Traveling the Rock Road

It wasn’t long after my Lady and I married that we made the decision to move from Ohio and start afresh in Indiana. It wasn’t easy for a couple of 20 year- olds, not even married a full year, to pull up stakes from our home, families and friends and start our lives someplace where we didn’t know anyone or what to expect with me working part-time plus going to college and Cathy taking a job in a bank. Yes it was a bit rough but slowly we got adjusted to the new routine, the area and even made some new friends. The one thing that probably kept us going most was a promise we made to each other that as soon as I finished school we’d return to Ohio.

As the years unfolded it became apparent I wasn’t going to finish school, at least not where I first started and not in 4 years. But we had fallen in love with the little community of Warsaw/Winona Lake with all it had to offer and began making plans for a permanent home to raise our family. There was just so much it had to offer with the beauty of the lakes, churches to attend and many good jobs to choose from, plus a small-town atmosphere that is quite progressive with arts and entertainment. This was becoming home now and we were happy with our decision to stay. We felt we had everything we wanted and needed, but occasionally there was a missing piece that actually did weigh me down and I missed dearly. A quick phone and a 2 ½ hour drive through the night would soon alleviate that nagging dark feeling.

I had known Lynn since the 7^th grade and Don from about our sophomore year; as the years rolled on they became closer than just school years’ friends, brothers. We knew more about each other than others would begin to know. Cathy was my life mate and a day has not gone by that I haven’t thanked God for her being there for me, but occasionally a moment came when I had to just talk to someone else who knew me well. Now I had made many new friends, but it just wasn’t the same; we had no history where we had walked the same path together. So once in a while I’d make a call to one or the other around 9 or 10 in the evening, then set off in the direction of Fremont, Ohio or Grand Rapids, Michigan for an important engagement of sitting around a living room strumming guitars and singing old songs, maybe going down somewhere to catch a band performing, but often just sitting in a coffee shop laughing and talking about the old times and what life was handing us now. After several hours, it was back in the car and home just as day was breaking. In one aspect, it was exhausting driving so far for what most would see as nothing important. But to me it was new life pumped back in my soul, just spending a little time with ones who I knew, would always care and be there for me.

C.S. Lewis sums up friendship like this, “Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.”

When you have a friendship where each one can take turns telling all that’s on their heart while the other does nothing more than listen, you have something special, something in this man’s thinking as a gift from God. That’s what bonds you, that’s what gives you that love for the one who has “Traveled the Rock Road” with you, and both were glad they were there for each other.

I see Jesus in the same light, as not only my Savior, but my friend; not because I say it, but because He does.

John 15:15 “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

God has surely blessed me with wonderful friends; my Lady, Donnie, Lynn, and of course Christ himself.

Proverbs 18:14 “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

We don’t see each other the way we used to; those all-night get-togethers are a few years back down the road. But I know at any time I can pick up the phone and our connection, our bond doesn’t start again, it merely picks up where we left off, just like when I pray to the Lord. That’s a love closer than a brother.

Who knows, now that we’re older perhaps we’ll all end up someday in the same nursing home, that is until they kick us out for getting all the other patients rockin out to little CCR and Steppenwolf.

“Get your motor running!!”

See ya next time.