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Maybe it’s because I live in the world of tight schedule, answering
machines and playing phone tags ….
Where making advance appointments is expected not just for
doctors and oil changes, dentist visits and air conditioner tune ups…
But also for seeing friends …
Where talking to a real
person and not a recording is scarce like snow in Florida (it DID happen ONCE last year!)
So, when,
in the throes of the busyness of Christmas season,
I send a tentative text…
Me: Good
morning J Two questions…
Julie: Yes…
Me: Before that, a warning…
Me: I need a partner in crime.
A rather frivolous, a quite innocuous crime, I must add…
And while I am still pecking at my screen, explaining the
nature of the crime, stating the two yes-or-no questions…
Back and forth, back and forth…
I lift my head and look up
through the dining room window
and see her there, laughing!
A blue van decorated with Christmas lights parked in our
driveway, the engine still running…
And my jaw drops and hits the floor…
Maybe it’s because I live in the world of schedules and
important priorities, answering machines and advance appointments…
When someone like my friend Julie shows up in my driveway
while I am still texting…
Her schedule as busy with responsibilities, obligations,
kids, to-do lists and what-nots, as anyone else's I know…
Especially during the hectic Christmas season….
And yet
A ready partner in crime…
Rather frivolous crime…
So frivolous someone may consider it a pure waste of time…
Precious time that could have been spent on something more
useful….
More important….
More dire…
While the rest of the world is busy with useful, important
and dire…
She lights up my driveway with laughs…
And helps me scrape my chin off the floor.
And helps me 'hide' the evidence -
Reminding me that ‘hiding the evidence’ is part of committing
a crime,
as if deaf to all the shoulds
and shouldn’ts screaming inside my
head and only hearing the laughter of the opportunity to be a partner in crime…
in whatever
as long as we get to be together …
No plan, no schedule, just a spur-of-the-moment silliness…
…And my heart bursts with thanks to God for allowing me to have a friend like Julie in my life…
A friend who shows up not just for life-and-deaf emergency,
but for just-because.
Who shows up while I am still texting, before I am even able to finish the sentence.
Perhaps it’s only because I live in the world where one must
set up appointments, and plan according to the priorities, the busy world of
goals and accomplishments and no time left just to be…
And to be a partner in a frivolous crime…
No time for laughter in the driveway…
And no time for hiding the evidence the way child hides the
crumbs and sticky fingers after eating a chocolate-chip cookie…
Where God appears more like a CEO or a president or at least a manager, with
important world-saving jobs and soul-budgeting priorities, where one must set
up an appointment and not just show up…
Where God appears way too lofty to join me as a partner in an utterly frivolous crime…
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Too preoccupied with clearly more important things than to
light up my driveway with the light of His laughter, the way the angels lit up the sky over the shepherds' field that night…
It will also come to
pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still
speaking, I will hear. Isaiah 65:24
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