The Envelopes I want to Send
Somewhere this month, somebody is going to be handed an envelope and told it is theirs to keep.
It might be a treatment center common room. It might be a folding table in a church basement, or the edge of a cot in a shelter, or a chair pulled up to a table in a group room.
Maybe they are thirty days sober. Maybe two days out. Maybe not counting anything yet, because counting feels like setting yourself up to fail.
Their name will not be on the front. These come in a box, dropped off by whoever runs the group. But the moment it is handed over, it belongs to one person.
Not a form. Not a worksheet. Not a paper somebody needs signed. Something soft in a hard place, and it is theirs.
That is the thing I have not been able to stop thinking about.
What is inside the envelope
If you are already in the Mosaic Mail Club, you know. Five things go in every mailing.
A 5x7 piece of original art. Not a printout of a stock image. A piece from my studio here in Montgomery, sized to prop up on a windowsill or tape to the wall beside a bed.
A devotional and a letter from me, both built around the theme in that month's art.
A scripture verse to sit with.
A creative journaling prompt, for the words.
A creative art doodle prompt, for the hands.
That is the whole envelope. Something to look at, something to read, something to pray over, something to write, and something to make.
No app. No login. No notification buzzing at you while you are trying to think. Just paper, and it is yours to keep.
I built it that way on purpose. The people I write for are not sitting still waiting to be rescued. They are looking for something that works. They are working programs, showing up to meetings, reading everything they can get their hands on, asking God for something that holds on a Tuesday.
They do not need one more thing to keep up with. They need something that meets the searching where it already is.
But here is what I have learned in my own life. Quiet minutes with your hands busy and your heart open are not a small thing. That is often the exact place God gets a word in.
Why these rooms
I want to put Mosaic Mail Club envelopes into the hands of people in recovery programs. In trauma healing groups. In homeless outreach. In church outreach ministries.
I am not guessing at what those rooms feel like.
My sober date is January 8, 2021. Before that there was alcohol, and overwork, and people-pleasing so constant I could not have told you what I actually wanted if you had asked me directly. I did not climb out of that pit. Jesus came down into it and pulled me out. He pursued me. That is the only version of the story that is true.
So when I picture someone opening one of these envelopes in a treatment center, I am not imagining a stranger. I am imagining me, a few years back, on a day when I would have told you I was fine.
What I would have needed on that day was not a program. It was somebody like me acknowledging me and seeing the real me and still showing compassion and acceptance.
The number
Here is the dream, out loud.
One thousand Mosaic Mail Club mailings given away every month, to ministries doing this work on the ground.
That is the whole vision. A thousand envelopes a month, going into rooms where nobody expects to receive anything beautiful.
I am not starting there. Starting there would be a good way to make a promise I cannot keep, and I am not interested in doing that to a ministry that starts counting on me.
So the first target is two hundred a month.
The honest math
Two hundred envelopes a month is not free. Paper, printing, supplies, and postage are real costs, and the giveaway is funded by the margin on Mosaic Mail Club memberships. Which means the number of envelopes I can give away is tied directly to how many people are in the club.
To fund two hundred giveaway mailings a month, I need somewhere in the range of six hundred to eight hundred members.
That is the whole plan. It is not complicated. It is just bigger than me.
And yes, this is me asking. I would rather say that plainly than dress it up as something else. Every membership at $9.87 a month is one more person in the club, and it moves the giveaway number up.
The three things you might be thinking
I can't do art.
You can't do art wrong. That is not a slogan I made up to sell something. It is the truest thing I know about a paintbrush. This is your art and your vision. How do you want it to look?
I do not have time for that.
The mailing comes once a month. What you do with it after that is yours.
Some people read the devotional the day it lands, prop the art on the kitchen counter, and let it preach at them for the next four weeks. Some sit with the scripture every single morning. Some work the journaling prompt one week and the doodle prompt the next. Some do a little every day and are ready for the next envelope before it ships.
One mailing will hold as much time as you want to give it. Twenty minutes on a Saturday, or twenty minutes every morning until the next one comes. There is no schedule to fall behind on, because you set it.
I do not have money for that.
$9.87 a month, and you can leave whenever you want. I priced it low on purpose, because I remember what it was like to want something and quietly decide I was not worth the line item.
Come in
If you have been looking for something that holds, a rhythm to return to that does not ask you to perform or keep up or have it figured out first, this is a door and I am standing next to it telling you what is inside.
And if you join, you are also putting an envelope in somebody else's hands. Somebody in a treatment center. Somebody in a shelter. Somebody two days out and not counting yet.
You do not have to be an artist. You do not have to be healed. You do not have to be sure about Jesus. Come exactly as you are.
The next mailing ships on the 15th. You can be on it.
Blessings, Erin
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