Happy Birthday Marty!

I can remember junior high school, some of it good, some of it bad and some of it not even remember worthy.  Still to this day I can sing the school song, but I have no idea why I can remember it. I like many, when asked would you like to ever relive junior high school , answer back with a resounding NO!  I wanted to be popular, but I wasn’t.  I wanted to be rebellious but not wild.  My mom made me wear longer skirts and socks with my shoes.  I wanted to wear miniskirts and fishnets, but I rolled my skirt up and took off my socks on the way to school and reversed the process on the way home.  My friend Leah and I were supposed to walk the long way to school and cross over the footbridge but many a morning we had taken too long with the previously mentioned clothes adjustment to be oh so cool and ended up having to cut across the football field.  Doing that ruined oh so many pairs of shoes because of that pesky morning dew.  Junior High was PE wearing one piece gym suits.  It was lunch with aluminum wrapped Hi-C drinks that had been packed frozen for a refreshing beverage at lunch instead of buying lukewarm milk in the cafeteria.  One of the best things though about junior high school was meeting Marty Z.  We were in the same history class and I remember her Amelia Earhart oral report, not for the dynamic presentation but for the fact she dropped her notecards in the trash can while giving her report. 

We went to the same high school, she was a Rebelette which back in the day would have been the dance squad but schools back then had drum and bugle corps…oh Rebelettes also played fifes.  I played volleyball.  Our lives didn’t intersect again until our junior year.  In January 1971 I asked Christ into my life at a James Robinson revival.  At the time he was known as God’s angry young man.  My friend Beth who was so instrumental in me coming to a saving knowledge of the Lord was a good friend of Marty.  And Marty became my good friend as well.  Both Beth and Marty helped me in early discipleship and growth in the Lord.  I was in Marty’s Action Group, which was the relevant term back then for Bible study.  See, trendy terms have always been around.  My New Testament was called Blueprint for Revolution.  It was the 70’s man!  J  One day today’s relevant will be charming memories.  That’s the way life is supposed to happen.  Through the years Marty and I have remained friends, picking up where we left off the last time we saw each other.  We have been doing that for over forty years.  Some of my favorite memories are the days I would go to Boerne and spend a couple of days with her and Bobby and the girls, Tricia and Megan.  Tricia always called me by my full name, Nancy Monarch and Megan made me a friendship bracelet, which I still have packed deep within our storage unit.  As you can tell, we have walked through a lot of life together, together but in different cities most of the time. 

Today is my friend’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Marty!  She’s a blessing and a joy.  She’s compassionate and a good listener.  She knows the Word but more importantly walks it out in daily living.  And something new that I learned about her yesterday, she carries both blue and green gum for her grandsons.  Now that is love!