Letter of Love

By Kirsten Nicole

December 31, 2025

I always thought home videos would be the most precious remnants of my long-passed birthmom. But I was wrong.

As I sat in my bedroom, a few lamps lighting the darkened room, everyone else having gone to bed hours prior, I pulled out a couple sheets of unassuming stationary. A green strip with tiny, yellow polka dots and waxy red apples bordered the handwritten script—a letter.

Addressed to me.

From her.

It was dated the seventh of May, 1998—the one-year anniversary of my due date, I would later learn, which I’m sure was no accident.

There was something especially powerful about these words. 

No, I couldn’t hear or see her saying them as I could with the home videos. But they were mine. She wasn’t talking about me to someone else. I wasn’t hearing what she felt about me through a thoughtful family member. These were her words. In her writing. Directly to future me.

And here I was. Sitting on the bed, pouring over every word as if it was her last to me. 

And it was…

She spoke about how very special I was to her, how my birth was one of the best days of her life, and how I made her look at life as if each and every day were a treasure. Some bittersweet irony in that.

She expressed how one day I would read this letter and know how much she loved me, that she would always be there for me no matter what the future held…

And while that last part wasn’t true, I know she would say now that someone even sweeter would be with me no matter what the future held. 

Someone who also wrote me a letter. Wrote each of us a letter. 

When I was one, on May 7th, 1998, apparently eating lunch while Momma Debbi wrote this to me, all I cared about was whether I was fed, had slept, and was entertained. 

But my mom knew that someday, I would really, truly care about her love for me. I would care to know what she thought of me, so she wrote it down. She wrote about her love for me, and I learned more about who she was.

And God knew, before we ever cared about Him (Romans 5:8), that someday we would care what He thought. We would care about His love. So, He wrote it down, in a book that expresses His love to us through every single page that points us to Christ. 

God demonstrated His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners; He died for us (Romans 5:8). He died and He rose again, to prove that He was the all-sufficient sacrifice necessary to restore our fellowship with Him, and He gave us a letter that details all of the sacrifices He made to do this, because He loved us. We weren’t worthy of it. We didn’t care about it. But He did it anyway.

And I became acutely aware that I didn’t pour over Scripture, the way I poured over the letter from my mom. I didn’t spend time reading and rereading with energy and passion, seeking to find something new about Him in the pages the way that I did with the two pieces of stationary I’d received from her.

Because I wasn’t thinking about it as a letter of love, from the very Creator of the universe, who cared enough to provide a way of salvation out of the very mess that I had created myself.

I thought about the way God wrote this letter of Scripture, and I imagined what the two-page, handwritten stationary might look like.

Child,

I created you in My image (Gen. 1:26). I stitched you together inside your mother’s womb. I created and know every part of who you are (Psalm 139:13-16). I gave you life (Gen. 2:7).

But you chose to turn away from Me (Rom. 3:23), away from my loving commandments (1 Jn. 5:3), and you chose to go your own way. You disobeyed me, and so we could not be together (Titus 3:3).

But I loved you. So, I chose to come, and to give up my life for you (Jn. 3:16). I took the punishment you rightly deserved on myself (Is. 53:5). I suffered wrath and judgment so you wouldn’t have to, so you could live with me in Heaven after dying on this earth (1 Pet. 2:24-25). So you could fulfill your original purpose…to love, honor, and serve Me (Eccl. 12:13).

I offer you this gift freely. You do not have to do anything to receive it. You cannot do anything to receive it (Eph. 2:8-9). That is the nature of a gift. I love you, and I have done this great thing to bring you back to Myself, so I can call you my child (1 Jn. 3:1). How will you respond to this gift?

I write you this letter with the greatest love man has ever known (Jn. 15:13). I died to rescue you; now, live for me (Lk. 9:23).