The Love Letter

Recently a lovely new girl moved in and was teaching us a lesson. I was lucky enough to be able to sneak in on this lesson as I usually don't get to. It was a really nice lesson and she handed out these thank you cards to us and asked us to give them to someone who we thought would need it. Well I love giving cards and so had plenty of people come to mind immediately, so I decided to ponder on this and decide later on who to give it to.

This lesson was a few weeks ago and late last week I was reminded of this little card waiting patiently in my bag to be used, by a feeling. I was spending some time with one of my good friends and I was looking at her thinking how beautiful and amazing she is and how lucky I am that she is my friend. I have many friends and people in my life that I think this about, but this feeling became so strong to me and it kept coming back everytime I thought of her in the few days after that. I wanted to give her the card but I didn't feel like I could fit all that I had to say in it..... so I wrote her a love letter.

I know this may sound so dorky but one of the things that I am really bad at is keeping in touch with people and feeling like the people that I love don't really understand how much I love them, and maybe I don't understand how much I really love them. If I think about this and record many of the reasons I care about them then maybe I can do better at taking care of them and keeping them in my thoughts (I have a best friend since birth who rocks at this by the way... she always remembers everything that is going on in all of her friends lives and remembers everyones birthdays EVERY year!)

Anyhow so I wrote this letter and told her several of the reasons why I love her and love that she is in my life and included it in the card. She is my wonderful friend.

She called me today to say thank you. The funny thing is that she was thinking many of the same things about me at the exact same time we had been spending time together that I was thinking about her..... But neither of us had said anything - why? I guess it may be inappropriate sometimes to say things like I love you and why, at a random time to someone who you do? But perhaps more often than not it is entirely appropriate. Why aren't we allowed to do this? For me I think it is the intimacy of it. At this point in my life I am working hard at letting walls down and letting people close to me see the real me... and help the real me. She also said many sweet things to me about why she loves me and told me a story about the first time that we met. The clarity of it was interesting to me because I always wonder what people really think about me and she gave me some insite into what she really thinks of me. It was nice, brought tears to my eyes, and made me feel like she really loves me too..... and it was okay for us to say this and to talk about it. At the end of the conversation I felt like something had changed in our friendship, something was there that wasn't there before and I truly treasure it.

It may have been dorky, wierd or risky for me to write this love letter but I know that she will treasure it and she really made me feel loved in her reaction to it.

I wonder what would happen it I wrote a simple love letter to many of the people that I treasure. My husband, my son and daughter, my mother, my family, my friends. How would this strengthen our relationships? How would their response make me feel? How would I feel knowing they have this letter to look back upon listing a wide range of wonderful things about them on a day when they really need it? I am grateful for that lesson and the cards that were handed out and know that that little gesture by my teacher went a long way today.

So... I challenge you to write a love letter. Let someone who you care about and admire know how you feel, and allow them to have something to look back upon to remind them of this. I could have just told my friend, but I was afraid that I would get flustered and it would be awkward and I wouldn't be able to say all that I wanted to without losing my thoughts - so I just wrote it down.

Kind of a random entry I know, but I think I might get a few more love letters on the go:)