Return to Sender
Returned to Sender
How one letter kept finding its way into the right hands
By Valarie Ripka McClure, Pennsylvania
I didn't recognize the return address on the envelope I pulled from the mailbox. Probably junk mail, I thought, opening it. To my surprise, there were two letters inside. Intrigued, I unfolded one of them.
"Dear Val," it began. Dear Val? I had no idea who the letter was from.
"I hope you don't mind that I have located you. Enclosed is a letter, but I had to send an explanation with it. Let me tell you a bit about myself...
"For the past several years I have endured one struggle after another. The minute I get my head above water, something else pulls me under. Yesterday was one of those times. Going over some papers, I just put my head down and said, 'I cannot do this anymore.'
"The next morning, I went grocery shopping, and in the parking lot I saw a folded sheet of paper on the ground next to my car. I thought it was someone's grocery list, but something I saw made me pick it up. It was a letter...
"'Dear Becky,' it read. 'You have been on my mind and heart a lot because I know you are hurting.'
"The letter contained a poem, I Am Waiting, Lord, about having faith through difficult times. 'Lord, help me not to simply sit among my broken things,' one line read. '...teach me in my waiting to find the valued remnants...'
"Even though I was not the person originally intended to receive this letter, I believe I was meant to see it. I do hope the other Becky got as much encouragement from it as I have. Thanks so much...Becky."
Slowly I unfolded the other letter in the envelope, the one the writer had mentioned. And I did recognize the person who wrote this one. It was signed "Val Ripka." Me.
I had sent that letter to my friend Becky when she was going through a rough time in her life. It had comforted her back then, 10 years earlier. She had thanked me for it when she'd received it, but later had told me that she had long since lost it, not sure where it might have gone.
Until it was found by just the right person, at just the right time.
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