Tough-Love Letters to a Troubled Teen – II

Dear Maisie,

I am listening to the drone of a lawn mower outside my study window as I sit down to write to you this week. The sound reminds me of how life is made up of so many seemingly insignificant events – small tasks or daily routines – that we don’t give much thought to. Yet when you add them all up at the end of a year, they form the patchwork quilt, the running narrative composition, of our lives on earth: each little effort as we work toward a goal or create a pleasant experience for someone else; every opportunity to use our gifts for scholarship or art or craftsmanship, or for working the soil to produce good things. 

That’s just me feeling philosophical today, but I have often had to remind myself that sending a note to a discouraged friend or baking cookies for a sick neighbor or taking someone to the store or a doctor’s appointment are not time-devouring side trips off the path that carries us toward the really important things, the Big Stuff that we hope to accomplish. They are more accurately the atomic particles that give forward momentum to our existence.  

And then the Big Stuff becomes the road markers that we aim for as we are being propelled along by these humdrum, everyday duties.  

When I was in high school, I coasted; couldn’t see the point of any of it; deprived myself of the joys of accomplishment. I didn’t know how to dig inside myself for a purpose. Heck, I didn’t even know who I was, so ready was I to let others define that for me. How ever was I supposed to know what to do with me?  

I’m still not always sure to this day how to define myself, or whether I want to fully accept the “Who” I have grown into, but when I keep plugging away and let the Lord direct my steps, then my days start to fill up with meaning. And if nothing else, I can tell my own story as a cautionary tale, and share the sweet sustenance of stories about people who inspire us to endure with grace. Serving others is always better than trying to please them. 

Some day I will write about you. It will be an account of struggle and triumph; it will have a happy ending, bursting with encouragement for those who read it. And it will be the story of a young life redeemed, with God’s help and your own “everyday” efforts. 

I love you… 

                                           Aunt Suz