Little Things

I've discovered a blog that has become very meaningful. Almost exactly 8 years ago, a woman I knew died unexpectedly. She still had a daughter at home, in high school, and then older kids at various stages of life. She was someone I admired tremendously. Her sons were friends with my brothers. Her daughter was my son's violin teacher. I worked with members of her family in volunteer work through our church. Her death was a terrible blow to many people.

Now her children have started publishing her extensive personal writings from letters, speeches, journals and other sources onto a blog called Lessons My Mother Taught Me. Reading it has done so many things for me, from helping me to remember her and think about what I admired about her to helping me to remember to live and to notice and to appreciate everything. She wrote to her children who were away from home about walking to school and seeing mushrooms and leaves falling. She wrote about blue skies and listening to music. She was admirable but not perfect, wonderful but humble-writing with tenderness about her foibles and fears, her worries for her kids, and everything else. She wrote a lot, of course not knowing that she would die so young, and to me it counts as a miracle that she did write and for her family to now have her words every day, to feel her voice and her way of speaking again, to have her wisdom close by.

Today as I was reading I was struck by her attention to all the details in her life. In catching up on blogs over the last couple of days, I've rejoiced at all the little things my friends have recorded and written about. God really is in the details I think. I do write letters every week to my son, and reading this friend's letters to her kids has inspired me to write even more than I already do. It makes me happy to think that my words could be a comfort to my kids someday, even if I were gone too soon.