Excitement

Alright, first and foremost, I gotta do a cheesy thing.  I need to say that this post is a strange thank you to a dear friend of mine.  I'm not going to tell you who she is, because, c'mon, that'd just be embarrassing... BUT, I'm going to tell her who she is (well, you get what I mean), and let her know that that, lest a Carly Simon song pops into her mind, she really isn't vain; this post really is about her...



So, I have this friend, and she's one of my best besties, and she loves the Lord in a pure and amazing way, and her heart and mind thirst continually for new levels of understanding.  She taught me one of the best prayers I know: "Lord, show me what this scripture / truth / word looks like for me, because I don't get it." (I could wrote a whole separate treatise about that prayer alone!) But, more recently, she's taught me something new.

Actually, if I'm going to get stuck on accuracy (which apparently I am), she probably has been teaching me this lesson for years, but I think I'm just starting to learn it.  Funny how teaching and learning don't always coincide the way it seems they should...

My friend; she's got the joy.  And I mean it.  You meet this woman and you know she's got the joy just wiped all over her pretty little face.  It shines in her eyes, shows in her smile, and giggles out of her voice.  I kid you not; it's even in her hair.

Now, needless to say, I love this girl, and she is a wonderful friend in all ways.  And, as I'm pleased to say about all my closest friends, I have a lot to learn from her.  But here's one that's just descended like a halo in the last few months: the girl gets excited.

Now, any one who knows me (or has read a post or two here) knows that I'm fairly excitable.  I like exclamation point, smiley faces, dancing about in all sorts of unlikely places and shouting just about anything that seems worth shouting out to the world around me... but there is a world of difference between excitable and my already excited friend.

She looks at her life, and when she finds places of transition, uncertainty and the general shroud of mystery of which the Lord seems so very fond, she does an amazing thing.  She gets excited.  In a good way.

Do you know what I do when I see these things on my own horizon?  Well, quite frankly, usually, I panic.  I admit it freely; in my fleshly fleshly state, I so often see the gray area, the uncertain (or at least unknown to me) future and the questions as they loom large.  And I freak. I am clever enough to freak in a very composed, appropriate and, sometimes, even reverent way, but make no mistake about it; I don't always keep my cool.

The cycle usually looks like this: fear leads to panic (this step happens very quickly) and then, at some point, I usually identify that I'm having a lapse in faith and I start talking some truth to myself.  Or, when I'm smart enough to ask for help, one of the wonderful people in my life will speak some truth to me.  (Don't you just love it when the truth is like a bucket of cold water or a slap against the face?  One of those, "Good heavens, man!  Snap out of it!" slaps?  I do.)  In any case, after the truth-smackdown, I get pulled back up out of the miry clay, and I get to regain my footing and walk in faith again.

And although I cycle through that process more and more quickly these days (not to mention less and less frequently), I definitely still feel an instinct to retreat from the unknown, the gray area and the shrouded.  They just plain scare me.  So, the Lord is working on me in that area, and I think my friend is one of His teaching tools.

You know what she does when she sees a vast, empty expanse of unknown future ahead of her?  Like a crazy person, she gets excited.  Where I tend to see a heavy curtain obscuring the path ahead, she sees a blank canvas.  When I look out to the road and see only a few inches ahead of me, I tend to be frustrated and afraid.  I'm pretty convinced that she spends very little time thinking about the few inches of road at her feet; instead, she just walks forward and gets all wonderfully stoked for whatever is past those few bricks at her feet.  It's like she sees it as an exciting surprise coming her way; she doesn't know what it is, but she is certain it's going to be tons of fun.

Do you know what that is all about?  I think I do.  She believes Him.  She believes the Word.  I mean, she actually reads the words of God, believes He means it and that He means it for her.  And she lives into the truth in the way only someone who really, really, really believes in His goodness, faithfulness and power can do: unafraid.  It's incredible to watch, my friends.  It's beautiful.  And I want to be just like her when I grow up.

do have to believe Him when He tells me that it's good, and better than good.  It's abundant, and it's more than I could ever hope or imagine (see Ephesians 3:20).  Well, shucks.  That is kind of exciting now that I think about it.

I'm grateful for the example in my friend, and I'm going to keep opening my heart up to learn this lesson as a living truth all my own.  Maybe someday I, too, can have a mess of joy oozing out of every place.  I can't imagine that wouldn't be for His glory.  I mean, who doesn't want hair all gooey with the joy of Jesus?  I do.  I do, Lord!  Teach me!