Dear Anonymous,
His bag is just too heavy to carry.
'Can you hold it for me for a few days?' he asks, with a jaw that has been rearranged and a face with steel plates holding it together.
Yes. Yes I can.
We wrap it up and store it in some corner of my car.
'It was just too heavy to carry.'
Some things are just too heavy. Best to put them down. I agree.
He wants to send a message to Evan Andrews, who he met at the YMCA gym and remembers fondly, before being brutally beat on the streets.
'Tell Evan, I love him too. I will pray for his brother. And him.'
He says this as a declaration. Here we are. Wounded and patched together and wound up in addiction and mental health chaos and here he is. Offering love.
Love it is.
And then there's this. A beautiful donation from someone half a nation away...
Dear Anonymous,
And then there's this. A beautiful donation from someone half a nation away who routinely contributes to offer coffee cards to folks on the streets of Portland, Maine ...and she mirrors back the words tattooed in my heart.
In. It. Together.
Thank you Dear Anonymous.
He is holding one of the YOU MATTER cards made by the National Honor Society of Freeport High School...
Dear Anonymous,
He is holding one of the YOU MATTER cards made by the National Honor Society of Freeport High School who recently raised money for donations to Dear Anonymous. I know. This blows the 'anonymous' part but I think it's worth discussing what a group of young people in our world chose to do of their own volition receiving nothing in return. We have tucked these inside pairs of socks and pockets of backpacks. Hell, we've handed them to the baristas at Starbucks.
This is Mike holding the card as a way to thank you. Cuz' yeah, YOU matter too.