Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. ~ Psalm 119:105

Bloggers celebrate 100 posts. They celebrate 500. Well, tonite I am celebrating 1000 posts.

1000!

For once in my life I'm struck speechless.

Maybe I'll recover my voice a little later.

Maybe I'll go write an email and come back in 20 minutes.

Nah, I'll stick around.

I've had a really interesting week. To me, anyway. Recently on Facebook I've reconnected with two long-lost friends. Kathy and I reconnected a little while ago and we've kicked around the idea of meeting somewhere and rehashing old times. Our old times go back. Waaaaaaaaaay back. I can hardly remember a time in my life when I didn't know her. She grew up in my hometown in Washington State, a small town about 10-15 miles inland from the coast. We went thru 1st-6th grades together in elementary school. Then, quite unexpectedly and very quickly, the summer of 1966, my family packed up and moved to Vancouver, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. I hardly had time to say good bye to the neighborhood kids I'd been growing up with, let alone any school friends. I hadn't had any real contact with Kathy since that time, 44 years ago this past September.

So along comes Facebook. We connect as Friends. We start talking about meeting up again. We were chatting last weekend and Kathy mentioned again that we should meet up. So I said, "How about next Saturday? Do you have any plans?" and her message came back "No. Saturday would work." So we agreed on a time, we agreed on a place, and oh what a thrill it was to walk in to the restaurant at 11:30 this morning and see her standing there grinning from ear to ear! We grabbed each other in a big bear hug, sat down, ate lunch, and chatted for 2 1/2 hours. She brought along her yearbook from the year she graduated, which would've been the same year for me, too, if I'd still been there. We looked thru it and discussed this person and that one. Who still lived in our hometown. Who'd died. Who she was still in contact with. The more I looked thru it, the more names and faces I recognized. It was like a treasure box of memories opening up and sifting thru a pile of unexpected jewels. It was....what was it exactly? Exciting and intoxicating. Bittersweet and sad. Heartbreaking and heart-melting. And it was healing...so healing.

Healing.

When my family moved so unexpectedly, so quickly, I never had the time to wrap my head around it, to adjust to it. And within 3 days after moving I was attending a junior high school with almost 900 students. Culture shock? After attending the same school with the same 25-30 kids it was like a nuclear implosion. Yes, implosion. Because life was hard. It was miserable. I went from being a happy carefree young girl to a bitter, angry, reclusive nobody almost overnite. And then I went to another junior high. And another. And a high school. And then another. And then the one I finally graduated from. I didn't hate Vancouver. I loathed Vancouver. No...I loathed me. I loathed my inability to establish myself somewhere, anywhere. To find solid footing. I know there are 'military brats' out there, children who've also moved around the world following their parents' careers. Families of academia. Some of them will tell you these moves were the experiences of a life time. I am not one of those. I didn't thrive on change. I shriveled up. I shut myself off into some deep part of me even I didn't recognize. I went thru the motions of living but I seemed to have gone into some kind of self-imposed state of emotional hibernation. Just waiting to finish. To get out of there. To break out. To get away. I don't think I ever truly recovered from being ripped away from the security, the cocoon of safety, my hometown gave me. 44 years later I still had a case of homesickness for it that never went away. For a time in my life when home was good, home was peaceful, home was a place I wanted to be.

So what was healing about it? you ask.

At one point, as Kathy and I were looking thru the yearbook, I said I had sometimes wondered what my life would've been like if I'd stayed there. Who I might've ended up marrying. What I might've ended up doing with my life. And suddenly it came to me, a flood of emotions almost overwhelming me. I told her it wouldn't have been the wonderful life I have. I never would've found Dear Hubby. We wouldn't have the loving marriage of 36 years together that we have. I wouldn't have my beautiful children, precious grandsons. I wouldn't have the blessed life that I'm living right now.

Right now...

And at that moment, tho I'm sure she never knew it, it was like I'd been hit over the head with a dawning of understanding. My life has been directed by Someone more powerful than me, who knew what I needed, who led me every step of the way even when I had no interest in Him and denied His existence. Someone who has cared for me and loved me and given me the guidance, the security, the safety I so badly wanted and needed. Maybe if it hadn't been for those lean, hard years of my youth I wouldn't realize how much I have, how rich my life is.

And then there is LuAnn. One of my first 'adult' friends, my first work friend at my first job after graduating from high school. We met and we clicked almost instantly. We knew each other face-to-face for only a short time before she moved back to her original home with family in Minneapolis. I visited her there. We both married. We both had children. We tried to keep up with each other by writing letters. Life got more hectic. Dear Hubby and I moved around a lot, 7 times in our first 5 years of marriage. We lost contact. We connected again several years ago, but for only a short time. The timing wasn't right. And then, Facebook. Again. On a lark just a couple of days ago, when her name came to me, I decided to do a search. I used her maiden name. And there she was. I sent her a message saying I seemed to keep stumbling across her in the strangest places. Or something like that. And she messaged me back. And here we are now. Perfect timing this time around. The LuAnn I remember and loved. We're both grandmas now. We've both grown up. We're women now, with the time to get reacquainted again. And I'm thrilled beyond words! And scheming to find some way where she and I can meet halfway in between, to have a face-to-face gossip fest like Kathy and I had today.

My life is changing.

Change is good.