This was her post last night.
LeighAnne is one of my steady friends. I lean on her for strength and logic (she has tremendous amounts of both), but I must admit that I also lean on her for her faith. LeighAnne is what I would lovingly call "my kind of Christian". Imperfect, and fully aware of it, I never feel her judgment or her push. When I confess my own misgivings or questions, I know she understands.
I have never been very religious. I was not raised in the church, and I am not particularly ever comfortable there. I am not always even sure what I believe or how vigorously I believe it on any given day, but I think that any God who doesn't accept my questions is probably not the God for me. I have lots of questions.
As a good Southern girl, I can talk the church talk enough to get through a Sunday service. I know my way around a covered dish supper. I reflect. I pray. I talk. Sometimes I feel Someone talking back. I put my best energy out into the world. I am a faithful person. I am loyal almost to a fault. I am generous, loving, and (mostly) forgiving. I try to find the good in everything and everyone. But I can be skeptical. I can be stubborn. And, yes, I can be angry and impatient. Typically, just as I begin to feel more even-footed with my own beliefs, an obstacle will often appear. From what my friends-in-the-know tell me, this is the way He likes to work. In the past few years, there seems to have been far more days jumping hurdles than walking the path of peace, and I found that my faith in finding the good feels like more of a struggle.
Luckily, I have incredible friends, valuable friends, who help me look. If God is in the details, I'd assume it's easy to find Him in a sunrise or a flower bloom or the pages of a sermon. But I imagine you'd have to look pretty closely to find Him in a noisy, crowded junior high cafeteria on an ordinary Tuesday morning.
As I shook that young man's hand and introduced myself to him today after school, I was awfully glad she did.
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