Mailbox

When I was twenty-four, I fell in love with mailboxes. 

At that time, I lived in a neighborhood that was pleasant to walk in, and my heart was just freshly-broken enough that taking walks was necessary and good. I would start out and make long loops through different circles and courts and streets and watch everything. I took private mental notes of everything, observing the open garages and the items people are inclined to keep in piles for later use. I said hello to birds, and looked past the rib bones of drainage grates down into their bellies of refuse. Sometimes there would be a lost butterfly wing on the asphalt or an apple blossom explosion on the sidewalk, and those were the cantata of the earth singing the last refrain one more time just for me. 

But there was a particular street I would turn onto that sloped uphill just enough so that while on it, you could not see the very end, and the road seemed to meet the tree line up ahead. Not long, there were orderly houses on either side, and this kept the wind from rustling my ears, an effect pertinent enough to ruin any good walk. And one afternoon my heart just took in the image of all the stately, black mailboxes lined up on either side, and they reminded me of something as serious as soldiers, and then the last, with its rebellious red flag in the air. I remember stopping and looking, and wanting worse than ever to break the rules and open the box and look, and even take. 

That simple mailbox, with its old-fashioned way of signaling. A little red flag. Can you imagine that we still live in a world where people put envelopes in a box on the street and a truck drives by every afternoon and collects and distributes and that’s all there is to it? In a shockingly fast-paced and complicated society, I realized that day how much I love this. Mailboxes are so steadfast. 

There they are. They hold our good news and bad news. They fill up with junk. Wasps build summer nests inside them, they are houses. The wasps always leave their craters abandoned, too. They are constantly filled and emptied. The metaphor of this feels like my heart and I can’t express enough ardency for how important and holy it is. 

Growing up, I think our mailbox was white. Or black. Sometime during childhood it was spray painted hunter green to match the storm door and shutters on the front of the house. Rebellious red flag. 

Our neighbor down the hill had a mailbox that always got caught in the snow plow’s arc. Knocked down to a comfortable, resigned slant every winter, it would disappear during the thaw and was always returned to its post by spring. The turning of the seasons, we learn to take ourselves out of harmful situations and stand our ground. We know Churchill: never, never, never give up. The mailbox knew. 

I began looking at pictures of old, rusted mailboxes that seemed to be the only call for packages on the side of a rural road. I pinned images to a Pinterest board. I loved how lonely they looked. I loved how you could never know what was, or wasn’t inside of them. I loved how they could be there for decades and never change. I loved that no matter how advanced society became, there were still little treasure chests on the side of the road being constantly filled and emptied. I loved that, even if I never did, at any moment I could send anyone I wanted a special letter or package and it would just appear inside their box sandwiched between a utility bill, and a coupon circular, and a postcard from a local dentist. 

As things go in my life, this metaphor took a sharp right one afternoon into a spiritual detour and further cemented my devotion to the mailbox and what it means, can mean, for all of us. Driving, down a road I have driven probably thousands of times in my life, I see something I’ve never seen before. It is a fairly narrow road, heavily treed, with a few houses aways back from the street. And there, with body half in the grass, half in the road, is an old woman leaning over, checking her mail. 

I veer slightly across the yellow line so as to not get too close to her, and pass, and am filled with an immense weight of sadness. I have friends who adore the elderly and even cannot wait to be established in years, but for me, the thought of being alone at that age tears me up inside. It leans into my fear of not ever finding my place and not being seen and known. So, when I see an older person and they are by themselves, it makes me unbelievably sad. I imagine this woman living by herself in this unspecific house on a pitiful street and here she is, going out to check her mail in a sweater, and I am driving by in my youth giving her breadth and going about my day. 

And that is when I feel God speaking to my heart: Keep checking the mail. 

Now there are two things to unpack. First is the woman. She was the lynchpin for the lesson. It was not lost on me that I have never, ever seen anyone checking that mailbox. Whenever I see something new on a road I have traversed thousands of times, I always turn it over for depth and meaning. So she was there, and then I hear God telling me to keep checking the mail. 

This took some time to process, but when I arrived at the point it made me weep. My faith is the mailbox, I am the old woman, life is the mail. Prayer is the act of checking the mail. Here God was telling me to go to the mailbox, every day. Every day, come to God, open the mailbox, see what is inside. In prayer, I ask and question, and search. Sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes there is a handful of junk for me to sort through. And sometimes, there is a birthday card, or a letter, or something that makes me feel seen and loved. I do not always get the answer I want, or any answer at all, but that does not mean the exercise is over. If I check my mail one afternoon and nothing is there, I don’t stop checking. It is a ritual. The box has to be maintained or it overflows. 

And sometimes, we need a break. We vacation and ask a trusted neighbor to check our mail for us. In faith too, there are times we simply cannot keep up, and we need others to intercede, to look for the important truths nestled between the circulars. And together, we keep checking. We are never the old lady checking alone, because the conversation is two-way, and God reaches out, and fills us as we return again, and again, and again. 

So it is a constant practice in my life. The love of the mailbox. Mine is weathered and swathed in a little patina, warped post deep in the red clay of my hometown and God’s abundant grace. And the little flag, red, held aloft, like a hand to God, sometimes in hallelujah, sometimes surrender.