encourage like a boss

I sit by the sea, digging my toes into soft sand, soothed by the crashing waves.  The sparkling vastness of the water glimmers behind my reading, God’s letter in my hands, soft from all my folding and unfolding. A prayer plants me like a seed buried to live in a wild, fertile love so big I can’t find its boundaries. 

It’s like I’ve swallowed the ocean.

I look up, scanning the horizon as far as my eyes can see, whispering His words back to Him.

how wide and long and high and deep is your love

how wide and long and high and deep

Sun glints warm. My friends–friends so long we have sisterhood written into the smile lines around our eyes–sit close by in their chairs, some talking low, hats pulled down over their heads, tendrils of hair lifting and curling in the breeze, and I can’t help but think how nice it is to have in them a family that chose me.

In another part of God’s letter, Peter wrote his part, that we are chosen people—chosen by God, using words that tell me this was a deeply personal choice.

I had wounds for a while that made me imagine myself some random grab bag grab, some rhyme on His fingers, as though God chose me the way human beings sometimes choose their trinkets.  For a while, I had to practice receiving the truth, a whisper of a prayer on my lips, that I am precious, tucked away for safe keeping, like a sea glass jewel carefully selected and held.

how wide and long and high and deep is your love

Did you know?  This is your truth too.  Sit with me maybe, on the beach, and receive it?

Phone strums my Riley sound, bold fingers across the strings.

I got a note from my boss today.

A picture comes through, the note, flattened out against the bar at home.  I have to enlarge it with my fingers, slipping off my sunglasses just to see the writing.  Funny thing–my stomach irrationally dips, like this will be another wounding.

And then I see instead that Riley’s boss begins, I want you to know that I appreciate you.

To appreciate something is to recognize its worth, and everyone needs to hear those words— I appreciate you, and here is Riley’s manager, writing in his own way that she is precious.  Not some eeny-meeny-miny-mo, but an I-value-you, written in his own easy-going scrawl.

I don’t know, but something about this takes me back to the first time some well-meaning soul asked me what to do with Riley, blinking at me bold, looking for all the world like Riley was more burden than blessing, and she, Riley, only a tiny, frustrated, flaxen-haired autistic girl with no words. I had said the first thing that poured out of my mama-heart, just love her. Just love her, that’s what you do. But she’s precious to me, that’s what I really wanted them to know. She’s worth it.

The note goes on—You bring bright light to the operation every day.

Inside me, the joy, like a swell. I turn my face up toward the sun.

 how wide and long and high and deep is your love

“Hey, y’all?  Riley got a note from her boss,” I say, and my friends, they look up, waiting, and I read it out loud, and when I read that part, you bring bright light, one of my sisters quietly says, “Oh,” that oh like some holy pause, “so, he sees her.”

I look up, swallowing against the tide, and smile, meeting her gaze. My friend, she’s one of those people who always sees. “Yes. Exactly.”

This isn’t just a Riley thing, the shining, but a people-belonging-to-God thing. His light draws its own attention.

You’re doing a great job delivering trays.  Thank you, Boss finishes, and I grin wide, suddenly voiceless, glancing up again at my friends, and one of them, using her voice for me as real sisters always do, says, “I love that he wrote that; that’s just so good.”

Sharing the joy, we turn our eyes again toward the deep.

how wide and long and high and deep…is your love

It could be a question, turned back to me.

How wide and long and high and deep is your love?

Is it boss-note deep?  Is it wide enough to put into words? Just the three lines, an easy offering, but within them the protective truth:

You are valued.  You are seen.  You are a blessing.

That’s what encouragement is, really, protective truth compelled by vast love, by the conquering, unconquerable Force that changes everything.

I stare out over the waves, wondering what our world would be like if we took the time to love one another even just this way, just three lines kindly scrawled and sealed up humble, passed from hand to hand.

I look down, press my own hand flat against the leather-bound lettered-love in my lap, pages and pages of it fluttering, thinking, heaven knows we need it.

Text Riley back, say, oh that must make you feel so good, getting that—using that word again that’s only really God’s, just good.

Text Kevin too, saying, wow. That note.

Did she send you a picture of the outside of the card?  He replies, then just goes on, knowing she probably didn’t.  It says,

You belong here.

Like I said, it’s like I swallowed the ocean, and just now, it spills right out of my eyes and runs right down my cheeks.