A thick manilla envelope was curled around the newspaper and piece of junkmail I pulled from my mailbox.
I hadn’t seen the college friend who sent it in more than a year, so I ripped the package open and found several cards – one with my name – and a notebook. At first glance, I thought I was getting some leftover things from our college apartment that someone found while summer cleaning.
The contents of this package gave me a little lift on this particularly difficult day.
“HEY LADIES! So here’s what I’m thinking … I feel very disconnected from y’all and it saddens me. Obviously physically being together is rather rare and hard to do. Phone calls, emails and Facebook are ways; however, I thought a fun way may be a book,” my friend and former UW-Oshkosh roommate wrote. “Instead of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants … a journal.”
Ironically, she’s always been the one to reconnect our group of friends – all the way from her home in New Orleans to where I am in Milwaukee, to where other friends are in Neenah, Plymouth, Oregon … wherever our wings have taken us.
That’s one way she keeps in touch with our “family” of friends, even when we’re too many miles away and a few dollars short for regular visits.
Little things make a world of difference.
That’s true for soldiers, too, as Ricardo hints at here and in his piece, where he examines the lives of young adults who put their faith and service into perspective.
In related articles, Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki shares his insight to how we should view war in light of our faith, and Fr. Jerry Herda answers whether killing an enemy in wartime is a sin.
Now that football season is upon us, Fernando Espino gives a gentle reminder in his column about where your faith should rest.
Kevin Gries, 22, and Dianne Marshall, 26, offer a glimpse into their lives and how they live out their Catholic faith on Pages 3 and 5, respectively.
Catholicism is one way that no matter where we are in the world – a soldier fighting overseas, a director of youth ministry in Sheboygan, a college student at UW-La Crosse – we’re connected to a larger family.
Maybe instead of a notebook, you can pass along an issue of myFaith – a little thing inside its pages might be just the thing that makes a world of difference to the person receiving it.
