Letter From Me

Earlier this year, on September 18th. Our wing had a retreat intended to bond us together as 38 women who would be sharing the unforeseeable future together. Our wing leadership had many ideas of what we could do in order to accomplish this. One thing that we did, in fact, the last thing, was write letters to ourselves to be opened at the end of the semester. I opened mine tonight.

It was amazing to read words I had thought out very early in the morning several months ago, and find them so completely relevant to what I am currently going through. I reminded myself of a lot of things. Choices that I want to keep making. Images to keep in my head. Truths to hold in my heart. I anticipated my tiredness, asked myself questions which cut to the heart and encouraged myself with wisdom and support.

It may seem strange to think that something I created myself would have this kind of power over me. Especially when you consider that I knew what was inside this letter before I opened it. But it did. I think that there are a couple of reasons for this, one of them being that God moved my hand as I wrote at 2am in a church gym, hoping that this was truly the last activity so that I could go to bed. I'm an old senior and can't stay up so late anymore. I wasn't trying my best, I wasn't firing on all cylinders. However, God used my words. Words have power, even, or especially, when used flippantly. These words were able to bring about good things.

I think we all need these reminders. We all need to examine ourselves and make decisions about who we want to be in the future. Some things won't change, others will. Hopefully, the most important things won't.

This exercise makes me want to write another of these letters to open at graduation. I can't get carried away though, or pretty soon I'll have one for every big event in my life!

This letter blessed me. My words blessed me. The things I wrote are certainly not finished, they still need to be remembered day by day. But for today, they are fresh in my mind.