You're Invited
Christmas is the time of year when we are most likely to receive unexpected correspondence in the mail. Whether a card or gift, it’s always exciting to open the mailbox to reveal something other than bills and junk mail.
Someone recently gifted a friend of mine a stationary set of sorts. Given that she knows I find immense joy in simple things like cute stationery and love all things handwritten, she asked if she could mail me a letter.
Well, a few days ago the letter arrived. The back was closed with a beautiful wax seal. The brown marbled envelope was not flat after its journey through the USPS at Christmas time. Instead, it had a pronounced curve as if a postal worker had wound it up to smack a fly in the cab of his delivery truck.
Breaking the wax seal gave me a feeling of discovery, and it helped create an unexpected delicacy in the way I handled the letter. The weight of the paper was substantial and perfectly folded to match the size of the envelope.
Upon opening the letter, I saw it was written on unlined paper. My friend’s words were written in a natural combination of print and cursive with a slightly rightward leaning incline across the page. There were some letters much lighter than others, giving the impression that the ink of her pen was waning. She had a word crossed through, showing a change in mind of how she wanted to word that particular sentence. It was beautiful and authentic.
Letters, cards, announcements, and gifts are such exciting items to receive in the mail, but I still believe there is nothing quite as exciting to receive as an invitation. An invitation means not only has someone thought of you, but they want you to join them. They want your company and to have you in communion with them. What greater compliment and encouragement is there than to have your attendance be requested in celebrating a birth, wedding, graduation, holiday, or any other significant moment in the life of someone who values you?
I may not be able to mail you an invitation, but I would like to invite you into 2022. I am sure many of you would join me in describing 2021 as chaotic. It was a long year, but we made it! Many blessings have come out of the chaos, and the Lord is still using each of those moments to the good of those who love Him.
While contemplating some of the chaos of 2021, my mind was taken back to my friend’s letter. It was calm, it was humble, and it was authentic.
Can I invite you to let 2022 be a year of calm, humble, authenticity? Can you allow yourself to let this year be one that resembles a handwritten letter?
If you choose to allow it, 2022 can be a place in time where you learn to humbly put a line through your mistakes and continue on with what you want to achieve and communicate. A line is a calm acknowledgement that a mistake was made or thought has changed.
Then, you start with a correction or a new direction—no big deal. We don’t have to scribble the mistake into oblivion in an effort to hide it. We don’t have to hide that we formally thought one thing and have since changed our minds.
It actually has the opposite effect when we choose to scribble and completely blot out our mistakes or past thoughts. What we thought we were erasing from memory has become a dark, very noticeable part of our letter. Instead of going relatively unnoticed, the urge to cover it has made it more prominent than it ever needed to be.
2022 can be the year where you begin to refuse to feel shame and condemnation for simply being a human. Stop autocorrecting your life to the expectations of those around you. Be the handwritten letter, not the shiny autocorrected screen of perfection.
Stand firm in your convictions, be humble in your mistakes and make the choices that will allow God to use you as He sees fit.
In that same vein, I hope you will allow 2022 to be a year without labels—a year without trying to fit in. I am consistently fascinated by people’s need to label themselves. It’s rooted in the desire to belong, but as children of God, the Bible provides all the labels we should ever want to use. Christian, Child of God, Co-heir, Servant of Christ, and the list goes on. We belong to Him, and there is no other source to which we should look to acquire labels.
Therefore, I am formally inviting you to spend 2022 calmly and humbly label-less and authentically His. Will you join me? I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!
May God bless you and yours with His presence, health, peace, and provision in this new year. I pray this year brings about a deeper relationship with Him than you have ever experienced before. A deepening that will bring you comfort and profound joy, and that will bring heaps upon heaps of glory to His name.
