Last night, I met a friend at a local wine place for a tasting, and she asked me to go with her to meet some other friends at their favorite hangout: a Korean Karaoke Joint in the ghetto. And I jumped at the chance. Because you never pass up the two fabulous words that are Korean and Karaoke.
Ya'll, it was more fun than you can shake a stick at. And you can shake a stick at a lot of things. If you ever have the chance to go to one, I insist you do and call me because I will want to come as well.
My friend is wonderful. We were friend-ish for about two years, and then we became a little closer last year, and we are finally moving to the point that we are friends outside of work. And that is good and scary and weird, because it used to be that you just walked up to the kid on the monkey bars and said "Hey, let's be friends" but then you get out of elementary school and it is not that easy. So, I'm learning. She's not learning so much, because she has tons of friends, but I am of the "few close ones" variety of friends.
So, driving home last night, or this morning, actually, I'm thinking about our evening and friendship and processing the whole thing, and two scriptures came to mind. Psalm 37:4 and Phil. 4:19. The former is my favorite verse ever and the second is one that seemed to fit.
Friendship is something I know I need. We are not meant to live alone. And many of my "few close ones" have moved away or are moving away. And I have had many a meltdown about friend-type stuff, and maybe mentioned it to God once or twice, but have saved most of my prayers for the (in my mind) big-ticket items like church ministry and others' health and etc. etc. But Psalm 37:4 tells me that He will give me the desires of my heart, and Phil 4:19 tells me that He will supply all my needs, and that tells me that even though I haven't formally and vocally asked for a friend like Mo, He knew just how much I needed it and picked just the right time to give it to me. Ah the blessing of it.
But as I was thinking more and driving home more and thanking Him more, I thought back over our conversations as we drove to the Karaoke joint, and realized that she may have needed me just as much as I needed her. See, the people we went with were this awesome group of twenty-somethings trying to get it figured out, and though most of them met through church-ish ways, they didn't all come out looking like youth group kids. In fact, none of them really came out looking like youth group kids grown up.
Mo's husband is a PK, and his parents are the center of their church world, and they are members of that old-school, live-the-right-way, flawless-appearing Christianity. And Mo and her husband are not like that. She's one of the most Christ-like people I know, give or take a few quirks, and she's struggling a little right now because she doesn't fit into their flawless-ish kind of way of doing things. So, her in-laws are missing out on seeing these people being Christ to each other and being the Church to each other (in their own way) and it is so sad to me.
And I think Mo needs me to be that someone from the more formalized Church (I am after all a Baptist girl) that looks at her and her life and recognizes the beauty and the Christianity of it and jumps right in and accepts it all and says "hey, I don't know either" and let's just be who God created us to be.
And I'm amazed at how God meets my needs and that He would call a sinning screw-up like me to have even the slightest part in bringing His Kingdom to earth. Wow.
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