Saturday, April 13, 2013

A LETTER a Day

The title above is strangely appropriate to the forum in which this post finds itself, stuck right in the middle of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge in which we bloggers post daily on our pages on a subject beginning with successive letters of the alphabet; a letter a day, except for Sunday, the day of most-welcome rest. Equally surprising is the fact that it was this challenge which led me to another that has similarly intrigued me, that of writing a snail mail letter a day.

 Jenny is a fellow A-to-Z-er whose The Modest Peacock blog (www.themodestpeacock.blogspot.com) celebrates handwritten missives in a big way. Her site led me to the story of Randy Osborne (www.randyosborne.com), who has taken on the daunting task of writing a letter a day in the year 2013 to anybody who wants one. Should I survive this year’s A to Z Challenge, I’ve mentally signed on to undertaking the A Month of Letters challenge in February of next year, writing letters that stamps are affixed to instead of posted on a webpage.

I am a huge fan of snail mail. Long before I owned a computer I wrote personal letters in abundance, usually to family and friends, but occasionally to church members who needed encouragement, authors I admired, or anyone else who caught my interest for a brief moment of time and had an address I could write on an envelope. As life got busier and the electronic world made communication easier I largely gave up the practice, as it simply took up too much time.

Perhaps it was when my sons moved away from home that my interest in the subject returned. I simply missed chatting with them, and doing so by mail allowed me to satisfy that urge in greater volume than I can text with my thumbs, one-sided conversations they could read and respond to whenever they had the time.

I come by the letter-writing bug honestly, as both my parents took pen in hand on a regular basis. My mother largely communicated with people at Christmas, handwriting long letters in the cards she sent to distant friends. My dad, however, wrote weekly letters to his children who had moved away from home. Just the sight of his familiar handwriting in my mailbox was as comforting as the words I read inside that detailed his day-to-day life or his thoughts on some subject I’d mentioned to him recently. Upon his death years ago I gathered up those treasures of his that I still had on hand and put them into a notebook. How wonderful it was when my now-grown youngest son started asking questions about the grandfather he never knew that I could pull out that volume and share written insights with him into the mind and heart of this wonderful man. He told me later that the letters my dad had written me were evidence of  how much he loved me.

We each have such a volume of letters filled with wisdom and instruction from a Father who loves us, penned in the pages of our Bibles. If we would only realize it as such we would look at it differently, open its pages as eagerly in the mornings as we rip open an envelope we find addressed to us in our mailbox and read what’s inside…simply a letter a day.

“For the Father Himself [tenderly] loves you…”
(John 16:27 AMP)

10 comments:

  1. I've nominated you for a blog award=) If you're interested, you can find all the information you need here: http://writingreadingandlife.com/2013/04/13/l-is-for-liebster-an-award-that-is/

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    1. Kathleen, THANK YOU so much...for visiting, for reading, and for the nomination!!! I am so glad to have made a new friend!

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  2. I remember the hand written letters with fondness. I have boxes of them. From parents, sons, my husband when we were dating (he was away on an elective for a year) ... they are all treasured!

    And your approach to the Bible - with the same eagerness and freshness. A letter a day.

    Thank you so much for this!


    Susan Scott's Soul Stuff

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    1. Thanks, Susan, for reading, and I am like you in that it is almost impossible to throw a handwritten letter away, lol!!!

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  3. What a wonderful gift your dad gave you. And yes, what a wonderful gift Father God has given us--His Word!
    Blessings!
    Pam at 2 Encourage

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    1. I agree, Pam! Talk about a treasure...!!! Thanks for reading!

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  4. When I started reading your post I thought about Dad's letters and sure enough, you mentioned them a paragraph later. I remember how Dad delighted addressing the envelope to you when Hamilton, OH was briefly named Hamilton! OH 8-) I like your commitment to writing a letter a day; sure hope I'll be the recipient of a few--we love to receive and read them! Love you!

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    1. Well, of course! And I wanted to say that seeing your handwriting on any piece of mail delights me the same way Dad's did! I thought about that the other day when the postcard from Monterey arrived! Thanks for sending us one! It's on the fridge...!

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  5. This post just reminded me that I made a promise on facebook to send a handwritten note to whoever would comment on the post. I need to go look it up and see who I owe a letter to! My parents and grandparents have always been wonderful letter writers, mostly handwritten but some typewritten too. They are a wonderful source of stories and history.

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    1. Funny about the facebook post, lol! What a great idea that was! I find that I want to type my letters rather than write them out by hand, simply because it is so much faster and the flow of my thoughts can run more easily. But the sight of a person's handwriting is a connection that a typewriter can't duplicate. Hmmm...guess I'll just be thankful for snail mail, however it comes! Thanks for reading. :)

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Thanks for visiting and sharing your thoughts! I appreciate your time. :)

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