Sending "Envelope Hugs"

 Pictured is Carol E. Crain of Taylors, S.C., a retired elementary school teacher.

Here is a May 1, 2007, interview with Carol E. Crain by her husband, Larry Steve Crain, written when they lived in Southern Pines, N.C. At the time of this posting, they live in Taylors, S.C.
    Carol sends “Envelope Hugs” to her friends and to some people she doesn’t personally know who experience tough times. She is a retired fourth-grade public school teacher, wife, and mother of two adult daughters. Carol enjoys sending encouraging hand-written communiqués to friends, acquaintances and strangers.   


I send hand-written, hand-created notes, often including songs and poems I’ve written and quotations I’ve collected. What I send depends on the situation a person is going through—whether he or she has cancer, has lost a child, is going through a divorce or whatever the need is.

I don’t type my notes and letters or use e-mail. I write my letters, my “Envelope Hugs,” in longhand. I think this means more in a day of e-mail and junk mail.

I have many kinds of cards and stationery, and I hand-make some cards, using magazine pictures. I’ve been doing this off-and-on since I was in college in South Carolina. Most of my friends and relatives lived in Pennsylvania, and I began sending cards and letters.

My husband and I married a year after we graduated from college and each taught school for a year. He left for a year in Vietnam only a few months after we married. I wrote him many letters during his army service (almost two years). And I kept in contact with some college friends and my relatives.

I’ve continued contact with many people who have specific needs, and sometimes I read in the newspaper about someone going through difficulties, and I follow up on that. It just depends on what I feel led to do in reaching out to a person.

After I went through malignant melanoma cancer in 1985, I’ve tended to notice people who’re going through any type of cancer. I know how they feel when they’re told they have cancer. When you’ve been through something like that, you belong to a fraternity or sorority you never wanted to join, but since you belong, there’s some good that can come out of it, since you understand.  

I put lots of different things in envelopes. It depends on how well I know the person, as to what I enclose.

If I don’t know a person, I’ll tell them, “Even though I don’t know you personally, when I heard about your situation, I wanted to share with you, and I hope the things I’ve sent to you will be a blessing to your life.”

I go through the songs and poems I’ve written, especially those written since about 1974, and I think about which one/ones might be most helpful to them.

One thing I’ve had to settle is that it doesn’t matter if I hear back from people. I know that the fact that I felt the Lord putting it on my heart to write to them in the first place means there was a reason for it. If I never know what they got from what I sent and how it ministered to them, it’s okay. Sometimes I think the fact that I don’t know them is what ministers most to them, because they realize I took time to write, even though I don’t personally know them.

Sometimes I send several different letters to the same person, but often it’s a one-time thing. If just depends.

Of the people whom I don’t know, I hear from a few. Once in a while, someone will write a note to me, saying thank you for sending the things you sent. But sometimes they’re so involved in what they’re going through that I don’t think anything about not hearing from them.

Sometimes I read an obituary, cut it out of the newspaper, and then wait several weeks before I follow up. I may follow up by writing the next day, or I may wait several months, because I think that after everything gets back to the day-to-day grind for people that it may mean more to them when someone reaches out to them by writing—after the visits, the phone calls and the mail have long ago quit coming.

I often call the church where the funeral was held or a funeral home to get a person’s address. If it’s local, I look in our phone directory.

I call my creations “Envelope Hugs”. I did a workshop on “Fun with Snail Mail: Creating Envelope Hugs” for a few ladies who came to my home and have conducted larger workshops for church ladies groups. I like to invite about four ladies to my home and show them how to reach out to others, using their own personalities and contacts. Whether it’s a mother who stays home with her baby or an elderly person what can’t get out much, anyone can send a letter of encouragement, an “envelope hug,” to people who need ministry.

Not all my cards are handmade. But sometimes I clip a picture from a magazine and write a quote with a Sharpie pen on that magazine page. I collect quotes. I put lots of little things in an envelope along with a card or letter—songs, poems. I don’t spend a lot of time keeping track of everything I send to people. I do try to track which songs and poems I send, so I won’t send one twice. I keep a date book listing people and the dates I’ve written those people.

I received a touching response from an elderly man who had been married over 60 years when his wife died. He approached me at church after I’d sent him something almost every day for several weeks after his wife died.

He told me how much my cards had meant to him. I sent cards with pictures of dogs, boats, lighthouses, nature scenes, etc.

“I have them standing up in each room, and when I go from one room to the other, and I look at your notes cards, they’re like company for me,” he said tearfully.

I thought that was a very meaningful way to describe what it means for a lot of people who go through their mail and see a personal piece of correspondence in the middle of all kinds of bills, pleas for money and junk mail.

