Tip of My Iceberg

I’ve a dear friend up north who I don’t get to see often. We’re as different as any two people can be, but we get each other. We spent formative years together, when our kids were young, making many of the same mistakes. Getting frustrated about the same things. Being joyfully inappropriate. Just for fun.

When I received a package in the mail from a far away place with no known return address, I was curious. Upon opening it I found a shirt. With kites flying across it.

Confusion. Recognition. Grins.

I called my friend to thank her. She called it whimsical. It was a remarkable gesture of love that came in the middle of a week of hard things and too much thinking.

I love whimsical.

We talked about what it would be like to be a kite. Floating gently on the breezes. Dipping and diving.

Her response was quite logical. She’d rather be a bird and not have anyone hanging on to her string. Too limiting. Too controlling.

Ah, but birds work at flying. Finding food. Making nests. Kites don’t work at anything. They dance on the breeze. The purpose for their existence is sheer fun.

I remember as a child flying kites with my brother and sisters in a wonderful field. With few trees.

We rarely had more than one kite, so the four of us would take turns holding the string. Our heads craned back at impossible angles. Watching the floating colors moving further and further away as we let out the string.

I would imagine how incredible it would be to float so high above the ground. Resting on the wind. Moving where any breeze would take me. Dancing so close to the clouds that I knew just a little more string would let me touch them.

When it was time to go home, the great disappointment of bringing the kite down was heightened by how wrong it looked landing in the grass. Earthbound.

There’s something sad about a kite not doing what it was made to do.

There’s something uncomfortable about anything not doing what it was made to do.

Even me.

Would I love to dance among the clouds? Yup. Be free to glide unconcerned on the breeze? Yup.

Be held back by a string? Not so much.

But I’m not a kite. I was made to reflect the One who made me. A purposeful creation full of possibilities and promise. To live life with dignity. With a heart shaped to fit into the nail-pierced hands of Jesus.

The world often says believing in Jesus is a crutch. But if there was a way to walk with Someone who knew the road I was taking, knew how hard it would be, knew where I would need help, would stay with me no matter what, I’d be a fool not to invite Him to accompany me.

It’s what I was made to do.

With a little whimsy thrown in. For fun.