I am constantly blown away by the friendships in my life. I have my childhood friends who have been constants in my entire life and are family. I have my book club girls who have become the sisters I never had. I have many other friends who are priceless because of the life we have experienced together. And I have new friends who have quickly allowed our friendship to weave into a close, tight knit in our families’ lives.

I am an extremely lucky girl.

For Christmas, our book club has a tradition of giving each other gifts. They are typically things that mean something to us all or they are some of our favorite things that we share with each other. This year, I went the extremely deep route and gave everyone…a selfie stick. Because come on! Everyone needs a selfie stick! It’s 2017! How did we go this long without one??

One of my friends actually did go deeper with her gift. She gave us all blessing cards that we can color and give to people in our lives. I absolutely loved the idea behind these cards, so I bought them for all of the women in our family for Christmas!

In the course of my day today, I had a number of friends reach out to me to let me know what is going on in their lives. I found myself writing down prayer requests and wishing I could do more.

And then I looked up and saw the little box of blessing cards.

I picked a card of the box, grabbed my box of colored pencils and went to town. With each pencil stroke, with each color chosen, I found myself praying for the friend the card will go to as well as the others on my heart.

I believe that everyone wants/needs to feel noticed, valued and loved. That if we could just get this right, the world would change!

A lot of times, we don’t take action because we feel like what we do is not big enough or that it won’t matter. (Or we are so wrapped up in our own lives that we don’t even notice others.) But I believe that every time we attempt to make someone feel noticed, valued or loved, in small or big ways, it matters.

Who knows if people will like receiving these cards. They may keep them…or they may instantly toss them in the trash. But either way, I hope they will know that someone noticed their pain and values their life. And I hope they know how much they are loved by God.