Several years ago as a grown woman with four children, I naturally began to think more often of my own mom and the sacrifices she made for me and my three siblings. I borrowed the idea of making a Grateful Jar for my mom filled with notes of thanks. It was like a burden pressed upon my heart to communicate to her how thankful I was for all kinds of big and small things she had done for me. And how very much I loved her.
I typed out on my computer, “Mom, thank you for…..” and I copied this partial sentence oodles of times with space underneath to handwrite what I wanted to thank her for. I spent weeks thinking about my mom’s investment into my life and writing “thank you” to her for ever so many things. Then I cut all of my little notes into rectangular slips of paper, folded them up, and filled the grateful jar to the top. There were some things that I hadn’t ever consciously thought about before but was now so sincerely grateful for. From “holding my hair back and staying with me when I threw up” to “teaching me how to balance a checkbook” I wrote and wrote, laughing and crying over sweet memories.
Just like so many things in God’s economy, what started out as a project to bless someone else ended up immensely blessing me. In those weeks of thinking back over the “good” in my growing up years, I stopped dwelling on the hard, the lack, the loss and instead I focused on so. much. good.This project absolutely changed me. And because of this, it also changed my relationship with my mom.
I filled the mason jar with chocolates as well as all of the thankful notes and I mailed it to Mom with the instructions to “Open one each day”. She delighted so much in this little gift that I received many phone calls from her as she finished opening that day’s note to reminisce with me about what I had written.
I’m so grateful I communicated the things I did through writing to her. If I had tried to sit and talk with her and verbally unload my grateful truck, I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t have worked so swell.Today and every day I will be so very grateful for this creative way that I got to communicate my heart to my mom.
Because last Fall, very suddenly and unexpectedly, she passed away.
No chance to say “I love you” one last time or “thank you” for any one of thousands of things.
Weeks after she died I found myself desperately hoping she had kept it. With all my heart I wanted to find that jar somewhere in her home with it’s notes stored safely inside. She had a tiny home and so she only kept what mattered most to her.
In one of her lower kitchen cabinets, right below her red chair where she sat every day to pay bills and order her world, I found the precious treasure I was hoping to find. The chocolates were gone of course but each one of my notes of gratitude was neatly folded and lovingly tucked back into the jar. And treasure of treasures, on some of my little slips of paper she had written in her distinctive writing, recollections that she had from the specific thing I wrote about. My words mattered to her. My heart of love and gratitude was heard by her heart. And I’m profoundly thankful that I told her.