I wrote a lady who was going through cancer, and she said that she kept my envelope hugs in a box, and when she felt especially down, she’d take my letters out and reread them. She said they ministered to her, again, and even in a different way.

Sometimes the Lord will impress me with something specific to share in an envelope—maybe a picture or something to say. Then later I find out why that particular item meant something to the person receiving the letter.

One time when I wrote a lady I didn’t know very well who was going through cancer. I’d met her in the downtown store she owned. I felt I should cut out some paper dolls in a magazine. They were only little childlike dolls. I cut out the dresses and the dolls and included them in an envelope with other items. I wrote, “I used to play with paper dolls when I was a child. Did you ever have any paper dolls?”

One day when she was especially down, she went to the post office and received that piece of mail. She said she opened my letter, saw the paper dolls and experienced such a warm feeling as she thought back about her childhood when she had a collection of paper dolls and her mother designed clothes for those dolls. She said her mother would draw the clothes, cut them out and give them to her to color for her dolls.

That was a very good memory she had, and she knew I had no way of knowing. She said she felt God gave her that special memory of her mother through my sending those paper dolls. It made her feel close to her mother while she was going through cancer treatments.

We became good friends. One night she called, and I sang some of my songs for about 45 minutes to her over the telephone. She said it was like hearing a lullaby that gave her peace before her first chemotherapy treatment the next day. She later died from cancer.  

Another time, a lady’s Army-officer husband spent two tours in the Middle East and returned safely to the U.S. Not long after his second return, he died in a head-on collision near their home. I didn’t know her personally but knew of her in our community.

I sent her and her three young children mail almost every day for months. I sent things of age-level interest to the children and sent her songs and poems and prayers the Lord would lay on my heart for her. I’d hand-write all those.

I only received one or two postcards from her during the months I was writing but never wondered why she didn’t respond more. I knew she was probably completely overwhelmed with her husband’s death and being the single parent of three young children.

One day, I came home after an especially hard day of teaching. This was probably a year and a half after I’d begun sending envelopes to this young widow. I’d tapered off from sending letters after several months, but I was still sending something once in a while. When I pulled in my driveway, there was a beautiful shopping bag, like a gift bag, on my porch.

“What’s that there for?” I wondered. “It’s not my birthday.”

The lady I’d written to had given me a whole shopping bag of very expensive stationery and note cards. She’d gone to a shop downtown and probably spent over $200. She hand-wrote a little card, saying she wanted me to know how much all the things that I’d sent to her and her children had meant to her.

It seemed as though the Lord was giving me encouragement to go on and do this for other people. I still use some of the stationery she gave me, and I think of her and the encouragement I felt.

I met another lady, Sharon, years ago, at a Bible study. She had been through a divorce and had two small children. She lives in a distant state, but that friendship has spanned almost thirty years. We still send notes, letters and packages, and we also call each other. 

I kept in contact with my first grade teacher until her death a few years ago. She was an inspiration to me, and I never forgot her. I now correspond with her daughter.

One of my fifth-grade students (1998) liked to write poetry. She moved away mid-year of the year I taught her. We’ve stayed in touch, and I encourage her in her writing. 

Another young lady—I read her essay about how she felt when her dog had to be put to sleep—began writing after I wrote her. She’s now married and has children. We’ve stayed in contact.

I’ve sometimes written to famous people, but I mostly write everyday people. 

I often include cards with quotes inside bills I pay. I never know when God may use a devotional quote to encourage someone who is going through a hard time and need to know God cares about them.

Sometimes people respond long after I’ve written them. Often their responses come on days I need something.

There’s a young lady at the gas station. I broke my ankle in 2004, and the healing process has been long. This young lady, if she had no inside customer, would come out and pump my gas for me. I sent her an envelope hug.

I have to have peace that I follow up on contacts when I need to. Some may sit on my desk for a while.

Years ago, a local man died when he accidentally drove his small truck in front of a speeding train. He was on the way to buy materials to build a playhouse for his grandchildren. I didn’t know the man or his wife, but when I read about the accident in the newspaper, I felt I should send something.

My note stayed several weeks on my desk until one night about 10 p.m. I was turning out the lights in my office and felt I should fix an envelope and send it the next day. I spent about an hour preparing that letter and things I included in the envelope.

In the letter, I apologized to the deceased man’s wife for waiting so long to reach out.

She soon called and said the letter came exactly when it was supposed to, because the envelope arrived on the day of their wedding anniversary.

When a young fellow teacher died in his early forties, I sent his wife and four children envelopes. One devotional book I sent arrived on her husband’s birthday. She said that meant a lot. I hadn’t known about his birthday. The Lord knows exactly what these people need. I try to stay open about that.

