Out of Sight & On My Mind

This is the time of year when you can’t open you mailbox without finding at least one catalog of some kind. Usually many more than one. Some from places you’ve never ordered a single thing from.

I usually scan through them before relegating them to the ever growing recycling pile. I occasionally find a t-shirt with something on it that’s clever or stupid or riotously funny. Not that I would ever buy it to wear out of the house. Why advertise to perfect strangers what you think is clever or they think is stupid?

A couple of weeks ago there was a little plaque with this verse on it:

Friends are like angels, you don’t have to see them to know they are there!

That is certainly true in 2020. No traveling to see friends (or family) in other states or other countries. I can’t even see my friends who live in the same town as often as I would like. Some of them I haven’t seen at all because the risk is too great for their health or the place we usually have lunch isn’t taking the precautions seriously. One of them, I visit through a window to protect them from the dreaded plague, although they got it anyway but thankfully, recovered.

To adjust to all this I’m making more efforts to stay in touch other ways.

Emails of happy thoughts and shared prayers or just checking in.

Notes of encouragement and sympathy or cards by postal mail.

And sometimes by picking up Mr. Bell’s invention to hear that special voice or unique laughter that can only come from my friend.

None of it replaces a full two arm hug before a face to face lunch in one of your favorite places that has managed to survive.

Or meeting friends in a full football stadium or hockey rink or baseball park hours from your home to cheer on you favorite team.

Or getting to finally take a friend up on their long standing offer to cross the border to visit their home in the hills on a lake with a view out the backdoor that could be a picture postcard.

I know my unseen angels exist because I believe they are actively engaged full time in battling the evil in the world right now. How much worse would it be if they were not?

I know my unseen friends are there because we’re making plans for next year, for their next birthday, for my next birthday, for the reunion, the next sports season, for when life as we know it can be finally returns.

I’m praying for that time when hope becomes reality.

For when our angels prevail.

For when friends are once again seen whenever and wherever we want.

In person!

Thank you to my angels for blessing me with friends to help me through this!