My son will live here at home another month before returning to college, but we’ve started gathering essentials to outfit his first apartment. While moving personal items to the attic this week, I came across a box labeled “family correspondence — college years.” The enclosed letters are a great representation of my parents and the ways both chose to communicate with me. Newspaper articles and news about family and friends came from my mom. Dad contributed carefully crafted words, representing deep thought and sentimentality. Today I treasure everything about those letters, just as I did 35 years ago when I was a young college student, wanting to know what was going on back home. Only today my appreciation is more profound, for I am a parent of a collegian and the same burning desire to impart love and wisdom churns deep inside of me. In this day of email and texting, seeing my parents’ familiar handwriting touches me deeply. As I read through them I enjoy the mental image of both sitting at their desk, sometime during the evening after work, to pour heart and soul onto stationery because they understood that their thoughts were safe with me. Dad, in particular, indulged in a great deal of sentimentality.
“You have been away to school about 10 days now and I am missing you greatly already. My knowledge that you are doing what you have wanted for so long and what your mother and I take as our pleasure in helping you to do makes our first real separation bearable but not easy. I miss your cheery ‘hello’ but take pleasure in the circumstances that you take from us.”
When I wondered if I could manage a part-time job as a dorm resident adviser while attending school full-time, Dad wrote, “If you want to do something worthwhile in life you must be a risk taker and not be afraid of failure. History is full of examples of people who failed many times before they achieved a worthwhile and outstanding goal.”
Dad’s words of encouragement take on new meaning today as I share their wisdom. Cancer ended our ability to talk and interact in this world, but I’m reminded with these words that love never dies. Its power breaks physical barriers and lives into eternity. That legacy of love emboldens me to communicate with my children without abandon, even when the sentimentality slightly embarrasses them and may not be accepted with the reaction I desire. I remind myself that bravely speaking love and encouragement and sharing nearly a century of gained wisdom will allow me to love on them when I’m unable to be there in person.
Let’s stop at some point this week and thank God for the wisdom and encouragement He hands us, each and every day, through people and circumstances. And may we make it a point to use words that encourage the people in our lives, never doubting that faithful sentiments can and will impact our world, now and into the future.