What do I put in my letters and envelopes?

Sometimes I put childish things, whimsical things, artwork. I collect calendars with pictures of animals, barns and a variety of all kinds of things. I try to make these very individual and out of the ordinary.

I wrote one couple whose young daughter was accidentally run over and killed at a family reunion. I noticed in the obituary that the daughter was the age of the children I taught at that time, and the Lord put that family on my mind many times. I’d sit in church some Sundays and write out prayers for them, which I’d send them.

The father called me, and the mother and the other remaining daughter wrote me.

The father told me how much all the things I sent had meant. I still sometimes send them things.

I feel like the Lord puts certain people on my heart because he knows whom it would touch and mean something to. I can’t cut out all the obituaries in the newspaper every day, seven days a week.

It’s not always the obituaries.

I read about a murder in another state and sent an envelope to the reporter who wrote the story about the murder. I wrote to the family of the deceased, also.

I want to listen to the Holy Spirit and stay open to letting the Lord use me to minister to hurting people and to use the talent and the gift he’s given me in writing songs and poems and making these creative things to make people feel ministered to when they’re in lots of pain.

Many of my poems and songs came from working out the healing of the memories of my childhood. 

When I was diagnosed with cancer, my minister said to me, “You’ve written a lot of things to minister to people who needed inner healing for hurtful experiences in their lives. And now maybe you’ll write things to minister to people who are going through serious illnesses.”

I remember looking at him and saying, “Well, maybe. I don’t know.” And the very next day, the Lord began to give me one song and one poem after another.

How do they come to me?

Songs come to me in the way that people think of their favorite Christmas carols. You can hear it in your mind. You can hum it. That’s how they come to me. The music usually comes at the same time the words do, if it’s a song. I’ve pulled the car over and written words on a paper bag or anything when they come. Then I sing my new songs into a tape recorder.

The poems come sometimes when I’m reading the Bible or a devotional book or any book. I write down quotes from things I read or hear. I have a lot of journals. I’ll write something someone said and then what that quote makes me think about. I’ll write, “Helen Keller said . . .” or “Abraham Lincoln said . . .” and share them in a letter. I have hundreds of quotes.

Writing has always been a very cathartic way to receive healing from the Lord for me. I write as I listen to sermons. I write as I watch a movie on TV. I write while reading devotional books and magazines. I’ve always related to writing. I think a lot of people don’t realize how they could be used in this way in their own personalities and creative abilities to reach out to people I’ll never meet.

I suppose people hesitate to reach out to others because sometimes no words seem adequate. But human words are all we have, and I hope God can use things I share in envelopes to ease pain.
Sometimes people don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything, and a needy person thinks, “I thought they cared more than that.”

Other times people don’t know what to say, so they say ridiculous things, which don’t help at all. They mean well but say inappropriate things. But at other times, God gives people words that are exactly what someone needs at a particular time. I’ve spoken to people at times, rather than wait to write to them.

I have several notes in progress. I don’t write ten or fifteen every day. I am now working on a note to a friend who has experienced divorce after 40 years of marriage. She’s alone, now. I’ve sent her all sorts of little messages telling her I care about her. And I’m always looking for little interesting things, little cartoons, little magazine pictures, all kinds of things to put in an envelope to convey that the Lord loves her and cares about the things she’s going through.

We never know when people may be suicidal, and the Lord may use an encounter with us to let a despondent person know how special they are and that the Lord cares about them.

Some may have never thought about being used of God in this way, this way of writing and reaching out, this way of sending envelope hugs.

Especially people who can’t get out of their homes very much can reach out by letters.

Some may look at others and think, “Oh, they have more gifts than I do. They’re up in front of people in my church.” But this is something shy people can do. Retired people can do. Shut-ins can do. People in nursing homes, those who are able to write something at all can do this. Mothers who are home with babies can write while their youngsters take naps.

I sometimes used to get up in the middle of the night or write from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., before I went to work, but now that I’m retired, I devote many hours to writing personal letters.

Someone may think, “Well, that’s just something special that God is doing through her, but God couldn’t use me like that.” I think God can use many people.

Some fear the rejection of not hearing back from people. But you need to feel that if you don’t hear from anyone you send mail to, it’s okay. If you start keeping track, saying, “Four weeks ago, I wrote Sally, and I never heard anything. And I sent 30 pieces of mail to so-and-so over the last year because they went through thus-and-thus, and I never heard . . . .” If you start keep track like that, you will lose the meaning of what this is all about. You don’t do it so you’ll get a reply. 

But like finding that shopping bag on my porch, that was like a 30-page letter to me. It was like the Lord saying, “See. I am encouraging you to keep on keeping on with this. See how much it does mean to people.” And it wasn’t about how much money she spent on the stationery she bought for me, but because of what she felt impressed to do.

