Life Together is Just Plain Fun

For awhile now I have been encouraging you all to go and love others, to simply do life together. Well let me tell you why...

Doing life together is just plain more fun!!! 

There is no other way to put it. Being surrounded by people who you want to serve God with and just do life with you is fun. Here is an example. Every year at this time I try to convince myself that I should watch a scary movie. I am not one for the anything bloody or gory, but I do like a suspenseful movie from time to time. I am partial to M. Night Shyamalan's movies Signs, The Village and The Six Sense. (Seriously friends, who thought the guy was dead the whole movie.) I enjoy a movie that gets your heart pumping. When I was a teenager, I watched Steven King's "The Shining." I remember being so incredibly scared. You guys there were not enough blankets for me to cover my face or pull over my head. The musical score to that movie was so intense, that a times I just watched it with the mute button on. I remember dreaming about that movie for weeks. I would go to bed and once I closed my eyes, BAM there stood the two girls in blue dresses in the corner of my room. My mind had a great way of playing tricks on me. It just creeped me out!!! And as it should have, because that movie has been quoted as one of the scariest films ever made. That movie came to my mind again this week and I thought that I should watch it. Maybe being older would make it easier to watch. If not, I would just hide under the blankets again, hit the mute button and come to the conclusion that I am a big, big wimp. Saturday night, my friend and I curled up on her basement couch to watch it. There was a small part of me that was a little concerned how I would react to the movie and I have to say I was a little nervous that I didn't see any blankets to cover my head with in case I needed them. But then within the first 3 minutes of the movie, my friend and I started laughing and for the next 3 hours, we continued to laugh. Yes there were parts of the movie that were a little creepy, and we would tell the characters out loud that what they were doing was stupid, but my perspective was different. I wasn't alone, I was with a friend.

In life there are things that if we face alone, can make us want to hide under the blankets and never come out. A new diagnosis or the loss of a loved one or the loss of a dream can make us want to retreat from whatever is in front of us and hide until our heart stops beating so fast. There are moments when all we want to do is push the mute button on whatever is ringing in our heads so that we can take a break from the confusion and hurt. But here is the thing, if you face it with a friend, it is easier. I am not saying the pain won't still be there and there still won't be moments when you want to hide under a blanket, but when you do and you look over and see someone else who is willing to crawl under the blanket with you, the burden is lighter. Friends the Lord never created us to do life alone. This truly reminds me of the villages in Lesotho where people simply do life together. One person has a nice garden, another has a cow for milk and another chickens and they all share. Doing life together makes everything just a little lighter. That doctor's appointment that you dread going to, when faced with a friend the time passes quicker and your courage to do whatever the treatment plan is, is bigger. The grief of losing a person you love, if faced with a friend can be a time of celebration through the tears of that person's life and how much they will always mean to you.

When we face hard things in life, we should always turn to God first. He is our ROCK. He is our stronghold. His ways our Sovereign. But we can't stop there, because God uses the people around us to bring His hope. He places people in our paths to explode His joy. He equips others to be His hands and feet to those around them. And each day, He is equipping you to do the same. You see doing life together is two-fold. One, it is opening yourself up to others and allowing people to journey with you. But also it is allowing others to open themselves up to you and allowing God to speak through you in to their lives. If we choose to do life under the covers, not only are we limiting the joy we could be having, but we are limiting the joy that someone else could be having because of our relationship to them.

How are we doing with this? Are we truly openly up our lives to be able to do life together? Are you raising your children to see the value in doing life with trusted friends who become family? Or are you trying to do it alone always making sure there is a blanket or two close by so that you can cover up when things get hard?

Friends life is going to bring rain, there is no doubt in that. There will be moments of great heartache and confusion. There are also moments of great celebration and joy. There will always moments to see God's promises written out for you and those around you. My question is are willing and able to step out in the rain and hold the umbrella for someone else? Are you willing to get wet, knowing that after the rain there are moments of sunshine and rainbows? I truly, truly hope you are, because even in the rain, while holding an umbrella for someone else or letting someone hold one for you, when you are wet and cold and the wind is getting you from every angle, there are moments of pure uninhabited joy. Moments when your heart wants to hit the pause button, because life just can't get any better than this.

Take time today friends, to hold an umbrella for someone else or to allow someone to hold that umbrella for you. Your life will be fuller and richer because of it and it will be a lot more fun than you could imagine it.