Speak Soon

I discovered a treasure about my Mama a few years ago. After her death I ended up with her workbook from a discipleship class she had attended in 1992. It was incredible to read in her own handwriting about her faith and love for God. It was also incredible to discover something else–a little remark written in the margin of a page. It was something I had never known she thought about me, and reading it in her own handwriting brought me such joy. It was as if she was speaking right to me.

How many times do we hesitate sharing our feelings with those we care about? What makes us hesitate? Are we afraid we will be judged? Are we afraid that we will not live up to their expectations? Are we concerned our words will hurt them? Are we even afraid they will not care about our thoughts? Our human mind creates all kinds of scenarios, but in the very end, those scenarios mean very little. What matters is telling those we love how we feel, and just allow God to take care of what must needs to be taken care of.

When Mama praised me, it was special. What I read that day in her workbook, I would have loved to have known while she was living. If I had known she felt about me in that way, we could have shared a closeness in our relationship that I had never known. Who knows what the last twenty-four years would have brought if I had known this about her? There are also many things I would love to tell her now, but I can't. Even though she was here for a lifetime, that lifetime became too short.

“People are like the grass,” Isaiah wrote. “Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. And so it is with people. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:6b-8, NLT). Life is but a vapor in God's cosmos of time. Take every opportunity to tell those in your life how much you love them. Speak soon. The opportunities will not always be there. The only thing that lasts is God's incredible love, and His Word which endures forever. Mama's words in the margin of that page will also endure until the time I will see her again.