Finding the Magic Wherever You Are

Finding the Magic Wherever You Are

My best friend Misty’s idyllic farmstead, next to the Red River, flooded a few weeks ago. I called her home, and the line beeped as if her phone was off the hook. I tried her cell phone and left a message, since I’d heard the devastating news through my mom and not from her. But there was no response.

Earlier this week, we got a hold of each other. It always does my heart good to talk to my best friend, but this conversation was especially poignant. My four-year-old and I had stayed at Misty’s farm for a couple of days in June and watching her in such a beautiful setting filled my spirit with peace.

Misty has been–and continues to be–one of the most influential people in my life. I have known her since our dads decided to write music together when I was two years old and she was five. This age gap provided her with the ability to teach me how to color inside the lines, swim in a creek, enjoy obscure movies and music, and assemble a creative outfit through thrift store finds.

But resilience is the most important lesson Misty ever taught me. You see, my best friend was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma when she was twenty-two. I was nineteen at the time, and my parents drove to my college in Kentucky—arranging everything with my fellow resident assistants, so that I would not have to work a shift after cheering at a basketball game.

I was confused but touched when I looked up into the stands and saw my parents, who visited the campus a few times a year. Afterward, we hugged and walked across the viaduct connecting the academic to the residential side of the college. My bare legs were freezing as we walked. My mom suggested that we go to Cracker Barrel for supper, but my dad asked, “Shouldn’t we tell her?”

The question wasn’t supposed to reach my ears, but it did. I stood there, beneath an American flag that snapped in the cold January wind, and learned that my best friend had cancer. There have been a few moments in my mind—both good and bad—that are as clear as snapshots.

This moment is one of them.

Ten and a half years have passed since that winter, and Misty was declared cancer-free even before she had a preventative bone marrow transplant at Vanderbilt in 2008.

It has greatly encouraged my faith to witness Misty’s journey, and when I was at her home in June, I couldn’t help rejoicing at the restoration that has taken place: Misty’s hair—one of the most beautiful red hues I’ve ever seen—tumbled in waves down her lower back; her husband, Justin, was working on a movable shed for their goats; their menagerie of animals was happy and content; their garden was growing, and beside it all, the Red River gently rolled past.

And then those banks swelled. The water rose. Misty, on the phone this week, told me she’d prayed for the water not to rise, but it did. The water crept up to their home, filling the first floor with two inches of water. The next day, the water had returned to its banks, but the devastation was complete.

My stomach tightened with disappointment. How could beauty, once more, be reduced to ashes?

But then Misty said, “It’s really a blessing in disguise. We were just maintaining what we had, even though it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. Now we can begin again.”

After she completed her story, I told Misty that we are both going through a period of transition. I said, “I wish we weren’t moving right now. This is the magical season.”

I could hear Misty’s smile on the line. “The magic is wherever you are.”

And then, just like that, I was taken back to our six- and nine-year-old, ten- and thirteen-year-old, and nineteen- and twenty-two-year-old selves, and my best friend gently instilling little nuggets of wisdom that I carried with me everywhere I went.

The magic is wherever you are. Life happens. Storms rage; raindrops fall; waters rise.

And yet, God is present even in the midst of the storm, promising that—one day—He will come and, once and for all, transform ashes to beauty. Until then, we will find the magic wherever we are.

Who has been the most influential person in your life? What did he/she teach you?