The Art of the Handwritten Note

This last week brought me several handwritten notes from people. Two were thank-you notes from the same good friend, one for a few small gifts when I drew his name for a Christmas party, and one for recently inviting his family over for an impromptu dinner at our home. Thank-you notes came from the other friends we had invited, as well.

It has seemed to me in the last few years that the world is losing its awareness about how important it is to write a thank-you note. I have sought out and given a number of gifts in recent years, and while there are some e-mailed thank-yous, a Facebook thank-you or two, and a few spoken thank-yous (rarely a handwritten note), some gifts are not even acknowledged. I have to ask, "Did you get the package I sent you?" I have also seen my parents take the time to give gifts that haven't been acknowledged to them.

A horrible realization has settled into my consciousness: I have been just as thoughtless on the receiving end as I have felt others to be in receiving the gifts I have given. The unacknowledged gift, the quick e-mail or a "TY" text message does not characterize the gracious person I would like to be. This weekend, with several handwritten notes arriving in the mail, I find myself acknowledging my lack of graciousness and resolving that I will change my ways.  Each note in the past week arrived with specific and kindly thoughts of me, the writer's personality visible in the uniqueness of their handwriting. I have appreciated each one.

If you are a gift-giver whom I have slighted with my carelessness, I apologize.

Quite unexpectedly, I also got a card this weekend from a colleague who reports to one of my direct reports at another campus of our university. There is nothing in the relationship or the timing that would benefit her in taking the time to send a card with a handwritten note. She was just thinking of me, for some reason, and took the time to send an affirmation.

"Just in case there isn't sunshine where you are," she wrote, "I thought I would try and send you some. However, I suspect that you are a ray of sunshine wherever you go. Thank you for being our voice, for going to all those meetings, for working with all those 'men' and making this a special place to work. I know it's not easy but we appreciate you and all you do so much."

In the afternoon of a day that began for me with a tense and contentious meeting followed by other difficult problems to solve, getting this handwritten note was a smile from her...and from God. It's something that would have taken me only five or ten minutes to do, but it did far more than five or ten minutes' worth of good in my life.

I want to do the same for others.

And then there was another card in the same batch of mail. This one came from one of Husband's first students of over 30 years ago, long before I was in his life. She still looks up to Husband, having never been able to make the switch to using his first name even though she's well into adulthood. She open-heartedly welcomed me as I came into his life.

I had forgotten a conversation she and I had after church last week, one in which I expressed some things that are weighing on my heart these days. But she had not. She thought of me midweek and took the time to write a note of appreciation and encouragement. "You're in my thoughts and prayers," she wrote. "The Lord is with you and will give you the strength you need."  My losses are small compared to her losses this past year, so the note was all the more precious.

Several years ago I resolved to write a note of appreciation or caring to someone each day during my worship time. The resolution was broken within a month, as so many people's resolutions are. But the art of the handwritten note remains one that "warms the cockles of the heart," as my mom would say. And I am resolved that I will do that better this year--writing thank-you notes, writing notes of appreciation, and writing notes of encouragement. It's not all that difficult to warm the cockles of someone's heart, and it makes the world a more loving place.