Will you be my best friend? Pleeaassee!

My blog seems like it could be titled "What God teaches me through my daughters" because it seems that lately all I write about is what I learned through watching them. So staying true to form, here we go again.

According to my wife, The other day my four year old was out in the backyard sitting in a fresh patch of new grass, where she frequently chooses to play, she looked up toward the sky and says "God, will you be my best friend? Please, please, pleeaassee!" Now, my wife and I have seen this kind of best friend request from our little girl several times recently. She has asked for BFF status and used her BFF potential as a bargaining chip several times in the past month. Yet, we have never seen her ask God to be her best friend. And if this wasn't enough of a Kodak Moment, my four year old looks up at the sky and responds, "Ok." It was as if God smiled down at her and said, "You bet I will be your best friend and it will most definitely be forever."

When God says that he is your friend, he means it. He speaks with his friends face to face, he let's them in on his plans, when his friends are discouraged he whispers words of encouragement to them. Have you ever thought of asking God to be your friend? Don't send him a Facebook friend request. Make it a bit more personal. Look up and say, "God, will you be my best friend? Please, please, pleeaassee!" and find out what his response will be. I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

Lose something

Recently my eldest daughter, Cady, lost a tooth. I don't know if you remember losing a tooth but it is a really exciting thing for a child. You may be thinking, "Of course it is exciting, because of the whole tooth fairy thing." but around here we don't do the tooth fairy. Even though, there was no promise of a philanthropic mystical being to sneak in and share her wealth while my daughter was sleeping, she still had great excitement about losing her tooth. She was actually losing a bone in her body and she was excited. Aside from children being excited about losing a tooth, I assume that the only other person excited about losing a bone from his body was Adam. You know that when you turn in a "rib" and get an "Eve", that's not a bad deal. It seems that Cady is just excited to be on the dental journey that requires the gain and loss of teeth. There seems to be this wonder in the loosening of the tooth, curiosity of when it will being fully gone and then the anticipation of a new tooth to come. It is absolutely exhilarating to her.

Jesus invites/demands (Matt 10:37-39) that we lose our lives if we are to follow him. Yes, I realize that what I gain is far more valuable than what I lose, but sometimes my attitude about losing my life is not so rosy. What I would like is to have excitement about losing my life because it is part of the greater adventure of following Christ. I would like to have excitement about where following him will lead me next, curiosity of when I will fully lose this life and an anticipation of the life that I now have in him and the one that is coming. Hopefully, I will live in the the excitement of losing this life.