Getting Carded

 

"Sometimes things are just hard..." wrote my prayer team member to me in a text less than an hour ago. Truer words were never spoken.

This will be our 15th year to do a large community packing party, and I have always felt bad that we didn't have a letter to include in each box. We hear so often from shoebox recipients of how they are blessed by having a letter and picture from the person who packed their box. It seems to give them a connection and feeling of being loved by someone they've never met. Since we pack thousands of boxes, handwritten notes aren't possible, and in past years I've hesitated to spend the money that could be spent on shoebox contents and shipping donations to invest in letters.

This year, though, I had a stronger feeling than ever before that this was important. I investigated both online printing options and a local company and found the online company to be about half the cost. As further confirmation, one of my team members offered to split the cost with me, and the plan to order 25,000 postcards with a picture on one side and a simple printed greeting on the other was finalized.

Then...we had to make plans for a picture. A key team member was on a mission trip until Wednesday of this week, and we had a promo code for 20% off with the online printing company that ended on Friday. Thursday was our only opportunity to get this shot. I sent out a few emails and invited team members to join us at Presque Isle, our local state park on Lake Erie. 

We recruited an amateur photographer, God blessed us with perfect weather, and we had the shots completed in short order last night. That was the easy part.

I liked the photo pictured here, but this is a cropped version. The original had more scenery around it, so I cropped it out. Because I'm so techno-deficient, I didn't realize that would mess with the resolution of the photo. I struggled for hours last evening to figure out how to get this picture uploaded into the printing company's site and finally got it done at 2:30 am. As my friend said, "Sometimes things are just hard."

Then this morning I got an email from the printing company telling me the photo was small and blurry and asking for the original photo. I replied and attached what I thought was the original, but the very patient Michael from Blockbuster Printing responded promptly (and kindly) to tell me it was the same exact photo. Could I please get an original with better resolution? As I said, "Sometimes things are just hard."

I contacted the photographer who was kind enough to promptly send me the original, and I forwarded it to Michael along with an apology and an explanation of how we were including these in our Operation Christmas Child boxes. I also sent a few desperate texts to our prayer team asking for prayer over this.

Maybe it's just that I've had a couple of nights with only a few hours of sleep that made me a bit overemotional, but I teared up when I read Michael's reply, "Perfection, this one is great. I will size correctly for you and send to print. These will be done by next week. Thank you so much again and best of luck on your generous efforts. We hope all goes well for you. We are rooting for you! Keep up that wonderful spirit, Kathy and happy 4th of July as well." Wow!

I wrote back to Michael and explained how he was an answer to prayer and told him how much his patience, kindness, and encouragement meant to me today. Maybe we both needed a little encouragement, because, after all, "Sometimes things are just hard."

But, by God's grace, our boxes will  have cards with a picture and encouraging message in them this year. And, though sometimes things are just hard, they are also worth the effort. Getting carded was worth it. 

Let It Undo You

 

In today's sermon about God's love as expressed by Paul in Romans 8:35-39, Pastor Derek said our response to the matchless love of God should be to "Let it undo you!" 

So I am breaking 8 months of blogging silence to record some of the ways I am undone by His love today.

I've been convicted over the past year or two of my lack of intentionality in observing a Sabbath. Unfortunately, I haven't acted on that conviction in any regular way, but yesterday I felt compelled to get all the piles of stuffed animals off the living room floor and all the stacks of shoebox clothing stored so I could really rest on this Sunday. What a difference it made to wake up and see my freshly vacuumed living room floor sans those piles!

As I searched this Sabbath afternoon for ways to recount manifestations of God's love for me, I grabbed a journal from my bookshelf that I wrote in 2008-2009. A few hours of reading the lines I wrote in the early morning hours of the days that year gave me lots of revelations.

It was a year of transition as we left the church I attended for 56 years and looked for a new church home. I recorded how I continued going back to that church basement and packing shoeboxes and how God allowed me to finish 7,272 boxes that year with the help of our OCC team and friends. I had no idea what the future would hold; on 11/19/08 I wrote, "I don't know if we'll ever pack that many again, but I praise You, God, for all these gospel opportunities that You've provided."

Day after day and week after week I recorded all my angst--my besetting sins of overeating and procrastination and irritability, and my inability to use my time as wisely as I wanted to for the Lord. And I realized in many ways those journal entries of 14 years ago mirror my current journal writings. I still struggle with the same sins; I still have much of the same angst. But God hasn't changed, and for some unfathomable reason He is still in love with me. Tears fill my eyes this moment as I think about it. 

Some things have changed, though. As I read my thoughts from 14 years ago I see I was concerned about spending too much money on shoeboxes, yet it was only a fraction of what God's provided for me to spend now. I wondered if we'd ever be able to pack as many boxes ever again as we packed in 2008...and now we regularly pack more than three times that many! 

I've been thinking lately about how tired I feel, but I see from this journal that I constantly complained 14 years ago about being tired. I hope this means that in 2037, if the Lord tarries, I'll still be complaining about being tired but also still carrying on by God's grace and with all the help He gives to get His will done--whatever that is in 2037. I'm not sure I'll ever be as positive as cheery Caleb of the Old Testament who insisted he was as strong at age 80 as he was 40 years earlier, because positivity has never been my strength, but who knows? God may do that miracle, too. 

I'm definitely taking this day off from making decisions, but in the next two days we'll be finalizing dates and preliminary details for our 2023 big shoebox packing party. In addition to perusing old journals today I've been looking over lists of all the items God's given us over these years since our first large packing party in 2009. I'll tell you, it's astounding.

On 7/08/09 I had a phone call with Joey White from OCC, and he asked if we'd consider doing a special large packing party. I had no experience, but the church I'd then recently started attending came around me to get that job done. God knew I needed that support! He worked out every detail and only 10 weeks later, on 9/26/09, we had 150 volunteers who got 5,577 boxes packed in under four hours. Only God! 

Year by year He keeps extending His grace over every roadblock to make this happen. Lord willing, this will be our 15th packing party, and we've packed over 304,000 more boxes since I wrote that journal in 2008. I stand amazed at what He does every year. 

Sometimes I just need to sit back. And breathe. And remember. And let it undo me.