Thank You Letter to a Friend

Your Words Matter more than you realize...

Photo by Mikhail Tyrsyna on Unsplash

“It meant a lot to me.” 

I recently received an email from a woman named Lynn that ended with those words. Lynn and I met at a reception for prospective seminary students at Princeton. I don’t remember the encounter, but 39 years later she found me through my website and sent an email reminding me we’d both attended an event with the seminary president. 

She wrote that after the meeting, she’d wondered if everyone thought she was a “...Hick from the sticks, coming from a no-name state school in North Carolina.” I’d responded, “Not at all; You’re impressive.” 

Her letter continued, “You gave me a confidence I didn’t have.” 

Remember that old rhyme we used to say to playground bullies?

I am rubber. You are glue. 

Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

In this case, the words stuck, and I’m glad they did.

I did not go on to attend Princeton Seminary, but Lynn did, marrying someone from Princeton and pursuing a career in academic and hospital administration. While I know there was a lot more to Lynn’s decision than what I said to her that evening, her beautiful letter all these years later made me think about the times when someone said something to me. Something that has made a powerful difference in my life – one they may be totally unaware of. 

Of course, words can hurt, creating slash marks across the heart and indelible tapes that play incessantly in the mind. I still remember Lena and Holly, third-graders who taunted my best friend, Anne, and me nearly every recess. I’m haunted almost nightly by the words of a woman who told me I was too judgemental to be her friend. And, of course, I’m not immune from throwing my own verbal stones.

But that is not what this essay is about. This is about the sentence or two dropped casually into a conversation that did not fall into that vast ocean of noise we hear daily, but skimmed the surface of our consciousness, creating powerful ripples of impact.

Photo by Charlotte Collins on Unsplash

One evening at a party, my friend Paul mentioned I should try qualifying for the Boston Marathon. At that moment I was decidedly unqualified, but we’d been talking about running, and I’d drunk too many beers, so I took his words to heart. They came at a time when I needed an outlet for stress, faltering confidence, and general malaise. 

I spent the next year following a rigid training plan, pounding the pavement for hours while listening to very long audiobooks. For some of you, that might sound like torture. For me, it was bliss – a time when I could focus on my breathing and the steamy romance between Claire Fraser and Jamie in the Outlander series rather than the challenge of raising teenagers. My dear husband put up with weekends where I’d do little but run for four hours and then lay on the couch for the other 20. 

I signed up for the Portland Marathon, confident I’d finish with a qualifying time. I missed it by 11 seconds. So, I added speed workouts at the track, lost a couple of pounds, and six months later crossed the finish line in another race with enough of a margin to send my money and registration to Boston. I doubt Paul knows how instrumental he was in helping me achieve one of my proudest accomplishments: surviving those teenage years. And finishing the Boston Marathon.  

The words of encouragement I spoke to Lynn as an arrogant twenty-two-year-old did not fall on deaf ears. They floated through the years, and now they’ve come back to me. What a gift. I feel a connection with this woman I would not recognize at the grocery store. If you believe in a universal energy, this is that, and it is almost sacred. 

Such is the power of words.

The words Paul spoke to me that evening were precious nuggets, that I’ve held close, letting them guide me. He believed in me, and so I believed in myself. Now it’s time to release them and let them float back to him. Thank you, Paul. 

And Lynn – thank you. “Your words meant a lot to me.”