My Most Improbable Friend & Mentor

I experience life primarily through my head and secondarily through my heart (evidence: the phrasing of this sentence). From a spiritual point of view, I don’t have any experience with the supernatural gifts or with spiritual warfare. I am enamored with the mystical but not immersed in it (I’ve dipped my toe in the pool a few times). As much as I want to, I have a hard time “hearing God” with any degree of certainty during daily living. Beyond that, I'm an introvert who needs about two hours of contemplative solitude for every hour of social interaction.

For all of the reasons above, it would seem improbable that I would consider Mike my friend & mentor. I would dare say he is opposite me in almost every aspect of the sentence above. The first time I met him, and a few times since, my immediate reaction is to guard myself because we are so different in all of those ways. (At least that is my perception of him and of me).

Yet I have no one else quite like him in my life. He has already considered and accepted (or at least is not alarmed by) the convictions I have come to through my journey over these past fifteen years. He knows Father. He sees beneath the surface of things. He loves in a purer way than most of the people I have stumbled across so far on this journey (including the guy who I find in my mirror each day).

He refreshes me and exhausts me all at the same time. He did both this week. God has given him to me as one of the greatest gifts in recent years of my life. I am trying to learn how to apply who he is to my opposite personality and makeup. Thank you Father for sending him to me and to us.