the sticker club

this was my mom on the day that she was discharged from the hospital at the end of january. and although she had come a long way, she still had a long way to go. my sister stacy has worked hard at getting my mom from "on the road to recovery" to "recovered". and today, i think i can officially say that my mom is recovered. hallelujah! how do i know? well, let me tell you...

the story begins when i left home for college. as a freshman getting mail was a pretty big deal (man that makes me old)... now they get texts, emails, tweets or connect on skype... but i'm getting off track before i even get started. anyways, at the beginning of every month, my mom would send me a letter. the front of the letter was typed, copied and then sent to a bunch of people that my mom corresponded with each month. on the back was a handwritten note to me from my mom. usually, the envelope also contained other stuff as well. she would send me things that she thought would interest me from our local newspaper, funny comic jokes from the saturday evening post, maybe a story from guidepost magazine or a variety of other things she thought might be of interest. she also decorated each letter with silly stickers and called the list of recipients "the sticker club". i looked forward to getting my monthly instalment of the sticker club each month as it made me feel really connected to home.

the week that my mom was in the accident, my mom's december letter arrived. the theme of her letter was "walking". ironic, right? there she was laying in a hospital bed far from home unable to walk, sending out a greeting that detailed all of her journeys from 2008. and interwoven through the details of her "walking" was how gracious God had been through the year and how He had walked with her on her journeys, making them a possibility. needless to say, getting and reading this letter was a difficult experience. the road ahead was marked with uncertainty and while reading of the joys from 2008 was encouraging, i also had a lot of unanswered questions concerning her future. i wondered several times in those first few weeks if it was the last letter i would receive from my mom. i tucked it away in my keepsake box and then found myself going back to the box to read it and extract encouragement from her words through the months that followed.

i have missed these letters.

yesterday, i went to mailbox to retrieve the mail. to my excitement and joy, the first installment (post-accident) of the sticker club had arrived. tears ran down my cheeks as i tore open the envelope. eureka! what a joy to know that my mom is back into a routine. what a blessing to receive evidence that she is seeing God's hand in her new life with my sister. how wonderful to read the details (even though i already knew most of them) of her new day to day adventures.