gifts

Why a Small Gesture Makes a World of Difference {a story of the warm cookie angel}

October 4, 2017 By Michelle 9 Comments

One day a few weeks ago, as I was staring out the sunroom windows into the middle distance, ostensibly “working,” I spotted The Warm Cookie car idling in front of my house.

Let’s pause right here for a moment of silence to appreciate that there is such thing as a Warm Cookie delivery service in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s true. You can order a dozen chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, butterscotch oatmeal chocolate chip, or any other number of flavors, and they will deliver a box of cookies still warm from the oven right to your door. You can even add a pint of milk or a single serving of vanilla ice cream with your delivery.

Jesus himself came up with this concept, I am sure of it. In between changing water into wine and distributing fish and bread to the multitudes, he trademarked The Warm Cookie.

Anyway, when I saw the Warm Cookie car idling in front of my house, my heart leapt. I’d never been the lucky recipient of a box of Warm Cookies, and I thought my time had finally come.

Alas, it hadn’t. My heart broke as the car accelerated past my house and turned into my neighbor’s driveway. No warm cookies for me.

I posted my disappointment on Facebook, received much empathy for my cookielessness state, and promptly forgot about the whole incident.

Four days later, I was having a terrible-no-good-very-bad day. You know the kind. My writing projects were backlogged at work. I sucked up the vacuum cord, shorted out the vacuum and nearly electrocuted myself in the process. My kids needed to be in two different places at the same time. And I’d just found out my closest friend was moving 1,500 miles away. That kind of day.

Walking in the door after my hour-long commute, I dropped my bags on the living room floor and slumped into the kitchen. And that’s when I saw it. There on the counter sat a cardboard box wrapped in a raffia bow, nestled inside of which were a dozen warm cookies. I read the card: “I wanted The Warm Cookie car to stop at your house.” It was from Kimberly.

Warm cookie in hand, I immediately Voxed my friend Kimberly in New Jersey, gushing into the phone, detailing the terrible-no-good-very-badness of my day and thanking her for her kindness.

But here’s the clincher: the warm cookies weren’t from my friend Kimberly. She messaged me back a little while later, sheepishly admitting that though she would love to take credit for the idea, the surprise delivery was not from her.

Here’s the second clincher: to my knowledge, I do not know any other Kimberlys. Mystified, I called The Warm Cookie, explaining my conundrum and why I hoped to track down the giver. Turns out, The Warm Cookie company had no record of a Michelle as a recipient nor a Kimberly as a giver.

I call her the Cookie Angel now, the mysterious Kimberly who gave me a reason to smile on a terrible-no-good-very-bad day. And as I write this, I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be fun to make this a thing? To launch a Pay it Forward Warm Cookie Angel Campaign? As far as I can see, the world could really use some snickerdoodles right now.

In all seriousness, though – we would all do well to remember the lasting and powerful effect of the small but meaningful gesture. Maybe it’s a handwritten note slipped into the mail. Or a bouquet of zinnias snipped from your garden. Or a lively greeting along your daily exercise route. As Mother Teresa so famously said, “We can’t all do great things. But we can all do small things with great love.”

Thank you, Kimberly the Cookie Angel. Your small thing turned around my bad day and made me smile all week (and my kids were pretty happy about it too).

When Easter Comes in a Thousand Unexpected Ways

April 2, 2015 By Michelle 14 Comments

rosebush rain

I tend to get writer’s block during the week leading up to a major Christian holiday. I feel all this pressure to say something BIG and UNIQUE and IMPORTANT, to present you with prose that does justice to the magnitude of the moment. After all, I’m a Christian writer, right? I should be able to find something lovely and profound to say about Jesus’ resurrection for heaven’s sake.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not grateful or don’t appreciate the momentousness of the occasion. I get, as much as my limited human brain can comprehend it, the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice for me. If I allow myself to stop for a minute or two and think, really think, about what his road to Calgary must have been like, about what it might have felt like to be nailed, metal through tender flesh, to a slab of wood, about the fact that I — deeply flawed me — can live free, totally, utterly and completely free in his grace…I am stunned.

Maybe that’s part of my problem – maybe the idea of such an astonishing sacrifice is simply too much.

At any rate, I’m going to let myself off the hook. I’m not going to write a traditional Maundy Thursday, Good Friday or even Easter Sunday post. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a sliver of beauty I glimpsed yesterday, right smack in the middle of my ordinary day. Because honestly, I think this unexpected bit of beauty says something about Easter, too.

I was sitting at the local coffee shop across from my friend Deidra. Deidra and I have recently realized that writing can be a lonely, isolating business (why it took me more than two years to discover this, I don’t know, but it’s hit me hard these last couple of months), so we’ve agreed to meet for “working dates” at Meadowlark once or twice a month.

