“She was enchanting.” Said of Meg Ryan’s character’s mom in my hands-down favorite film, You’ve Got Mail.

Enchanting, perhaps because she was in her sweet spot, living life to the fullest, unlike her daughter, Kathleen (Meg), who was destined to be an author, but wrestled with ownership of the book store left to her after her mom’s death.

I see a quote from a post at Anunexpectedjournal.com, and it resonates as truth, “I wonder if depression we feel as grown-ups is precisely because we’ve become disenchanted with the world as we see it. We’ve forgotten who we are…we’ve forgotten that we’ve forgotten.”

Enchantment: A feeling of great pleasure, delight.

…

I am always thinking I have little value if I’m not seeking to do something I deem as important. Not for recognition, but worth. Like God won’t value me if I fail to publicly post, or attempt to author all these words into books I’m accumulating. Like I am letting the words He’s given me fall on the ground because they haven’t affected anyone other than myself. As if my worth is tied to my words, which is tied to my works, which is tied to my worthiness as a human being leaving a carbon footprint on Planet Earth–a waste of precious energy resources.

…

I saw the bluish flowers bloom out in the middle of our hike the other day, simple beauty in the midst of nowhere. Not an abundance of population on this route, but here a single, yellow butterfly appears out there with us, enjoying the moment. and the day, without hardly a care in the world.

I think of the birds. God says they don’t worry, yet they soar. And their life purpose is fulfilled in enjoying their being.

We live in a culture that has a vague misunderstanding of a real need versus a want, when everything is within reach. Don’t think I need to go over the difference between extravagance and necessity, but a few surface without hardly a thought: Water from a faucet? Extravagance. Shelter without decorations? Necessity.

But what if this misunderstanding transfers to my confusion on whether God needs me. What if he wants me instead? Wants me to be near. Wants to communicate. And what if the experience with Him by my side is reason enough to claim a carbon footprint? Enoch in the Bible walked daily with God, until he was no more.

Is this enough, wanting to walk with God without the feeling that I need to be doing something for him?

…

A phrase popped up and out of my mouth, maybe this is a partial reason for my wandering away from wonder, even though I hardly desire to place blame on anyone beyond myself:

The Religiously Correct

Sanitized, stripped clean of wonder by ways of what is right. Cleaning the purity of imagination. Making everything sterile in the belief our minds need to be completely evacuated, and painted white.

I think of the transfiguration of Jesus, and Peter in the moment when he couldn’t comprehend the beauty of Jesus all aglow. I wonder if he made it religiously correct, by bringing wonder and glory down to a more palatable experience. Could it be because he felt the weight and magnitude of the perfection of His Presence, and his unworthiness caused him to create movement to feel needed?

Peter exclaimed, “Lord, it’s wonderful for us to be here! If you want, I’ll make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

 But even as he spoke, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy. Listen to him.”

He just witnessed something so beyond extraordinary…yet, he was lost in the moment, but not lost in the moment.

What if the moment was for Peter and friends to experience a glimpse of the Fullness and Wonder of God? And this was to bring them great joy too?

He chose Peter, not because he needed Peter, but because he wanted Peter. God can speak from a donkey after all.

From the beginning, he called him, spoke with him, wanted to be with him. Yes, he had a call on his life to reach others, but His Presence superseded Peter’s purpose.

I’m guilty of something similar. The nudge from God to travel to North Carolina in a couple weeks has been overwhelming. I’ve spent days attempting to find “reason” for such a trip. Maybe I will finally be published. So I work and work on a book proposal, something my creative mind has difficulty with, putting order to things–stealing away my time with a purpose, likely created by me, because what if it is just about wonder and experience and worship and walking with God?

And by feeling I need to attach a need, I dim it down to lackluster at best.