Monday was a rest and recharge day. It was a busy weekend, and I woke up from nearly nine hours of sleep feeling like I was 72 years old going on 73. When it came time to decide on something to post in this space, I wasn’t entirely happy with anything I’ve written the past few days, so I turned to “the archives.”
I found myself re-reading the introduction to my 2019 book, A Bridge at Crossroads, which is subtitled “101 Encouragements.” And there I found something that seems worth sharing again …
When I’m on my game, every day I pick up my pen and a journal and put words in it. Not a lot of words, most days – just enough for me to say something. The best of those fragments of thought and bursts of creativity find their way into my blog.
One day I developed a brief mission statement for my work, comprised of three words that begin with the letter E: “Encourage. Enlighten. Entertain.” If I’m doing one of those three things, mission accomplished. If I’m doing two or three of them, so much the better.
Most of all I love to be encouraging. There are so many discouraging words these days that people sometimes just need to hear, “It’s going to be all right. You can do this. You can make it through.” Some days, I find myself writing words that I need to hear, something I may desperately need someone to say. If no one else is going to say it, I will.
I wrote the title and opening piece a little more than two years ago, on a day when I needed some encouragement.
I went to a sanctuary in the town where I had worked until a couple of weeks earlier, a woodsy place called Crossroads at Big Creek where I liked to walk during my lunch breaks. I sat down on a wooden bench near a basic bridge made of 2 by 4s over the creek, and I pulled out my pen and a mini legal pad.
Hoping to write words of encouragement to someone like me, I began. It took barely five minutes for it to pour out, and I have barely touched the words since: “When you are sad – for there will come a time when you are sad …”
I am not the only one to face days like that one, and I am not the only one who needs to read what I wrote that afternoon. I daresay we all find ourselves at a place called Crossroads, in need of a bridge, and so I collected 101 of these little prose poems of encouragement for when you’re rattled, when you’re about to embark on a new adventure, when you could use a gentle push, or all of the above.
This can be – should be – a world of joy, though sometimes you have to look hard to find the reasons to dance. Life is better lived when you search for the light and not the dark and when, having found that light, you dance for as long as your heart can stand the joy.
In these pages, I hope you find what you need to hear.
