"The Box"

This latest ONE Project portrait features the incredible Meg and her box full of letters.  It is a fantastic story-enjoy!

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On my 17th birthday, my dad gave me a small wooden box. Inside, I found handwritten letters that he had written to me every year on my birthday; the first when I turned one, and the last on the birthday of my senior year of high school.

Every few years he would tape a diamond to the letter. In the letter he attached to the first diamond, in 1984, he wrote, “I chose a diamond because you and your mom are more precious to me than jewels.”

In the letter he attached to the last diamond, in 2001, he wrote, “These 6 diamonds form a perfect cross...God’s love is perfect and more valuable than all. You have the character of your mother and her mother before her. A woman (wife) of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Proverbs 31:10”

The diamond necklace is beautiful, and I love wearing it, but his letters are everything. My dad’s words of delight and love are what I treasure most. His heart on paper, folded up in a small box to take with me as I moved out of our home for college. Stories of rocking me in my white rocking chair when I was 2, or tucking me in bed at night when we were skiing when I was 4, or watching me play tennis when I was 10, to his last note he put in the box when I was 17.

The last words of the last letter tucked away in this little box read, “What more could a father ask of a loving God? For you are His as well and we shall be together forever. I love you. -Always, Dad.”


  These glimpses into daily life while being raised by my parents have traveled for 23 years with me every place I have lived. They still sit by my MOST treasured love letter, my Bible.

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