I’ve always been a secret admirer. Not in the stereotypical way of sending secret letters coated with perfume and sweet elaborate gifts. (mostly because I thought that came off kind of creepy) If there was a girl I really liked, then there was a 98% chance I would be scared to death of her. It never failed that my words would get jumbled up, my voice would crack, and I would sweat through the shirt I was wearing before I could even think about walking up and uttering the words, “hello.” As you can probably predict, I didn’t ask a lot of people on dates. Due to my inability to handle even the smallest forms of communication without embarrassing myself in front of girls I liked, I usually just stayed a secret admirer. I didn’t think I had what it took to ask a girl out to coffee or a date and so, I didn’t ask them. I was pretty much missing the whole point and I couldn’t even see it. Ya see, the thing about being an admirer is that you can make it a dead end road. All you’ll ever be is an admirer unless you make a point to change it. An admirer isn’t a person of action. Now don’t get me wrong, I think admiration is great, unless it keeps you from taking action. I never asked out any of the girls because I used my fear as an excuse, I never took that chance or leap of faith. Soon I found that my stagnant admiring didn’t stop with grade school crushes and I found that once I started getting older it started moving to other areas of my life.I was an admirer! I admired people who were strong in their faith, and people who gave back to the community and to charity. I admired missionaries for going over seas and preaching the good news to the lost people more than anyone. I would say things like, “I’m so glad there are people like that out here in the world” or “Good people do still exist”. It would make me feel all warm inside and I would unknowingly be using their good deeds as satisfaction, just being happy that there were enough good people like that in the world to make up for people like me, who weren’t. As long as someone was doing it, it didn’t matter if it wasn’t me,right? The job was still getting done by someone. I think how easy and stress free it is to just admire the people who go out and serve, and it made me feel guilt free. But what if we were all stagnant admirers? What if everyone thought like me, each person staying still, waiting for someone else to make the first move? Nothing would get done, but more importantly, it isn’t what we are called to do. We are called to be more than admirer’s, we are called to be servants for the Lord. To go and spread the Gospel. So, here’s to being more than an admirer.