There’s no two letters or envelopes I’ve ever done that are identical. There are no two people alike. There could be five people going through cancer, but you don’t make five envelope hugs that are all alike. Each person is different and individually special to God.

I like to take the time to think of each person I’m writing to. I want to create something just for that specific person. I don’t send e-mail, though I don’t criticize those who do. Many of us associate e-mails with stock items we copy and send, maybe send to 50 people with one click of a computer key.

In a world becoming more and more obsessed with technology, my Envelope Hugs ministry reaches out in a personal way. I print because my printing is much more readable than my longhand writing. I prefer printing over typing letters because of the personal character of handwriting.

Some say to me, “I bet you enjoy scrap-booking,” and I say, “No, I really don’t.” My envelope hugs are a form of scrap-booking—I’m just mailing the pages out to people. I may take a piece of paper and glue a word or pictures from magazines. Then I may write about what that word makes me think of. You can be creative.

Peggy, one of my friends, sends creative envelope hugs to me. I’ll send her a letter about childhood memories, and often, when she returns a “hug,” she’ll take the same picture I sent and write a note about what the picture made her think of. Or she’ll take a quote from one of my letters and write about why that quote ministered to her. I recently opened one of her letters before I went to my beautician. She’d written about not allowing people to steal the joy from our lives. I read that letter to my beautician. I feel Peggy’s letter ministered to her. I wrote Peggy and told her that she ministered to the lady who styles my hair. I sent Peggy about 12 different kinds of note cards, so she can use them to write other people. Sometimes I include blank note cards and say to the person I’m writing, “Maybe you’d like to send a card to someone today.”

When I write, I picture the person receiving my letter and looking at each little thing I’ve included in the envelope. I have all different sizes of envelopes. Often I’ll put a smaller envelope inside a larger one and write on the smaller, “Open tomorrow” or “Open on Sunday” or “Put in your pocketbook and open whenever.” When I feel impressed to be creative in this way, I believe it’s a beautiful manner in which God is showing the person receiving the note that he is ministering to them in a very special way, a way that is all their own.

Another friend tended to respond by writing formally but has become more creative in her responses over the years as I set an example of finding joy in writing. I feel her new-found creative expressions have eased some of the melancholy in her life.

My notes, letters and hand-made cards don’t appear mass-produced. I even put a little bow around a set of quotes I recently copied from a devotional book. I wrap some notes in brightly-colored cloths before tucking them inside envelopes. 

Years ago I read an article in “Home Life” magazine about a Christian couple whose daughter and son lived away from home and shared an apartment in the town where they attended college. While the brother was away from the apartment, an intruder broke in and killed his sister.   

I wrote the grieving mother and shared heartfelt sympathy. She and I have been writing ever since. At the time of the trial for their daughter’s murderer, I had a Dachshund and so did she. When she and her husband traveled around Easter time to attend the trial, they took their Dachshund with them. In one of her notes, she mentioned the name of the hotel where they were to stay during that trial.

I prepared a care package to send to the hotel, so it would be waiting for them when they arrived. I included all sorts of Easter things such as Easter candy, a stuffed Easter bunny to decorate their hotel room, dog biscuits, a journal for her husband and one for her son, who was 21 years old.

Before I closed the envelope, I felt I should send a letter from my dog to her dog. I didn’t want to seem ridiculous or frivolous in light of the serious ordeal they faced. Yet, the idea of writing a dog-to-dog letter wouldn’t leave me. I had stationery with Dachunds printed about the paper’s border.

So I wrote “To Ellie Kay from Dudley”. I wrote two or three pages from our dog Dudley.

When my friend received the package, she went to a drugstore, bought a card with Dachshunds on it and wrote a return letter from her dog. She included lines such as
”Mom and Dad talk about how the jury is going to be chosen,” “They’re going to have to see the person who ‘did this’ to their daughter” and “They both pet me a lot.”

I felt the Lord inspired me to write in a manner—a seemingly childish way—that helped my friend get out her feelings in a way she was able to deal with—through the imaginary words of her dog.

Through the years I’ve sent little Dachshund things and my songs and poems to her. And I’ve also mailed notes to the father and the brother. We’ve enjoyed years of staying in touch, and I met her through responding to a magazine article about her tragedy.

A day hardly goes by that new contacts don’t come across my path. Here is one of my favorite quotes by an unknown author:

“It was only a kindly word / And a word that was lightly spoken / Yet not in vain / For it stilled the pain / Of a heart that was nearly broken.”

That’s what I want my envelope hugs to do. I want them to still the pain of hurting people.