To Renewed Friendships and Tomorrows

I am sitting down today with a heart of gratitude, graciousness, and just plan old happiness!

Back in June I wrote about moving back home after being away for 20 years and with the exception of 2 people I had not had the opportunity to reconnect with my friends from High School.

Last night I had what some would say was an opportunity, but I have to call it a gift, and one I didn’t even know I wanted – I got to sit down, slow down, reconnect, and renew friendships with 4 of the most special people in my life. These friends are the ones that you just own all the stuff you did in school with. These are the ones you cry with. These are the ones whose sentences you answer before they finish and end with “yeah about that”. We owned our pasts, and opened up to one another as if no time had passed. I needed that. It was like stepping back in a moment, and then going forward to present day.

It was important. I had felt very off balance after moving home questioning at times had I made the right decision. YES! From the moment we moved back I felt like a weight had been lifted, but I had no idea the burdens I carried were heavier than I ever imagined. Last night those rolled away as well. I can’t say I regret things in my past as they have made me the person I am today, I am stronger, wiser, more compassionate, loving, caring, because of those things, the bitter things of my yesterdays, make my today’s sweeter, and my tomorrow’s more fragrant.

There are those moments, like last night, when you just know, that someone greater than yourself had a hand in the planning, the coming together of a single moment in time. I can’t speak for the whole group of us, but to me, God gave me a gift last night, a gift where time stood still for a few hours, and I found time never changed my place in their hearts, the hearts of true friends, old friends, good friends, and the window in my heart once again open, and a fresh sense of purpose and being blew in. Sometimes it’s not the homily (preaching) from the ambo (altar) that are the best – sometimes it the simple yet sincere words of others that make all the difference in the world.

We cried, we laughed, we pondered, we shared, we remembered and renewed something we didn’t even know we had lost – each other.