"Stayin' Alive"

After seven long years of emptiness and one year of old fashioned written correspondence my dear friend and I have finally been reuinuted. Other than a few creases of age time stamped around the occipitals and perhaps a couple extra pounds around the waistline, Daniel looked exactly the same as he did in 1993 when our lives first crossed paths.

Over the many years of friendship we lived housemates several times, sometimes surviving of a $3.00 box of pancake mix until payday. It would be impossible to count all the time spent shooting pool and playing music on the juke box at the local dive or re-watching our favorite movies. So many inside jokes and quoting movie lines at moments only the two of us would get the irony, and this was only the beginning of our friendship. By far my fondest memory is Daniel being the only person in my corner at a very stressful time of my life. I had just given birth to my 2nd child and was in the midst of divorce preceedings, basically living with no support. I was forced to return to work when my daughter was only three weeks old, and to make it worse, I worked graveyard shift.  I was overcome with guilt leaving my newborn and my 4 year old, but he was right there by my side, someone I trusted my childrens' lives with. He watched over them as though they were his own flesh and blood. He kept them safe and cared for and entertained them so I could sleep after working all night. He never asked for anything in return except my continued friendship. Daniel was an integral part of my children's lives.

So here we are, almost 20 years later and so much to catch up on. We are both facing obstacles in our own lives but somehow knowing my dear friend is back in my life, I feel a sense of peace.  We have been there for one another through so many hardships, I know that the challenges that face us now we can get through. Another example of God working in mysterious ways.