and friends are friends forever........

In the early 1980s we met a couple named Chris & Diane. We loved them. I think they loved us. They were a transplant to our community having just graduated school and starting out life.

Scott & Chris met playing church league basketball. They introduced their wives and we invited them out to our little house that was half zoo, half neighborhood Kool-Aid kids spot, half mental facility (my poor 9th grade Algebra teacher would gasp at my fractions here...) and the "whole", was us just trying to understand life. Understand God. Understand evil, sin, blessing and fear.....

They came out to our place and I am pretty sure baby Scotty was a gooey mess when they picked him up and played with him. Kristi and Heidi were in awe -- they had on clean jeans and looked really young, successful and nice. They talked with the girls like they were family. The girls were smitten.

We loved them.

At least once a month they told us to save our pennies - that they were going to take us "someplace cool" in Columbus and have some good food. And they introduced us into the - make a solemn oohhhh sound with your lips here folks and click your teeth 3 times because this was not so 'church-accepted-cool' in the 80s, - but we were really into the *new* Christian rock music.

They introduced us to Keith Green, to Steve Camp, Petra, DeGarmo and Key. Taught us *head-bangers* how to worship with Sandy Patti. We went to every discounted, free or cheap concert advertised - and they were mostly in Columbus. They always drove. Every time.

Our kids loved them - Kristi and Heidi would play Barbies and they always said "say-like this is Chris and that is Diane" then they would go off in their Barbie car together and pick up people.

That's what they did - pick up people and love them and take them places. And become a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

I remember I stopped in to their house the day the movers were way too quickly packing up their moving truck. There was nothing to say that we had not already said. We cried a little. My heart was rent in two.

They moved and have since lived all over the Midwest and South, moving with his job. When they left us it truly felt as if our shared garment of life had been ripped apart. We went for short weekends to their place - they came and stayed over at ours - which was very brave considering our son's early morning wake up antics at the time. He went through several phases - one was using his child-size compound bow, acting the stealthy apache complete with face paint, checking all over the house and whispering in your-dead-asleep-ear while it was just barely light enough outside cluing one into the fact that it might be 5:30am - but he would whisper such things in your ear as "there were enemies around"; or a cowboy or a soldier would suddenly appear - whatever 4 year old boys like to think up at 5am, while others sleep soundly in the early morning... one was his superman cape and it gravely appeared that there was a lot of saving to be done for everything in the whole wide world before 6am.

To have Superman suddenly jump on one's bed and declare that indeed the world was once again a safer place presented a challenge to any parental empathy and self control, let alone overnight guests.

But as years go, we were not so much in touch. I sent Diane this link just last December as I was trolling through some old songs - she and Chris sing and she has sung professionally, and they used to sing sometimes for our Bible Study and play their guitar, and this was the last song I remember them dong for us.



Diane had been a spiritual rock to me introducing me to things that I was not going to learn in Sunday School. She taught me the precepts of healing. She taught me a lot about believing when you pray. She taught me to loathe and hate evil but somehow to keep praying to God about it even when you don't feel like it. They know some of our deepest pains, deepest hurts. Chris was always such a gentleman and watching for people's hurts and trying to help do what he could to help heal them.

I'm not sure they have ever understood what their simple heartfelt giving meant to us way back then -- and now.

While I was dozing off my Benadryl injection today - and might I just say anytime you might be offered one of those, take it - and Scott was quietly sitting in the room trying to better his solitaire score - in walks Diane. And she brought along a powerful praying friend. For us. (and for the record, this lady knew her sanitizing techniques ;)

God is still teaching me about this *community* thing He thinks a lot about...... and using lots of others to get me there. I took them all on a "steroid-bounce
-walk" then we prayed and God has been ever so good to us today.

I didn't know that the unit would allow visitors other than drivers, and somehow Mary Poppins flew in with the sunshine and wind today and ministered to her old friends.

And friends are friends forever....... if the Lord's the Lord of them
And a friend will not say never,'Cause the welcome will not end
Though it's hard to let you go,In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long
To live as friends


But we'll keep you close as always,It won't even seem you've gone
'Cause our hearts in big and small ways,Will keep the love that keeps us strong

These words mean as much to us now as they did then.......

And they mean so much because there are others that have woven in and out of our lives and the love that Jesus gives us is a "bonder" that only man can break.... When you can say out loud that there are those in your life that no matter the distance, no matter the times in between, no matter where they are spiritually, but when you meet them again the love grows deeper, it is truly one of the most miraculous things that God puts here on earth.

We were in a small group at a church one time and the leader was a gifted wood-worker. He brought in 20 small dowel rods that had been broken and then set and glued back together. He handed them out and said "this is what God does for us - where we are broken, He glues us and that weak spot once glued, cannot be broken again." And he was right - the stronger guys in the group could break the dowel rods again, but never in the same spot that the master woodworker had repaired them and made them whole again.

God has brought us into a lot of *community* over the years. We have been blessed at different times in our lives with deep, good friends. And as we have been placed in new groups of people so representing God's plan of community, I cannot say how good that is.

And I think that dowel rod goes both ways - in our latest house church in Matthew we learned that our relationship is both "vertical" with God - but also has to be "horizontal" with people - building community. Both broken bonds can and should be repaired or "healed" if you may. Because we have a lifetime to hurt and heal and break and bond, and when God puts ones in your lives that are "friends", but more than friends - they are eternal family, then get out the wood glue and keep them in unbreakable, bonded shape.....

And one more tangent I beg you -- when you put those vertical dowel rods (your relationship to God) and those horizontal dowel rods (your relationship with your spiritual family here on earth) and touch them in the middle - they become a symbol. The cross. The cross is not an easy thing to manage to begin with, but if we realize what God can do with His wood glue, it's kind of awesome.

That's why we can love and hug and cry with loved ones we haven't seen in a long time from far away. That's why we can sit in a wonderful house church with all kind of personalities and claim "bonding". That's why we can drink a glass of wine with those who are as close as brothers and sisters and feel the goodness that God gives to us - warmth, honesty, truth and love.

Our God is pretty awesome that way.

Love to all those that are walking this journey with us.