Dear Boy,

I'm truly sorry. Forgive the cliché, but I honestly believe you'll find someone better.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Friends,

I don't deserve you. Each day, I wonder what I could have possibly done to earn your friendship, and I can never reach a satisfactory answer. You are supportive, attentive, and in every way wonderful. And you seem to think I deserve your friendship, despite my doubts on that score.

Maybe this is a slight hint of the love we have from Christ. I don't deserve his love, but he really, really wants to give it to me. To all of us. Deep, true love isn't our love for God, but his love for us, sacrificial love with no reason to expect an equal return. He meets us halfway and, when we aren't there, he keeps going the whole way until he reaches us where we are.

Thanks for loving me so much I can start to understand, however slightly, the love of Christ.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear 30-Second Segment of a Conversation on Monday,

For how brief you were, you made me sad and got me thinking for the subsequent 48 hours. Change, relocation, and answers to prayer: all of this was wrapped up in a short side comment as part of a larger conversation. I have what I want, and you, oh short little sentence, informed me that an old, fervent prayer for someone else has been answered. And even as I thank God for that answer, I'm realizing that I have to come to grips with the fact that just because God answers prayers we make for someone else, that doesn't necessarily mean we ourselves get to benefit from those blessings.

You showed me that God is good, and that I still have a lot of growing up to do.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Pancakes,

Thank you for being a tasty way to use up some old milk and butter last night after the Ash Wednesday service.

Of course, I'm not sure how thankful I should be that you nearly became ashes, yourselves. Why did you have to nearly burn? Why did you have to fill the entire apartment with smoke so that the alarms went off and brought my landlord upstairs to make sure his house wasn't burning down around him?

I get it. You're in cahoots with God. Shame on me for being ashamed of the ashes on my forehead from the Ash Wednesday service and being glad I hadn't seen anyone on the way into my apartment. Setting off the smoke alarms was just your little way of teaching me humility, wasn't it, Pancakes?

Well, it worked. And you were delicious, which more than made up for trouble.

Hug & kisses,
B