I was supposed to be writing a devotion for my chuch’s e-newsletter, but I was doing far more gazing into the middle distance than I was actual writing, and that’s when I saw this:

pencil sketch

Pinned among the detritus of advertisements and fliers — a missing cat, a search for a new roommate, an event long past — was a small pencil drawing sketched onto white-lined paper, one edge jagged from where it had been torn from a notebook, the other curled a bit, stiff from the arid indoor heat. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was startlingly beautiful in its own way, the woman’s languid eyes, full lips and strong brows a surprise amid the chaos of the bulletin board. I stared at the drawing for a long time, delighted by the unexpected discovery, a gem tucked among junk.

It made me happy to see that drawing, almost like it had been intended just for me. Somehow that sketch, the model’s penetrating gaze, her delicate nose, made me feel like all was right with the world. Tacked amid the world’s wants, it was, simply, an offering.

It seems to me that we are given the gift of Easter not just on one Sunday in 365 days, but in a thousand unexpected ways, in a thousand unexpected offerings, every single day.

A row of raindrops clinging to the stem of a rosebush.

A sweet compliment from the Walgreen’s clerk.

The scent of blooming magnolia wafting through an open window.

Forgiveness when we don’t deserve it.

Love when we don’t ask for it.

Beauty where we least expect to find it.

It’s true, Easter is flesh nailed to a cross and a stone rolled away from a tomb and the unearned gift of eternal life.

But look closely. You might also find Easter in a simple pencil sketch tacked to cork — unexpected beauty, unexplained gift, one of a thousand reminders of God’s abundant grace on an ordinary day.

On Personality Tests and Your God-Given Passion

February 5, 2014 By Michelle 19 Comments

In high school I took one of those personality strengths tests aimed at helping you discern the best career path. When I finished filling in all the circles with my number two pencil, my dad, a guidance counselor, tallied the results. Turned out the test revealed I’d make an excellent card store manager. Not a doctor or a professor or lawyer. Not an engineer or scientist. A card store manager. I could barely contain my excitement.

Nothing against card stores or managers, of course. But at that point I wondered why I was completing dozens of college applications when it looked like I should pedal down to the local mall and apply for a job at the Hallmark outlet.

Last week I took one of those online “What Career Should You Have?” quizzes. When I was done answering questions like, “Do you prefer the New Yorker or Vogue?” and “Would you rather have Beyonce or the Dalai Lama for dinner?” the test proclaimed I should be a corporate vice president.

While the overachiever part of me was disappointed not to get CEO, I was also a little embarrassed. Some of my friends got wholesome careers like “humanitarian” and “professor.” I mean, what kind of Christian writer is better suited for vice president as her ideal job? Aren’t I supposed to be humble and spiritual instead of eyeing my 401K?

I never set out to be a writer. I was an English major, true. I worked a various corporate and non-profit writing jobs, crafting ad copy and annual reports and fundraising letters. But I didn’t consider myself a writer, a “real writer,” because I didn’t write anything creative. Ever.

All that changed when God got a hold of me. I found myself holed up in the basement at dawn, pecking at the keyboard, my fleece bathrobe tucked around my neck to ward off the damp chill. I was writing a memoir, but it felt more like a mystery — I couldn’t for the life of me envision the ending.

God used writing to bring me back to him, and I didn’t have any idea how the story would turn out – both on the page and in real life. What I did know, though, was that once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. No one was more surprised than I was to discover I’d tapped into a deep passion, one that had lain dormant for more than three decades.

Personality tests and the Strengths-Finder and even silly online quizzes have a place and a purpose. They can offer useful insights and information; they can help you rule out certain paths and guide you toward others; and sometimes they’re just plain fun. But they can’t always illuminate your passion, your God-given dream. Sometimes that passion reveals itself through experimentation, trial and error. But sometimes it blossoms out of nowhere, right when you least expect it, like a brilliant bloom in the midst of February gray.

When You’re Looking for Your Place

May 29, 2013 By Michelle 23 Comments

He asks me every couple of months or so. “Mommy, where is your favorite place on earth?”

Noah and Brad share the same favorite place: up at the cabin on the north shore of Minnesota’s Lake Superior, where the lupine bloom in pastel waves and the birch trees peel papery and the air blows chilled off the water. Noah even has a specific spot in his special place: a mossy mound, surrounded by a forest of birch. He sits on a log dotted with red mushrooms, quiet behind a screen of lush ferns.

The boys are always disappointed when I tell them I don’t have one special place. “I haven’t found it yet,” I answer. “I’m still looking.” This worries them. “Think harder,” Rowan urges. His special place is down in the Florida Keys, where he fishes for snapper lurking under the gnarled mangrove.

I’ve been looking for my place for several years now, ever since I read Desert Solitaire, by naturalist Edward Abbey. “Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place,” writes Abbey in the opening paragraph, “the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.”

I want that, I thought when I read those lines. I want a right place, a one true home, a place where I feel wholly at home, wholly content, wholly me. And I don’t just want the vision of an ideal place. I want an actual place.

