25 Messages & Late Night Musings

From the archives, circa 2013... oh so many lifetimes ago.

December 27, 2013

I spent the last two hours cleaning off my cell phone so that one of our boys could have it as his first smart phone. While deleting apps, transferring pictures, and getting rid of music, I had a one-woman trip down memory lane, but nothing touched me like 25 locked text messages that saved themselves from deletion.

A couple years ago I went through a personal hell--a trek through the Valley of the Shadow of Death that King David wrote about, or at least it felt that way. I felt alone in the valley, but conversations with a kind friend reminded me in those message that the valley is a nice place to walk with God and that it is through jumping into the valley with full abandon that we allow God to catch us.

In those 25 non-deletable messages were words of encouragement, truth, and friendship--words of life both sent and received. A short snippet of the thousands they represent, seeing them reminded me of where I was at the time, where I've been emotionally, mentally, and spiritually the last several years, and then it makes me wonder where I am now. Those messages also reminded me of friends--those who stuck by me, those who didn't, those who were faithful, those who weren't, and those who fell off along the way. I became thankful for each, because in each category and in each circumstance it taught me something and made me who I am. Even those who betrayed me I can be thankful for because those acts eventually made me stronger.

Cleaning off my phone tonight is a bit like cleaning out a chunk of my (his)story. Tomorrow when I visit the cell service provider and have my new phone activated, I will begin a new chapter. New stories will be told through new text messages and tweets, and I am thankful in advance for those who will share that with me.

Here in a dark, quiet house while my three men sleep snuggled in their beds, I didn't expect to have portions of my deepest heart revealed while transferring a cell phone from one person to another, but I did. And I am thankful. Those 25 messages reminded me of friendship, encouragment, love, and grace. And they made me look forward to the new messages, thoughts, and words that will fill my next phone and the next part of my story. A blank slate is a beautiful thing, and I hope you, my dearest friends who would share these late-night musings with me, will fill it with me with color, grace, friendship, life, and love.