were pouring back from the front, shell-shocked and unable to speak and somebody said, “Lionel, you’re very good at all this speech stuff. Do you think you could possibly help these poor buggers”. I did muscle therapy, exercise, relaxation, but I knew I had to go deeper. Those poor young blokes had cried out in fear, and no-one was listening to them. My job was to give them faith in their voice and let them know that a friend was listening. That must ring a few bells with you, Bertie.
To enter anyone’s heart and story, we must first enter our own.
Lionel’s surrender to his own story makes him both safe and powerful: Safe enough to allow a man with the self-assurance of an eight year old to attack him, and powerful enough to respond with the love and grace that exposes the boy and draws out the man. When Lionel answers Bertie’s accusation, he does so with grace, born out of vision for who and what Bertie could be, not only as a king but more so as a recovered man. My vision for others is too often contingent on their approval of me. But not Lionel. In the moment when Bertie dismisses him, he chooses all the more to believe in his accuser. First and foremost because he knows Bertie reacts out of fear and shame rather than out of the good but young, immature heart underneath.
As a processed man living a redemptive story, Lionel cannot be harmed by Bertie’s immaturity. Additionally, Bertie’s success or failure as a speaker and king will neither validate nor invalidate Lionel, for someone surrendered to God’s authoring is free to live without the need of other’s approval. And Lionel’s experience of humility and acceptance in his own story becomes the bridge that allows his wisdom to pass over. The power of Lionel’s words and presence come not from his ability to fight or flee, but in his willingness to surrender to life and serve and love in the midst of disappointment.
The safest and most powerful people live the path of surrender.
Likely Lionel still winces each time he is turned away from an audition, if he even still acts at all. But because he embraces both his own losses and gifts, he finds the freedom to love Bertie despite his friend’s stab at his Achilles Heel. I imagine the first day Lionel auditioned for an acting role early in life, he envisioned performing in front of thousands at the pinnacle of his career, with his praises adorning the newspaper the next morning. I don’t imagine he saw himself playing speech therapist to pay the bills. And yet, he finds himself needed by the king at his most crucial hour as the security of the country hangs in the balance.
Redemption always includes surrender to the suffering in our story, and when we do so, we prepare ourselves to enter a story larger than ourselves.
While it is Bertie’s story Lionel attends to, it’s his own grieved and processed story which allows him to become safe and powerful. To mature in heart is to become safer and more potent with life to offer. But the road to this safety and power winds first through the suffering in our own journey. If you want to offer a presence of safety and possess the strength to empower others, surrender is the only way.
How would you have written your story differently?
What losses have marked your life and invite you to grieve them?
What stories or feelings do you continually resist, and how might your resistance keep you from the story that awaits your recovered heart?
Safe and Powerful. We were made to be so. Surrendered to our story like Lionel, we too may find the ability to enter the life of another in the loving manner that disarms a king.