This weekend, after years of looking, I finally found my place. Turns out, I didn’t have to look far. “This is my place,” I announce to Noah and Brad on Saturday evening, as the setting sun glows over the backyard.

“What do you mean?” Noah asks. “Right here? Like, the backyard?”

“Yup, right here,” I say, nodding and sweeping my arm toward the grass. “Sitting in my lounge chair, watching the cardinals, listening to the cheers at the ballgame across the field. Right here.”

“Well, all right, it’s your place I guess. You can choose wherever you want,” Noah says, looking askance at the chipped table and sun-faded umbrella.

What I realized as I sat on the back patio on Saturday night is that I’ve finally reached the point where I can find contentment in the moment, in the now. Restless and agitated by nature, I’ve always felt a yearning for something … something else or something more or something different. Recently, though, in the last year or so, that restless yearning has dissipated, replaced by simple contentment and a better ability to appreciate the moment.

This, I know, is a direct result of the practice of gratitude.

I’ve been counting gifts for two years now. I just passed #1,500, and I’m reaching the last wrinkled, worn pages of the journal I purchased on a whim, from a sale rack next to the prescription counter at Walgreen’s.

This practice, this daily gift counting, has singlehandedly altered my attitude toward life. Gone is the glass-half-empty girl. And while I might not ever become a textbook optimist, I know I’ve changed. I notice gifts everywhere now – on the running trail, at the grocery store, in my own backyard. My eyes see. My brain records, spooling a ticker tape of gifts. I don’t even write them all down. But I notice.

This past weekend, after years of searching, I finally realized I don’t need to travel far and wide to discover my right place, my one true home. It’s here. Right now. Under the faded umbrella. The goldfinch singing from the magnolia tree. The heady scent of lilac settling like a fragrant blanket over the whole backyard.

So tell me, do you have a true home, a right place, a favorite spot on earth?

Sharing with Ann Voskamp’s 1,000 gifts community:

1490 first blooming lilac
1491 working on the couch when I’m sick
1492 pink petals on the pavement
1493 a soaking rain
1494 scent of lemon cake baking
1495 a boy who still wants to sleep in our bed
1496 single droplet of pinesap
1497 card from Sara
1498 Rowan’s toes, peeking out from the comforter
1499 improvement for dad
1500 my backyard – my favorite place

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Know Your Strengths

April 15, 2013 By Michelle 34 Comments

A few months after Noah was born I decided to make him a scrapbook. I scoured the aisles at Michael’s for stickers and dye-cuts and fancy papers and special scissors with ruffled edges. And then, every night after Noah was finally settled in his crib, I sat at the dining room table, construction paper littering the floor at my feet, and I scrapped.

The problem was, I hated every minute of it.

Nothing turned out like I had envisioned. I didn’t have a creative eye for matching papers and pictures. Everything I cut with the fancy scissors turned out crooked and off-kilter. My handwriting was messy, and the magic marker smudged and bled. I had envisioned Martha Stewart magnificence, and what I created looked like the work of a ten-year-old. Scrapbooking, I learned the hard way, was not my thing.

As I paged through that rag-tag scrapbook a couple of days ago I thought about the verses we read for this week from Acts 6.

Because the twelve disciples were struggling to maintain order within the rapidly growing church, they called a meeting with the larger group of followers to decide what they could delegate and what they would continue to focus on themselves:

“We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program,” they announced. “And so, brothers, select seven men who are well-respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word.” (Acts 6:2-4)

The disciples recognized their strengths and their mission – teaching and preaching the word of God. They focused on their God-given gifts and then delegated those responsibilities better-suited to the strengths of others in the group.

I think sometimes we feel obligated to do it all. And instead of focusing on the special abilities God has given us, we run ourselves ragged funneling our energy into areas in which we don’t especially excel. Sometimes we say yes to something because we feel like that’s what’s expected of us. Like me with the scrapbook. As a new mother, I thought that was what I was supposed to do: make a scrapbook of my baby’s first year. Regardless of whether I was good at it or not, and regardless of whether I even enjoyed it.

A few years ago the director of children’s ministries at my church called to ask if I might be willing to teach Sunday school. A wave of guilt washed through me before I took a deep breath and informed her that I didn’t think I would be well-suited for such a role. “Frankly I don’t even really like kids that much,” I blurted to Faye. Thankfully she laughed.

There are times you do need to try something new in order to grow or to step out of your comfort zone. But there are other instances in which you know saying yes would result in a cataclysmic disaster.

Sometimes, as with my ill-fated foray into scrapbooking, a period of trial and error is necessary in order to discern our strengths. But sometimes, like the disciples, we simply know what we’re good at and where we need to focus our energy. And in those circumstances, it’s okay to say yes, or no, with confidence and without guilt.

What about you? Do you know what your God-given strengths are? Have you ever said no to something you knew wouldn’t be the best use of your skills?

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