The best part of writing a book is getting feedback from readers. In the back of the book, I invite people to write me and share their story with me. I’m hugely honored to get emails and letters that introduce themselves and their lives. The one thing all of the letters have in common, no matter where they come from on the globe, is that they carry some degree of heartache and betrayal, loneliness and longing. Some say more about it than others, but it’s always there. In two years, I can remember only one letter from a reader that spoke of her happiness and delightful romance.

Of all that God has shown me
I can speak but the smallest word,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on her foot
From an overspilling jar…
–Mechtild of Magdeburg

Part of my calling is to be an ear for ladies who have no one to listen to them, and I enter into this gladly. But sometimes I wonder where the happy stories are. Right now I’m ready to listen to something lovely and smiley and warm. It can be anything that you saw or heard or felt today or ten years ago. It can be about a rainbow you saw, or how your husband won your heart. It could be the pansy you found smiling at you, or the gentle rain on your face. I don’t care what it is. I just want happy stories, drops of honey from an overspilling jar. Surely that’s not asking too much?

An African proverb says that a person who sees something good must tell the story. So let’s hear some, because I know they’re out there.

Write your story in the comments box OR email me (anitayoder[at]gmail[dot]com). I want to hear from you! And if you don’t have a happy story, well, that’s ok. Send me your sad one tomorrow. I want to hear that too, honestly. Just not today, ok?

Last night after work and other jobs I stopped at my brother’s house to drop off a book. I wasn’t going to stay long. But two little boys were in the tub, and the youngest one was being fed, and my brother and I stood in the kitchen and chatted. Then I helped myself to a muffin and had to tell the bathed boys ‘hi’ before I left. Which turned out to be drying them and putting pj’s on the middle one.

When the oldest one, age four, asked “Do you want a cup of tea?” I wasn’t going to accept, but then, how could I refuse? So my brother made us lovely fresh mint tea, and he and his wife sat at the table with me to drink it while three little boys rotated on and off our laps. We didn’t solve all the world’s problems, but they gave me wise words and perspective that I needed. Finally, I tumbled the littlest Cuddle Bug into his daddy’s lap and left the warm circle of their dining room light.

When I left, it was 9:00. Being a Saturday night, I’m sure they had umpteen things to do that didn’t include sitting and drinking tea with a sister and auntie. In the next month, they plan to move an hour away. In a few months, I plan to move to another country. The times I can drop in on them after work are going to be limited. But the rarity of the event was only part of the value to me. My brother put mint leaves in the cup, but an Alchemist was working because when I drank it, I found comfort and love.

He wouldn’t have to bother.
A friend commented this after telling how she was learning about God’s character of generosity in pursuing her soul and giving her salvation. And it is true: God bothers a lot about us, goes to amazing details for the well-being of our whole person: spirit, soul, and body.

My awe at the way He looks after the intangible parts of me–is it my spirit, or soul? I never know–was renewed recently when I listened to a talk by Jerry Root entitled “C.S.Lewis’ Approach to Art and Literature.” (The speech is found here, among many other excellent talks.) At first the speech is very academic, and I could only grasp parts of it. Toward the end, however, Root becomes more practical about observing and appreciating art, and then he quotes Lewis in his Letters to Malcom, Chiefly on Prayer:

Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says, “What must be the quality of that being whose far-off and momentary coruscations* are like this! One’s mind runs back up from the sunbeam to the sun.”

Mr. Root then becomes poetic as he explains further how observing art and creativity around us can result in worship. “Something we might have missed at first makes its way into our consciousness. We could have lived on a dark planet. And been told that there would be one sunset. And we’d have lined every west coast of every continent and every island on the planet. And as we saw the glory of that event and tears came to our eyes, we’d have written about it in our journals and regaled our progeny with the glory of that event.

But what must God be like, that He has made our planet a perpetual kaleidoscope of sunrises and sunsets?! One star in a night sky should be enough to make any right-thinking mind and open heart fall in a state of wonder. But God is so liberal with His glory that He’s littered the heavens with stars and moons and galaxies and shooting stars!”

I live on a perpetual kaleidoscope. What must God be like? He wouldn’t have to bother. But I’m awfully glad He does!

*coruscation: a sudden flash of brightness