For as long as I can remember, I've been keeping things. No, this is not a cry for a Horders intervention or Buried Alive. I keep things. For example, letters, cards, pictures that are outdated. (I still have a frame in my bedroom from my 16th birthday with eight of my closest friends at the time. Needless to say, things change and many of us have lost touch.) But I keep it anyway. Maybe it reminds me of a simpler time when I didn't have to fill our loan information or even work forty hours a week. Maybe it reminds me of the days when I had birthday parties at my home and felt special because I was older than everyone around me?
Whatever the reason, I keep it.
Although I'm not positive why I've kept some of the things in my room or in the shoebox underneath my bed, I am sure there is a reason I've kept one specific letter.
There is a single white piece of paper.
It moves around with me.
From school to home and back again.
From school to home and back again.
And the words on that single sheet of paper, which is now looking a little ragged from all the times I've opened, refolded, stuffed it into some envelope, only to repeat the cycle not long after... the words on that paper are simple. Maybe 200 words max, but it is not the word count that keeps me coming back and reading it so often.
There is something beautiful about the letter. It is the only letter he ever sent. The single sheet of paper he took the time to fill about four months into our friendship. You'd think someone in ministry might show love in other ways, and he does, all the time, but the strength of the letter came from knowing that the letter he sent was what I would receive best.
So here I am. Getting ready to start a new year, with a new staff. People I already enjoy and find myself anxious to get to know and excited to learn from. Another year to get it right this time after feeling like I failed so miserably last year. And I pull out the letter...
"some people can't see themselves truly when they look in a mirror and they need another to tell them. Well Meredith, when I look at you, I see love. Everyday. Keep on loving Meredith, because you are so good at it."
"some people can't see themselves truly when they look in a mirror and they need another to tell them. Well Meredith, when I look at you, I see love. Everyday. Keep on loving Meredith, because you are so good at it."
Oh boy, I've been burned this past year. I've made some of the hardest decisions of my life. Done the right thing for myself and my relationship with the Lord when no one understood or supported it. And there that letter was. Just sitting there. Waiting silently for me to open it and allow it to speak volumes.
and so I open it again, when I think I won't get it right
and I hear someone else say what is sometimes so difficult to remember...
and I hear someone else say what is sometimes so difficult to remember...
"...you are so good at it."
Because my friends, that's what the people who love us do. They remind us how brillant and wonderful we are, when we can't it ourselves.
