When I retired, I had to do something with all the daily organizers that I had kept year by year. After 37 years of pastoral ministry, I had accumulated a bookshelf of them.
“Toss them all,” several told me.
That made sense, but for some reason, perhaps because they represented years of work, I couldn’t. But a couple of years into retirement, it was time.
Still, I had to peek down the years of “to-do” lists, appointments, meeting agendas, and reminders: a veritable record of “the days of my life,” mundane as reading most of the pages was.
Opening the year 2000, I started thumbing through its pages, and my eyes landed on June 14. I recognized my daughter, Mary-Elizabeth’s handwriting.
In the corner of the page, where I would write my goals for that day, she had written a note to me, signing it, “Smiles,” the nickname I had given her.
“Daddy,” she had written, “I (with a heart emoji) U! Thanx for taking me swimming on Monday, it was really fun! You are a Great Dad!”
Then she quoted a Scripture I had given her when she was younger, the verse that would become her life-verse: “Always remember,” she wrote, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God stands forever. Is. 40:8.”
My heart stopped as I read the words. Mary-Liz was 12 when she wrote them. Her mother, my wife, was battling cancer at the time. I was overwhelmed with taking care of my family and ministering to the church during a challenging time in its life. Reading the words, I could feel the self-doubt, the angst, the pain, and the sadness that hovered over me like a dark cloud in that trying season of life.
But then, I felt her words the way I must have felt them back then. They would have been like an oasis in the desert, sparking joy in my life, just as God’s love did to the weary believers described in Psalm 84. Even as they walk through the “Valley of Weeping,” God refreshes them, wrote the Psalmist.
What little I had given Mary by spending a day with her back then, returned to me many times more, lifting my then weary soul. Even though what I did with Mary didn’t make it into my “Day-Timer” notes of significant events that day, my time was precious to her.
Sometimes, walking in life’s shadows, weighted by life’s burdens, groping in the darkness, we still manage to let the Light shine through us, unaware of the lasting effect it has on someone else. And somehow, God takes the broken offering of ourselves and creates something beautiful from it, which comes back to bless us, even more, years later, though we were unaware of the miracle God had wrought in someone else’s life.
I thought of something Brooks Adams wrote in his diary. Brooks’ father, Charles Francis Adams, was the United States ambassador to Great Britain during Lincoln’s presidency. Brooks wrote about a special day when he was eight years old. His dad took him fishing.
Brooks wrote in his diary, “Went fishing with my father; the most glorious day of my life.” Through the years, Brooks would speak of that day and its enduring impact on his life.
His father also had a note in his diary dated the same day. It simply said, “Went fishing with my son: a day wasted.” What the father deemed a wasted day, the son remembered as a wonderful day.
When I shared with Mary that note she had written twenty-five years ago, she texted back, “Love that you kept these.”
Toss them?
Yes, I will.
“But not just yet,” I said to myself as I turned another page.
And listened for the past to speak.