A mini-reunion ...

Thirty-five years. Three-and-a-half decades. That's a lot of years. And that's how many years it has been since I have seen some of my college friends, although many of us have lived in the Grand Rapids area all of these years! Through Facebook, we have reconnected; and yesterday, six of us shared a noon lunch together ...
... at a gorgeous 100+-year-old home in Heritage Hills. All of us were freshman residents of Miller Dormitory at what was then Grand Rapids Baptist College in the fall of 1971. Connie and Pam lived right across the hall from Robbie (who could not make the trip north from Florida) and I. Carol lived next door. Hollie lived three doors down, and Chris lived ... I can't remember which room! And then in 1974 when I permanently moved to Grand Rapids and rented a house with a bunch of girls, Hollie and Carol were two of those who rented with me. Chris and Connie grew up on small farms in the Ionia area. I used to love to hear them talk about what it was like to grow up on a farm. I do remember being quite amazed at the way they described being rather afraid of the "big city", referring to Grand Rapids! Having lived in Detroit up until my freshman year, I thought Grand Rapids was QUITE a small town!
And wouldn't you know? Last Thursday, I'm not sure what I did to cause it, but suddenly I had a pinched nerve way deep in my right hip ... in my SI joint (sacroiliac joint) and ... I could barely walk without lots and lots of facial grimacing and woeful sounds! I was hoping the pain would go away so that I could walk normally ... but instead, I hobbled my way up the front walk and up the steps to Carol's lovely house, looking like I was 40 years older than my age. "My, she certainly aged poorly, didn't she?" I could imagine my friends thinking! Mr. Jones suggested that I procure the use of a cane for this occasion (isn't he sweet?!), but I told him I would try to "rough" it. Thankfully, two of these girls have had similar pinched nerve issues and were entirely sympathetic to my plight! But I certainly FELT OLD.
I'd actually seen one of these girls maybe three times in the last 37 years ~ but the last time was about five years ago. When I worked for the docs, I typed patient documents and had access to patient records, along with each day's patient schedule. I noticed her name on our patient list one day and made a point to go out to the waiting room and greet her ... and then we made an appointment to eat lunch together. I won't tell you which girl it was because that would be a terrible breach of patient confidentiality; and even though I've been retired three years now, I wouldn't dream of doing that!

We were asked to bring college memorabilia with us yesterday, so I brought my college year books and a handful of snapshots I had kept. I was going to scan in some of the 1971 pictures of us to show you the difference between what we looked like THEN as compared to NOW ... but that would be TOO MEAN (!).

We had so much to talk about! We spent the whole afternoon together. We laughed and reminisced and tried to catch each other up to our present-day histories ... can you picture six women trying to summarize 35 years of history to each other? It was good to hear where God had led in these friend's lives. We celebrated His faithfulness and His goodness to each one of us!

P.S. The flower pictures were taken in Carol's back yard. The dainty blue ones are forget-me-nots. I'm not sure what the other ones are.