I’ve written before about the unlikely friendship I struck up with Gladys, a Guideposts reader, earlier last year. Well, this past Christmas, I decided to send Gladys a handmade gift–a clear plastic ornament with a paper crane floating inside.
I wrapped my creation in tissue paper and shipped it in a padded envelope, hoping it would make it to Gladys by December 25.
The Monday after Christmas, I returned to work kind of in a sour mood. And not just because I no longer had an excuse to eat sugar cookies for breakfast! As some of you might know, I have multiple sclerosis. Thankfully, I’m doing great and my illness is very stable. But every so often, it really puts me in a funk. Mostly because I have to take a medicine that can only be administered via injection. It leaves my arms and legs a bit bruised and, well, dented.
That morning, as I got ready for work, I looked in the mirror and just felt so frustrated by “the dents,” as I call them. My right leg was still sore from the previous night’s injection. My sister assured me no one could see the dents, but I wasn’t so sure.
I settled in at my desk at work and saw that I had a voicemail. It was from Gladys. She’d received her ornament and loved it. I gave her a call back.
“The ornament is beautiful,” she said. “But I have to tell you—it arrived with a dent in the side of it! The package must’ve fallen. I couldn’t get rid of the dent, but that made me like it even more. Because God loves us dents and all.”
I was flabbergasted. Dents? What a choice of words! Words I badly needed to hear that day.
I really believe God uses other people, sometimes strangers, to get certain messages to us loud and clear. In this case, it was my dear friend Gladys, who reminded me that I am loved, dents and all.
