Sometimes, when I’m just bobbling down the stream, living my ordinary life, I’ll wonder to myself, “What shall I write in this week’s Sunday Letter?” This week, I kept hearing the faint whisper of the word “encouragement.”
Well, heck yes! Of course I want to encourage. Who couldn’t use a bucket or two of that nowadays? I mean, look around. It’s a wreck out there. And sometimes the wreck even spills into our very own lives.
But where to start? Maybe, I thought, I could get some ideas from my quotes file. When I opened it to “Encouragement,” the very first one I read, a line from a Karen Moning novel, made me laugh: “It’s just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it’s time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.”
What wonderful advice! Think about what it’s really saying. If you’re going to face a world that’s falling apart, you need to shore up your self-confidence, by remembering who you are, and wrapping yourself in that knowledge.
That brought me to a second quote from my file: “She remembered who she was, and that changed everything.”
And just who are you? One of those most complex of creatures – a human, being here, wherever here is, doing the best you can with what you got. That’s one of the things that identifies us as human, I think. We keep trying to do the best we can with whatever resources we can discover.
Sometimes those resources can seem mighty slim. Sometimes they seem no match for the wreck outside the door. We all get discouraged and bruised along the way. We make mistakes, take wrong turns. We underrate ourselves and our resilience and ingenuity. But that’s exactly when we need to pull down the drapes and whip up a smarter costume. Try on a smile. Shine your shoes. Straighten your shoulders. So far, after all, you have managed to get from one moment to the next, all the way to this one, right? You have momentum on your side, not to mention buckets of tools and talents, and, of course, the life force itself.
Long story, but I found myself telling a friend the childhood tale about the little red engine that had to climb a big, steep hill, pulling a big, heavy train behind him. He was undaunted, this brave little engine, and he kept saying to himself with every turn of his wheels, “I think I can, I think I can,” until he made it all the way to the top.
I think you can, too.
I’ll leave you with one final quote from my file by singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. It’s a good one to remember. “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”
Just keep going. And enjoy the journey.
Warmly,
Susan