great b-day bonus

Well, my birthday was last Friday, but tonight I got a special bonus that I wasn't expecting and it made my evening.

My best friend and former college room-mate wrote me an ACTUAL email and let me know what is going on in his life!

(Now in all fairness, I am not that great at shooting emails out to him either. And I know that he sends me a note with some fear and trepidation, because invariably, I'm so excited to hear from him that I send him back an email that is way too long to expect anybody to read.)

AO is just a great, talented person that I'm so glad to call him my friend. We were both music majors in college and with very few exceptions had almost the same schedules the whole time we were in school. We were also in the same traveling ensembles and then we decided to be room-mates (can anybody say "recipe for disaster"?) We did have our rocky spots in college, but I think that the fact that we made it through with a friendship still intact strengthens the friendship we have now. Even though we're both kind of flaky when it comes to staying in touch.

I think about this phenomenon quite a bit (and I know I've written at least one song about it); how we must cherish our friendships while we're in the middle of them. Because people come and go, as much as I still love AO, he lives a long ways away and it's hard to keep up with each other. The important thing is to bathe the relationship with grace. So I haven't heard from you in a long time; You haven't heard from me either! Why waste precious time and energy focusing on how we're bad at correspondence when we could just pick up where we left off! That's way more fun!

That's just one of the reasons that I appreciate AO so much. We just pick up where we left off. He's got 4 kids and a great wife and I've just got a great wife. He's a successful, talented music minister at a large church in Arizona. I, among other things, move pianos. So what? I still know what he looks like in bikini underwear...that's got to be worth something, right?

Holly and I have run into old friends where, for whatever reason, they don't feel like they can do that, and it's so sad to me. Believe me when I tell you: Don't be like that. Cherish your friends, especially the ones that you only get to have contact with occasionally.