Small gestures

Hello friends! I'm trusting that you've had a great week. As I sit here to write out my usual intro, I find that nothing is coming to mind...so just take a look at this week's column, enjoy it (that's my plan), and pass it along to your friends and followers across the Internet. Much love!

Original publication date: Friday, April 10, 2015 
Random Writer  
Small gestures  

The other day, I rearranged my bedroom. In the midst of the mess, I ended up stumbling upon a folder and when I opened it, all I could do was smile and laugh.

The contents inside were all the papers and decorations from the door of my college dorm room. Before you ask, “Why is this such a big deal?” let me just go ahead and tell you. At Bible college, the front door of the college dorm room was kind of like your locker in middle school or high school. It could be personalized to truly showcase who you were, adorned with pictures and randomness of all kinds. Or, it could be plain with only the numbers showing (because those tags couldn’t be removed).

I was among the former. My freshman year, my roommate and I started out with just our name tags (they were scuba fins to coincide with the underwater theme for our floor). But by the end of the semester, there was a notepad and pen, little dry erase boards with markers--both of which had friendly notes to my roommate and me from our floormates--and the most crazy assortment of pictures which stemmed from inside jokes--from a picture of a tube of toothpaste to a cut-out of the side of a Pop Tart box (there was a cute picture of an animated Pop Tart...don’t judge).

The folder was actually a culmination of door decorations of all four years in college, so trust me when I say there was a whole lot more. My last two years in college, I was a Resident Assistant (also known as a “dorm mom”), so some of the girls on the dorm gifted me with coloring pages that I proudly displayed on my door like a mom showing off her kids’ artwork on the refrigerator. One of the girls gave me a colored picture of Snoopy laying on a pumpkin, but because she wasn’t a fan of the beagle, she colored him brown.

But a lot of little papers were in that folder too. During my last year, my dorm was located on the floor with the TV room (remember, we went to a Bible college) so a lot of the girls would swing by our floor and leave notes on the notepad on my door, whether they were “my girls” or not. One of the notes I found was from my neighbor on the floor, in which she thanked me for the snack mix I mailed to all of the girls on the floor. It allowed her to get through her long class that day.

There were other random items in the folder that weren’t part of the door decor, like the notes I made with some of the girls on the floor when we sat in the middle of the hallway and had the grand idea of forming a sorority on the campus of our Bible college (which never happened), or the Valentine poem from the guitarist in our Sunday school praise band--who sent every girl in our class a note--that said “Roses are red, violets are blue. I’m sorry I don’t sing, but I’m glad you do.”  

Call me simple or silly, but I love small gestures. Little tokens of appreciation. Short, hand-written notes. I’m preaching to the choir when I say that note and letter writing are lost arts that we need to take part in more. Because that paper and pen combination proves that someone took time out of their day, their schedule to say, “Hey, I’m thinking of you. You mean enough to me to set aside some time and let you know that.” You’d think that as much as I love getting a hand-written note or letter that I would do it more, but I don’t.

The same thing can be said for small gifts and such. One time in college, my friend and I were talking about candy and I shared that I loved Twizzlers Pull and Peel. The next day, I opened my campus mailbox and found a bag of those red licorice with the attached note, “I saw these and thought of you!”

In the world of instant messaging, sometimes the feelings we want to convey in an email or text get lost or become twisted to mean something completely different than what was originally intended. But when we sit down to write a note or stand in a store deciding what gift to give that friend or loved one, we let go of our own agendas and focus on someone else for that moment. It brings to mind the Scripture at the start of the book of Philippians where Paul says, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.” Because with each note or picture that I found in that folder, I was able to recall the good memories I had with the person who gifted me with those items.  

So maybe someone’s been on your mind for the past couple of days, for whatever reason. Take some time this week to send them a written note or letter, or buy them their favorite candy or some other small gift. And please, don’t put it off...because you never know when it might be too late.