EVERY PERSON MATTERS: A GIFT IN 46 WORDS
She couldn’t have known what a gift it was to see those words slide silently across my screen: “… I saw and my stomach dropped.”
My friend saw and noticed, and sent me four sentences, forty-six words – all gift.
“And you live with this every day.” Grace poured out.
This friend, the one who’d opened her arms, her home, and her heart to a gaggle of beleaguered kids, had paused amid her crazy, busy life and tried to imagine mine, to wander a few steps along my path.
“Are we doing enough,” she asked, “for you?”
My friend knows what it means to love her neighbor, hundreds of miles and a half dozen states to her north, as she loves herself.
“Is there anything at all we can do to help?”
She didn’t judge or jump in with her own story – didn’t offer expertise or hard-won wisdom. She simply asked – opened her great, big, amazing heart and asked: forty-six words – love poured out, grace spilled over amid a journey I can’t begin to understand. It’s who she is – a living, breathing, blood-poured-out, Jesus-in-the-flesh mama to seven lost and wounded souls, a woman after God’s own heart.
EVERY PERSON MATTERS
My friend and I aren’t walking the same road, but it doesn’t matter.
We matter. Every person matters – and that’s enough.
It’s what we all long for: to matter, to be seen, heard, and understood – to know that we are not alone.
It’s what my parents want as they journey through a year of treatment for my Dad’s systemic melanoma. It’s what my son wants as he travels the road of serious chronic illness. It’s what my girls want: to be seen, to be known – and to matter. It’s what I want as I learn to parent a houseful of teens with significant illnesses. It’s what my husband wants. It’s what my neighbor, my aunt, and my friend want – someone to listen, to hear, to see, and to know. Every person matters.
EVERY PERSON MATTERS: WE ARE LOVED
It’s what we all want – and it’s just exactly what God promises: never to leave us, never to renounce, repudiate, or resign – never to give up on, throw over, drift away from, walk out on, cast off, or desert us.
God is in this forever, until the very end of time. He loves us with an everlasting love – a love that never quits, never fails, and never, ever ends.
We are noticed, seen, loved – and we are His.
We matter – every single one of us. My friend couldn’t have known what a gift she’d wrapped up in those forty-six words, but they carried the fragrance of eternity – the love of the Father wrapped in the flesh of His child. Grace poured out, spilled over, abundant, lavish. The Body of Christ, alive. Love changing the world a single heartbeat at a time.
Who could you encourage with a note today? Find out more about our #PenToPaper program.
Cindee Snider Re
Author, Designer, and Co-Founder of Chronic Joy®
Cindee is married to the man she loves most in this world, Mom to five adult kids plus a son- and daughter-in-love, and Lolli to an adorable grandbaby. She and four of her kids have Ehlers-Danlos and myriad co-existing conditions. While a life steeped in illness is not what she would have chosen, through it, she’s learning that the deeper the valley, the greater her capacity for joy.
Cindee is the author of Discovering Hope, Finding Purpose, Embracing Worth, and I Take You in Sickness and in Health.
#PenToPaper - Ministry of Letter Writing
#PenToPaper is a ministry of the heart: God’s love, poured into us, infuses each word we write to the heart of another. What an encouraging reason to pick up your pen and write!
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