Yesterday was my birthday. It was wonderful and joyous, and I'll hopefully get a chance to write about it later. But one thing that really stuck out to me was my conversation in the morning with Natalie Franke. She was telling me that she got a letter from a stranger this past week, and it was exactly what she needed at the moment. By the time she was done reading it, she was moved so deeply and touched in every way. She told me the letter was from this girl who would write hundreds of love letters to strangers, leaving them in random mailboxes or slipping them into people's jackets on the subway. I couldn't get the idea out of my head. So after finding the link in Natalie's post, I found Hannah Brencher who started it all. I did even more clicking, and found out this was an entire movement called The World Needs More Love Letters. The entire idea is to mobilize people to just write letters - beautiful, beautiful love letters - to total and complete strangers. As I read through the site more and more, I was touched and mesmerized. Each letter I read was somehow so unique and personal and relatable to me. Since I often view my birthday as my own form of a "New Years" (full of changes and usually better followed resolutions), I felt called. The timing was too perfect! I have always had a deep love for hand written letters, and here I was, feeling abnormally joyous. Why shouldn't I share that love with others?
So I decided to write 22 letters for my 22 years of age.
Then I realized it was 1 AM, and that was a litttttle ambitious for me. So I settled on starting off with 3 for the month of March. Once my pen hit the paper, I couldn't stop. Somehow, I began writing to myself. I wrote the letters as what I needed to hear at my lowest points - those moments of confusion, self doubt, and utter loneliness. Those moments where I felt like nothing was going right, and I was barely keeping my head above water. I wrote them to myself and to someone else at the same time. I realized how universal some of these feelings were, but at the same time I felt that this was meant for a specific person in the world. Some might view it as fate or destiny, but I feel strongly that God is playing a role in this too. I haven't even decided where I want to place the cards yet, but I think I'll know when I see it.
Sometimes you have to join a movement when it's calling your name.
To learn more, check out http://www.moreloveletters.com/!