Cards

Imagine going to the mailbox and coming back with a handwritten card in your pile of bills and magazines.  Doesn't that make you smile?  Doesn't that make you step a little lighter?  I know it does for me. 

I love getting cards.  Not only for my birthday, but I love getting cards all the time.  A “Thinking of You” or “Hello” note just makes my little heart feel like it's getting a great big giant hug. 

The only thing I love more than getting cards, is giving cards.  To know that I can make someone else feel good, simply by sending them a card, just means the world to me.  If you are reading this blog, chances are you’ve received a card or two (or a hundred!) from me. 

Knowing that someone may be having a hard or lonely day, and just like that - they can feel loved, isn't that just the best!  And over the past 5 years, this has become my goal and my mission. To be more specific – my mission has become to donate cards. And it all started with a powerful, colorful, expressive and simply fabulous woman named Toni Sanders.

When we first moved to South Carolina, I volunteered at Hospice Compassus and met Toni. When I walked into their office and first met this little (in stature only) gal, I knew, she knew, we were going to be friends.

You could not have a more compassionate, dedicated and likeable person than Toni on your team.  In addition to overseeing the volunteers, Toni also coordinated with the nurses and visited with patients.  One day, I told Toni that I wanted her to be able to give a card to patients when she visited them. That comment led to my suppling Compassus, and their staff, with over 900 cards over the course of a few years. Toni kept the cards in her office, and since everyone loved to stop and see Toni anyway, it made perfect sense that they could get a card as they headed out the door.

Over the past five years I have donated over, and I’m totally guessing here - 10,000 cards.  They have gone to the Alzheimer’s Association, Chosen Children’s Ministry, Shriners Children's Greenville, Spartanburg Regional Hospital, Spartanburg Humane Society, Wren Hospice and The ALS Association North Carolina, raffles, people I know and people I don’t know.  Cards have gone to my neighbors and their church's; Mountain View Baptist and Holly Springs Baptist Church.  They have gone to friends as far away as Texas and as close as next door.  If someone tells me they like my cards, I usually send them a dozen or so of their own to give.

When I am working on cards, the studio looks like a little factory.  All the paper must be cut to size, folded, stamped, colored and put into the envelopes.  Since I usually work on 800+ cards at a time, they are in various stages of progress and take over just about every surface of my studio.  

If I made it sound like work, I apologize because I sincerely love every single part of the process.  I love making the cards and knowing who or what organization they are going to, this is not work.  This is nurturing my heart and in extension, nurturing others. 

Almost every time I give away cards, I usually hear the comment that I should sell them.  And maybe at one time, that would have appealed to me, but it doesn’t anymore.  My passion and my mission is to keep supplying handmade cards to anyone who needs them and to keep spreading the love for as long as I can. 

I read this quote by Erma Bombeck in a book I was reading and I LOVE it. 

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and I could say “I used everything you gave me”.  

This sounds like a wonderful goal and I'm almost sure that she succeeded this in her life.  I hope Erma doesn't mind, but I have since adapted it as my own goal as well.  And I will strive everyday to accomplish this.