Finding Long Lost Friends

This has been a year of reflection. At 42, I've spent quite a bit of my energies coming to terms with myself (again...this time as a skinny man); part of that has involved my growing awareness that I have lost touch with significant people in my past. I miss my college friends, former students, and my professors!

About 8 weeks ago, I went back to my college town and spent a few hours on the college campus re-experiencing that past life. It was an empty Sunday afternoon when I walked around the dorms and practice rooms. I was even able to sit in Craig Chapel all alone, playing my favorite hymns, remembering what it was like to go to recitals and to chapel there. During my Junior & Senior years, I was also the Minister of Music at the campus church which met in Craig Chapel. Later that day, I called Kathy Wilson (a sweet college professor who was also my Craig Chapel accompanist) and spent about an hour catching up with her, then had a nice phone chat with June Barber (my college voice teacher). Through them, I found Darrel Johnson (my college conducting teacher - a most significant mentor from those days). Coming home from that trip, I was even more aware that many of my college friends were elusive...I didn't know where they ended up and/or whether they had new married names. No matter how much I wanted to find them, I couldn't muster up a google search that found them...

THANK GOD FOR FACEBOOK!

Because of my new job at Pitman High School, I created a FACEBOOK profile and within 48 hours I located many friends I've been longing to see...some for over a decade! Almost daily, more friends find me and we begin the process of reconnecting. This has been a week of utter joy to hear how my friends are doing and where they are today. I'm so, so happy to have reconnected with this past part of myself, seeing how my current self and that past self really fit together.

I have such a crazy background and I sometimes wonder how I ended up where I am today...it's a testimony to the fact that we all evolve and that the plan from above will work itself out if we just step out of the way. To the many people who have come back into my life, I say, "Thank you...I have needed you!" To the people who will come back into my life tomorrow or the day after that, "...Bring it on because I have missed you so!"