26 years late and right on time.

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1157 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Bob Sheppard. You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.

Here’s the upgrade:

You think it’s too late, but upgraded thinking knows the mind of love has his own timetable.

Here’s the story:

This month, Bob Sheppard, from Long Beach, California, walked out to his mailbox. One piece of mail that day. A weathered postcard, soft at the corners, like it had been handled by time itself. He turned it over. The postmark on the front was Copenhagen, Denmark. July of the year 2000. The message was short. “Flying in, we saw lots of water and green, green land everywhere.” And it was signed, “M and D.” Mom and Dad, his parents John and Joanne.

By the time that card reached Bob’s hand, both of them were gone. His mother had passed about four years ago. His father, an Army veteran, died six years ago during the pandemic, when the hospital rules meant his son never got to say a proper goodbye. That one still haunts him.

His parents were travelers. Easter Island. The Galapagos. Africa. He keeps a board on his wall with their passport pages and their photos, a map of a life well lived. And now, 26 years after they dropped it in a mailbox in Denmark, one more piece arrived.

The likely explanation is ordinary. The card slipped behind something in a postal facility. Fell out of a bin. Got rediscovered decades later and forwarded, because he still lives at the same address. But he didn’t call it ordinary. He called it a treasure. He called it “almost a postcard from heaven.”

That card was written before anyone knew what it would come to mean. Just two travelers, happy, describing green land out an airplane window. They had no idea they were writing something their grieving son would one day hold like a relic. That’s the thing about love you put into the world. You never know when it lands. You never know what it will weigh when it gets there.

The better story to tell yourself is, “Nothing I send in love is ever late; it arrives exactly when someone needs it.” So send it. The text you keep meaning to send. The note in the card. The voice memo. The thing written down, so it can outlive the moment. It was an ordinary Tuesday for the mail carrier who delivered that postcard, but it was no ordinary day for Bob. Your message may be received as a postcard from heaven too.

Tell me a story of a message that arrived late, but right on time to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and tell them, “Thinking of you today.”