About Encouragement

 There have been times in the past when I've been hesitant to send a note or leave a message of encouragement for someone. I wasn't sure exactly what to say, or I was worried it would be weird (especially if it was someone I didn't know), or I thought that so many other people had probably already said it better. I sometimes reached out, but too often kept silent.

Two things happened that have changed things for me. First, last spring/summer I received some little notes from people at the church. I don't know if they knew just how hard that time was for me (being apart from the church family hurt so much, and made the other challenges of that time even worse), but their notes made me feel less alone. They helped a lot.

Then, more recently, I've been answering emails for the church. There have been a lot (I've answered emails from more than 900 people), and many of them are the same: we've heard about what's happening, we support you, we're praying for you. Some are long and rambling, and some are very short, only a sentence or two. There are people who have put a lot of thought into what they want to say and write beautiful emails, and others who just want us to know that they're thinking of us and say it quickly (and sometimes with a lack of punctuation). We have pretty much every type of writing possible: essays, simple sentences, paragraphs, business letter-esque, poetry, rants, writing that would normally make the inner English major cringe (but the inner English major is calm when reading encouraging notes).

The point is: I appreciate every single one. It doesn't matter that I've read the same words a hundred times before, or that someone wasn't sure how to express things, or that we're hearing from people who have never been to our church or met us. What matters is that these people took the time to reach out and offer some encouragement when they thought it would help.

I'm becoming more willing to say something, even just a little something when the time arises. I comment on Facebook posts or Twitter. I write some little notes to send to people and I send some quick texts. I still probably keep silent more often than I should, but I'm trying. Because what I've discovered is that none of what I worried about matters; it just matters that someone knows that I care.