When Old Friends Reappear
WORDS FROM W.W. June 4, 2019
I received a termination notice from a school I’ve been a substitute teacher at. The notice was the result of not having subbed there a single day this past school year. Timberview Middle School, where I teach so often that some of the students think I’m one of the regular instructors, schedules me a steady 3 days a week. It’s also where I coach three sports and practices begin right after school. As Carol keeps saying to me, “You’re suppose to be retired!”
“Reconfigured, dear!”
The other school that was looking to terminate me has its dismissal bell 15 minutes later than Timberview, and the traffic jam getting out of the school grounds resembles the chaos of Paris streets.
I went to talk to the person who schedules substitutes and we worked things out for next year.
“You know, Johanna, at my age when I hear the word “terminate” I think of other things.”
“Sorry, Mr. Wolfe. We really don’t like to terminate people.”
“That’s a relief! You know, I’m starting to look for where the defibrillator is when I come into the school building.”
“You’re not serious?”
“No, but I might be if the word “terminate” gets used too many more times.”
When you reach Medicare age you start to think about things like that. You start to think about how long your hips and knees are going to hold up, how many more “rodeos’ you have in you, and what you can’t eat more than what you can eat.
But you also start thinking about old friends, people who have been a part of your journey in the past or the present. There is a longing inside you to reconnect, to sit and converse, to have a few more of those moments together, like in the past, that cause you to smile.
One of those old friends, Chuck Moore, pastor of First Baptist Church of Champaign/Savoy, Illinois, had a serious health situation about a month ago. Another old friend (In fact, the oldest of the three of us…like, just a few days younger than dirt!), Tom Bayes, has talked to me about converging in Champaign to see Chuck. Tom lives in the Charlotte, North Carolina area now. The three of us pastored churches in the Lansing, Michigan area for years and became close friends. Our “BMW Group” (Bayes, Moore, Wolfe) met for lunch every other week for seven years.
Tom and I have “a need” to see Chuck. It’s that longing that won’t go away, the relational equivalent of a Big Mac Attack. (Oh, there’s another word that causes us to shudder in our old age…attack!)
Two days ago I received an email from a long lost friend named Randy Bockman. We lost touch with one another about two decades ago. What a delight to read an email from “The Bock”! We met while studying at Miami (Ohio) University and became good friends. He was one of my groomsmen. But then we lost touch with one another. I moved to Colorado Springs and he moved from Cincinnati to somewhere in Indiana.
When I read his message, once again, that longing to reconnect rose to the surface. He was one of the greatest guys I ever met and my life has been a bit impoverished without his presence.
Old friends are like rain showers for parched souls. They are God’s blessings for the last parts of our journeys.
Brandon Bayes, Tom’s son who sometimes says something that qualifies as wisdom (I know he’s reading that comment so I had to make it a bit sarcastic!), said to his dad, “Are you all going to wait until there’s a funeral to get together?” It was not really a question, but more like a coach’s halftime admonition to his team as they huddle together in the locker room.
When old friends reappear, or old friends have a setback of some kind, you can’t get rid of the urgency to see them again. It’s what signals to you that your life has depth, has roots of relational significance.
Explore posts in the same categories: Christianity, Community, Death, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, UncategorizedTags: friendship, reconnecting with old friends
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