Karen’s Notes!

“Insights from a Glory-Bound Lady”

Selected Notes

Volume 4 Number 37, “You Make Me Feel Special”

September 15th, 2021

I love variety.

This is going to be a very, very different “Karen’s Notes!”

For this week, it is not what she wrote, but what she did and what she told me.

Some of the folks who read “Karen’s Notes” are brand new to my website and never got to meet Karen. Others have met her when attending a ladies’ event in which she was speaking. Others are part of church families where I was the pastor and Karen was the pastor’s wife. A very few family and friends who really, really know her will testify that what I’m about to share is absolutely true (not that other things I share aren’t true!)

Karen was not a hoarder. She did not have much of an attachment to things. If she was rather convinced that the item or thing was of no further use, out it went. Please understand, we had plenty of keepsake items because they had sentimental value. But you understand what I’m talking about. She was not a collector and hoarder of things and clutter.

That’s why it is so extremely special to me to have discovered soon after her Homegoing to Heaven that she kept every single love letter I mailed to her from Bible college. I also occasionally would write her a love note and slip it into her Bible where I would later that morning ask the church family to turn. Some of these date back over forty years.

Picture the scene. Karen is in the kitchen finishing Sunday lunch. The house is full of the sounds of children. I walk into the parsonage in Marilla and come into the kitchen. Karen turned from the counter and came and embraced me.

Karen said: “Honey, your note today about loving me, about praying for me, about thanking the Lord for me is wonderful. I can’t tell you how much it means. My Heaven Father tells me wonderful things and so does my husband. You make me feel so special.”

With that she hugged me and kissed me just as most of our younger children came around the corner.

What our kids did: Screaming and wiping their faces and hollering, “Yuck, yuck, yuck! I’m never doing that! Right on the mouth! Yuck!”

Michael’s observation: How do you express your love, prayers, and thanksgiving to loved ones around you? A thoughtful note might be the greatest blessing in all the world to someone today. The Father repeatedly tells us that He loves us and demonstrates His love to us. “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:38-39). As believers, may we not only love the Lord but also those around us. May the Lord give us wisdom to communicate this to them as well as demonstrate it.