Lettre

The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.  ~Svetlana Alliluyeva


I am a huge advocate for the written word. 


Honestly, as much as I love and rely on technology for communications with the world beyond my own doorstep...


...there is something so heartfelt about a hand-penned letter, placed in a hand-licked and carefully address envelope, and slipped into a mailbox. 


It requires patience and love and a steadfast hand. 


It's a discipline and a virtue, one of which I am a devoted follower. 


I received my first penpal at the tender age of 11 with a little girl I met through a Christian children's magazine...


...and then continued with my letter-writing delights at the age of 14 with a guy friend I met at Family Camp, with whom I still have a wonderful friendship with to this very day.


And now, I have just recently begun a new mailbox-connected friendship with my beautiful friend Grace of Puddles of Memories. 


There is something so entrancing about the idea about sitting down at a table, taking a pen between my fingers, and allowing my thoughts to flow out from me onto the page...


...sharing everything, no matter how trivial, with someone who waits in a different part of the country to hear my soul's musings. 


There is magic in the art of the pen and paper. 


The computer has its delights and its requirements, that is certain. 


But the whispered mystery of the written word...


...novels made of paper, fragrant with ink and unspoken promises of lands to come...


...the scritching sound made as my pen traces across the blank page of a eagerly-waiting journal, aching to fill its empty spaces with teardrops and overwhelming joys...


...letters written in the careful hand of a patient and tender friend... 


These things have held me spellbound all my life.


And regardless of technology,


I would rather hold the words in my palm. 


The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.  ~Walt Whitman

Separate

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." - Helen Keller

There are so many things about life that confuse me.

The cruelty of separation is one of them.

It's a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around. Why is it that those people who mean the most to us are generally so very far away?

I am surrounded by friends who are involved in long-distance relationships, or are simply kept from seeing the one they love for one reason or another. Having dealt first-hand with the struggles of being in a relationship with someone living in another state, I know exactly the ache that creeps in from time to time.

It's not even those with whom we share a romantic connection that feel so very far away at times. I live with my husband and see him on a fairly regular basis; however, the rest of the people I care about are spread far and wide. Some are much closer to me geographically -- as close as a ten to fifty minute drive -- while others live in different states or even in other countries. Some are even as far away as Heaven.

So why do we do it? Why do we endure the separation from those people that mean the most to us, and still fight it out, even in the most complicated and crucial of moments?

Because it's worth it.

We do have the blessings of modern technology through cell phones, email, and social networks to keep us connected to those we care about. But even those things fail us sometimes...

...how many nights do we go to bed with a heart twinging with the familiar ache of distance?

...the wish that we would hear the lilt of that familiar voice or catch a whisper of a too-long silent laugh?

Separation is hard. The fingers of loneliness and the chill of missing are very real.

...but then, does that not make the reunions all the more sweet?

"All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee to me."

~William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XLIII"