A Note Of Love

I had mentioned in a previous post (Clutter) that I’m a ‘pack rat’. 

I hang onto things that mean something to me.  I guess you could say I’m a romantic, that I’m nostalgic.  I don’t think you’d be wrong with that characterization.  Seems like I passed that onto my youngest, Emily.  We both have our ‘treasures’.

Recently, I was rummaging through a drawer in my nightstand where I keep “my things”.  My wife, Kim, would call it Clutter, but I call it Treasures . . . pieces of my life that I can’t bear to part with.  This drawer is jammed to the brim, almost (but not quite) to the point that I have trouble opening and closing it.

I can’t remember what I was looking for, but I came across some cards and notes Kim had given me a long time ago.  Almost twenty-one years ago.  Whatever I was looking for was soon forgotten.  Gone.  As I said, I can’t even remember what it was I was looking for.

You see, when Kim was the Head Softball Coach at the school in California where we met, before each game, she would write a note to each of her players.  Something to inspire.  She’d include a piece of candy.  Each game.  Every game.  Each kid.  Every kid.

Our wedding was in July of 1992.  I had to drive from California to Wisconsin because I had a number of things I had to bring back.  Kim flew home to help her mom with the preparations while I drove.  I stopped the first night somewhere in Southern Utah and checked into a hotel.  As I unpacked this or that, maybe as I got ready for bed, I opened up my suitcase and came across a stack of cards labeled Joe Day One, Joe Day Two, and so on, until Joe Wedding Day.

Each card had a note from her.  Something simple . . . something meaningful. 

A Note Of Love.

Kim has carried that tradition well past her softball team . . . well past that wedding trip.  When Emily went off to Y camp one summer, she had a card from Kim for each day.  When we traveled by car back to Wisconsin to visit family and friends, each of our kids had a card a day.  I’ve often thought that over the years, we should have bought stock in Hallmark!

A Note Of Love.

It isn’t the card, necessarily.  To me, it wasn’t even the sentiment written on the card. 

What was important to me was the time Kim took to write the note.  What was important to me was the thought she put into the note.

Got me thinking . . .

How often have we expressed, even in a little way, how much someone means to us?  A gesture.  A smile.  A touch.  How many opportunities have been missed, have been lost, because we might have thought it was ‘a dumb idea’ perhaps ‘we might get ridiculed or scoffed at’, because our gesture ‘might be rejected’?  How many opportunities were missed because we were waiting for the ‘right time’, when actually any time would have been the ‘right time’?  An opportunity missed is an opportunity lost. 

We’ve missed and lost too many already, you and I.  Don’t lose any more.  There are those around us, who we bump into daily, that need a gentle reminder that they are loved, that they are thought about, that they are needed, that they mean something to us.  There are those around us who really do need A Note Of Love.  They really do.  Really.  Something to think about . . .

Live Your Life, and Make A Difference!