Do You have a Happy File?

Tonight I’ve been cleaning off the bookshelves in my office. These poor bookshelves are quite the mess. When I sold Creative Memories they held scrapbooks, refill pages, decorative paper, photo tape, stickers and practically everything you’d need to create an album that would someday hold the memories of your life. Once I quit the selling process I condensed the items that were left and added a few books . . . and then some DVD’s . . . and some CD’s . . . and well really anything that I needed to stuff someplace seemed to end up on these shelves. So, in an effort to tidy up a bit, I thought I’d spend an hour or two rearranging. So far, this is where I’m at.

Basically, the mess that was on the shelves is now all over the office floor. Hmmm…..

Oh well, it’ll get done.

As often happens when I’m in the middle of a mess, I find something that belongs somewhere else and well, that leads me on a bit of a rabbit trail. It’s a fun trail until you realize that you have to eventually get back to the mess. Tonight’s trail led me to my “happy file.” Do you have a “happy file?”

What’s a happy file, you ask? (Please, pretend you’re asking for my benefit. I like to think that people are chatting with me when I write.) A “happy file” is a place you stick note cards, printed out emails, or a simple piece of paper with something on it that makes you feel . . . well . . . happy. Most of the notes in my happy file are filled with a kind word of encouragement from a friend or family member. A few are just something that made me laugh.

I’m not going to tell you about every note in my happy file but there are a couple I’d like to share. This first one made me laugh. It’s a little note the size of a gift tag. Actually, it is a gift tag that Scott found one year when I was wrapping Christmas gifts. He took some of my fancy-edged scissors and dressed the sides up a bit, taped on two pennies, and then wrote a note. From the looks of it, he was about 8 or 9. Here’s what it says:

Do not read until cristmas (he wasn’t our best speller)
Two pennies like these share the love of god
To Mom
From Scott

All I can say is thankfully his theology has matured! You can’t throw stuff like this away. Sometimes you just need a good laugh.

Obviously, that isn’t what sent me to my “happy file” tonight. That note has been there for years. Tonight though, I found amidst some old Bible Study lessons a note written to me from a friend. I think I was having a tough day and couldn’t come up with one thing I liked about myself. Do you ever have days like that? My friend refused to let me wallow in my own self-pity and said to me, “Well, I could come up with five of your good qualities right now,” and she did (actually she got all the way to seven.) This is how the note reads:

Nancy
Sweet
Kind
Hard-working
Wonderful
Strong
Fun
Woman of God

I’m not sharing this with you to brag about myself. What I realized as I read it is this is of course it feels good to know that someone thinks of me as having all those qualities. (That’s why it’s going in the “happy file” after all.) But in the end, there is only one thing on that list that really matters to me and it’s the three short words, “Woman of God.” That’s what I want people to remember about me . . . . that I served Jesus.

And actually, I’ll consider my time on this earth a success if, at the end of my days, someone can say, “I met a woman once who told me how much Jesus loves me. It changed my life.” That would go in my “heavenly happy file.”