My family story which proves small gestures can be huge in such a troubled world - Christa Ackroyd

And yet it is impossible to ignore the chaos and the fear which echoes around the globe. We all need to find quiet messages of love and hope that are always there if we look for them.

This week my reminder came, as it does so often, from my father. And yes, mum too.

Because when the big things seem overwhelming sometimes it is exactly those little moments that provide the balance and a recalculation as to what matters.

I have to be honest. I don’t know what it was about last week, but I was feeling quite melancholy. And a little overwhelmed. I don’t do change easily, especially change that was never part of the plan.

I found it quite by accident. I honestly thought I had opened every box, gone through every drawer and genuinely decided there was not one more momento of my life so far I could cram into my cottage, which is I am pleased to say just one carpet short of being finished. At last.

But it wasn’t in a box. It was placed carefully in the glove compartment of my car and travelled with me from my old life to the new.

So it was only when the sunshine drew me to finally cleaning the dust of winter and the chaos of moving on from my vehicle that I found it.

It is battered and worn. It is worth maybe a pound or two. But the joy and comfort it brought then and now is more precious than gold or silver.

I instantly remembered where I had seen it down the years from being a young child. It was kept in the top drawer of dad’s bedside cabinet and left there when he died almost 30 years ago by mum.

When she died eight years ago this month, I packed it away along with other precious items I knew would remain with me forever. I knew its history. I had yet to discover its contents.

It is a little leather tooled wallet bought by my father as a very young man doing his National Service in the late 1940s.

I have photographs of dad looking dapper in his sand coloured uniform in Palestine in 1947, photographs I know he sent to mum back home helping her own mum run the local post office in the village where they had met only a few months before.

As I took it inside to nourish the cracked and slightly faded leather with the cream I save for our horse tack, I smiled. It was only when I opened it did the tears of remembrance flow. I am soppy and sentimental and proud of it.

Inside the wallet were two items, placed there by the father who had raised me, the man who along with mum adopted me at just ten days old.

One was a tiny black and white photograph of the woman he had left behind. Mum with her wavy wartime hairstyle aged just 19, looking beautiful and calm and serene as she did all her life.

And tucked inside another pocket a tiny sprig of carefully preserved lucky heather, almost certainly plucked from the North York moors where she grew up and considered her spiritual home, the same source of heather she was to carefully place in her wedding bouquet some four years later. And kept by her in their wedding album.

Oh what a find. To think he had travelled the world and had taken with him the woman who already meant the world to him and did until they were parted through death.

Oh what joy it has brought me this week as it sits on my bedside cabinet as a reminder of the love and loyalty they shared.

He had more important gifts to share. And he shared them with me, mum and my brother in a quiet unassuming manner that symbolised the man he was, content with his lot, family first, a man of few words but a ready smile. Until this week I never really saw him as a true romantic.

It was mum who recalled catching the bus to Bradford to watch him on point duty, handsome in his police uniform which he wore for 30 years after he returned home from National Service and joined the force.

It was mum who saved birthday cards and little notes from him and from us until the day she died. But it was dad who when he died had already bought the anniversary card and ordered the flowers for what would have been their 57th wedding anniversary the following week.

The card was also tucked inside the same bedside cabinet as his precious wallet, never sent but always kept. It was probably bought from Morrisons. It wasn’t full of hearts or romantic words.

It was just a card with flowers on it and the words ‘To my dear wife on our anniversary’. But it was enough. Deeds not words were dad’s gift.

Years later my mum told me a story about her and my dad which I have thought long and hard about sharing with you but have decided I will.

Because it might give you hope in a troubled world that some gestures, though small, are actually huge and within us all to give.

It was a long time after dad died before I asked my mum why she couldn’t have children, knowing it must have saddened her while acknowledging that if she had we would probably never have shared in the love they gave so freely.

Her answer floored me.

"I could,” she said without a hint of self pity. “But when your dad came back from Palestine he contracted mumps and that became the issue.

"But I never told anyone the reason why. Because I never wanted anyone to look at him as anything other than the fine man he was.”

So you see why that little wallet means the world. In it Dad carried the newly-found love for a woman so strong she was prepared for people to presume it was her to protect him.

While all the while telling me that the sadness it brought with it also brought the greatest joy they could ever have wished for. Us as a family. And gave me every life lesson I have ever needed.

Sometimes it is not the big things that prove our worth. It is not the grand gestures or blousy showing of affection. It is protecting each other in good times and bad. And always carrying with you what really matters.

Life is not always as we planned it. But we will always have choices to make along the way. We can stay strong. We can look back but press on forwards.

We can stop worrying about things beyond our control or we can take control of the things we can change by remembering the lessons we have been taught along the way.

So look back to look forwards if you must. Remember the positives and shun the negatives. And smile. Because sometimes we have no idea what is around the corner.

You know what they say... if life gives you lemons make lemonade.

And always carry with you, in a wallet or at least in your mind, gratitude for what you have and the knowledge that sometimes out of the worst moments there will always follow the best.