Driving home tonight tired from a long day and caught in a loop of frustrations, I found myself thinking about a hard season from my past. It lasted for years and was incredibly life-changing. And in the middle of it, gratitude found me in the most unexpected way.
My family and I were driving up north for our usual short vacation, the one we took every year. But that year, what was normally light felt heavy. Life was difficult in the kinds of ways you can’t easily talk about or fix. I remember staring out the window, thinking about everything I couldn’t control, when my attention drifted to the trees lining the road—tall, endless, reaching into the summer sky.
Then I noticed the sunlight.
It was skipping across the leaves like it had a rhythm—rays moving from leaf to leaf, branch to branch, tree to tree. I’d seen this scene a hundred times, but not like on this particular day. The colors looked impossibly vibrant, and it felt as if the sun was smiling at me, inviting me to smile back.
And then something shifted instantly.
The heaviness didn’t disappear, but it loosened its grip. Gratitude rose up so fast it surprised me. I thought about my life, my breath, and the people who had quietly carried me through this season: family, friends, neighbors, mentors, colleagues—steady presences who couldn’t fix things, but showed up and sat beside me. I realized I wasn’t walking through the woods alone.
Then, for confusing reason, I felt I needed to thank them.
Not casually. Not vaguely. I felt compelled—almost urgently—to write it down and put it in their hands. The idea seemed a little ridiculous (because I mean, who does this?), but I couldn’t shake it for the rest of the trip. I just wanted to get home and write gratitude cards.
So, when I returned home, I did.
I made gratitude cards and letters—illustrated some, wrote until my hand ached, and filled close to thirty envelopes. Most I mailed. Some I delivered in person. The in-person ones were the hardest. So many cards and letters sat on my desk way longer than I meant them to, simply because I was afraid of being seen as a weirdo (oh, how that negative self-talk gets me every time!).
But something in me kept insisting: Just show up and give. You’ll understand why later.
When I finally dropped them in the mailbox, or walked back to my car after handing one to someone face-to-face, the release was indescribable.
Lightness returned in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. It uplifted me, and perhaps that was God’s intention. It was like finally exhaling, like a cold drink on a relentless day, like putting the final stroke on a painting and signing your name at the bottom. Not an ending, just a shift. A page turning.
Turns out that I didn’t crash and burn from being vulnerable—quite the opposite actually. I found strength in it. I learned that it was okay to name the good out loud, to express genuine appreciation to someone, to tell someone plainly, “You mattered to me. Thank you.” I’d never really thanked people like this before, and maybe that’s why it felt so monumental. But I learned by doing it.
And here’s the deeper lesson:
What I understood later—the biggest lesson of all—was this: the people in your circles deeply impact your life, kindness is contagious, and it might be the best antidote for a heavy heart.
Sometimes I think handwritten notes and gratitude is a lost art. We’re so busy consuming that we forget how powerful it is to give simple words with kindness, with intention. Even now, I still send spontaneous notes because I’ve seen what gratitude can do to a heavy heart. And it all stems back from watching sunlight glimmer through the trees. I’m so grateful to have had that enlightening drive.
Which is why tonight felt so uncanny.
When I got home, I was mindlessly going through old files and notes I hadn’t looked at in ages, and out of everything I could’ve stumbled across, I found the message I wrote inside those gratitude cards so many years ago—the very thing I’d been literally thinking about on my drive home tonight (crazy!).
Inside my cards, I wrote:
For each moment when you
provided a listening ear,
a message of encouragement,
a contagious smile,
a glimpse of positive…Even if for just a brief moment,
Even if you don’t remember,
I do.
And it made all the difference to me this year.I missed the Christmas card deadline,
but that’s not what this card is for.
I just wanted to say thank you,
for walking with me in the woods of life.
I am so grateful to have your company.
Finding that note tonight felt like a gift. Not just because it brought back that memory, but because it reminded me of the kind of people I had in my circles then, the ones still beside me now, and the new ones I’ve gained along the way.
A listening ear. Encouragement. Presence. A little light.
People remember those things. Those moments matter.
And I hope those gratitude cards did, too.
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