Long Lost Friend

This has already been a productive morning.  Early appointment with the Dr and then breakfast at Buffalo Grille.  After eating a pancake and some eggs, I settled in with Soul Print and began marking and writing away.   While reading and relaxing, I got a phone call that my second pair of glasses were ready for pick up.  Yahoo!  I picked up my other pair yesterday and what a difference really being able to see crisply, especially for distance.  For just about a year most everything has been a little blurry and fuzzy.  So I am praising and thanking God for vision this morning and feeling a little like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, you know the whole what big eyes you have.  The better to see you with my dear. 


I'm still taking in what we learned in Bible study last night.  Beth pretty much camped out on James 1:1.  Who knew, well God does, there is so much meat and insight from that one little introductory verse.  So Joy to You, my dear friends.  I told Lisa P afterwards that this little snippet of a song was running through my brain...I am a slave of God, I am a slave of God, I am a slave of God, He calls me James (or Jacob.)

For years I have been searching for a long lost friend, my crazy friend Debbie.  The last time we had any contact was probably 1993 or 1994.  About 3 or 4 times a year I would try doing an Internet search for her but nothing, no information on her where abouts was to be found.  This year as I began one of my annual searches for her, I got the crazy idea to look to see if her son was on Facebook.  He was!  I sent him a message asking if his mother's name was Debbie and that I was looking to get in touch with her.  Several days later he responded that yes, the friend I've been looking for is in fact his mom.  He gave me her email address and warned me she didn't get on email very often.  So I waited to hear back from her, no response.  I sent another email just in case she missed the first one and after waiting for over a month I received an email from her on Monday January 17.  I cannot tell you how much joy and happiness filled my heart hearing back from her.  We've emailed back and forth since then and she tried to call once but I didn't have my phone with me.  Debbie, sometimes Roy and I had some fun times and wild adventures back in the day.   I can still go weak with laughter thinking about our "helping" her mom move a chair from the downstairs living room up to her second floor bedroom.  We hosted bridal luncheons, drove all over town for the least little thing,  laughed at her mom's idiosyncrasies, moved Roy's car to another parking spot when he went to the grocery store for us, and well I could go on and on about HOT SHIPLEY DONUTS, lady fingers and the like.  When Roy and I were first married, he traveled quite a bit and since our apartment was just down the street from the office where Debbie worked, she'd come and spend the night with me while Roy was gone.  We took an exercise class at the Post Oak Y and this is how far classes and costumes have come, we wore black leotards and black thick tights/leggings for the class.  So did everyone else.  We hardly did any of the exercise because we were too busy laughing on the back row of class.  I think that is the fondest memory I have of our friendship, the constant laughter.  We wouldn't say a word and just bust out laughing while we shopped, ate, or exercised.  In fact her mom would say to Debbie every time after I left their home, that Nancy Monarch!  She does nothing but laugh from the moment she comes in and until she leaves.  Little did her mom know we laughed about her quirky ways and the minute I hit the door, it was all over but the crying.  Roy called Debbie's and my conversations Martian Talk.  You know how they say twins have their own language?  Well, we kind of did too.  We would talk so quickly that we began leaving vowels out of our words.  Many commented that they couldn't ever understand us when we talked with one another.  Oops, I have been so busy remembering such a fun season in life I have forgotten that y'all will be bored with most of this.  But I think you can tell how excited I am to be back in touch with Debbie. 


On Friday while getting highlights and haircut, I ran into a friend from elementary school.  In fact her sister is my age and she is the only one I attended kindergarten through senior year with.  Such fun catching up.  Then last night after Bible study Lisa P and I made two new friends as we played taxi cab to the parking garages so they wouldn't have to walk alone in the dark. 

I have always said God has gifted me with the greatest friends in the world!  Love having friends in all ages and stages of life.  Makes this journey very interesting and bearable.  Peggy and I did a Mildred and Gertrude thing for a women's retreat and I think I have posted this before, but our rewritten words to Michael W Smith's song, Friends

Friends are friends forever, so don't get bored with them.
And a friend won't throw you in a river just to see if you can swim.
Oh it's hard to say no to the invite of let's go.
Oh a lifetime not's too long to live as friends.

Joy to You Today my friends!