How My Heart Yearns Within Me

“He said that when he saw me in the first grade he thought I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.”  My friend threw her head back and laughed with pleasure.  “And he said you were the other one.  You were smart and pretty.”  Now I threw my head back and laughed, also with pleasure.  It felt good to be remembered in such a positive way by one of my oldest friends.  

My classmates and I graduated from high school 52 years ago, and many of us have known each other for almost our entire lives.  The man referenced and the friend who told me what he’d said are among my longest-held friends.  I met them both in the second grade.

Due to COVID, we were unable to celebrate our 50th on time; instead, that celebration took place this past weekend.  And what a celebration it was.  Nearly 30 out of a class of around 60 turned out.  There were spouses, friends, and two young children of one classmate present as well.  A dozen of our friends were missing, having passed on way, way too early.  But those who attended had a glorious time.

We reminisced, of course.  We honored the dead.  We ate.  We ate lots.  We all tried to talk with everyone else there.  And we told stories.  Oh, did we tell stories!  Some were funny, some were sad, many were neutral, but all evoked in me feelings of nostalgia and love for those with whom I’d shared so much.  

I learned, for example, of the tiny salmon two of my male classmates managed to catch when they were very small, and placed in a portion of the stream they’d dammed off near the cabin of one of their families.  They checked on him every time they visited the place and he grew, as you can imagine, over the three years they kept him there.  They called him Sam.

I heard of one classmate’s love for the rest of us to the extent that he regularly and frequently named us all by name to his wife.  He talked about and prayed for us.  He’s one of the ones who are gone and we miss him very much.

I got a good laugh out of the story about two of our young men and a telephone pole.  Both were, on separate occasions, walking the same young lady home from school.  In their distracted states, both of them walked into the pole – the same one!  One hit the pole itself, the other the guy wire connecting the pole to the sidewalk.  They were both knocked silly but eventually were able to limp home.  Neither seems any the worse for wear at this time.

Reunions here are terrific, but there’s a reunion coming that I seriously hope none of us miss.  It would be tragic to do so, and unnecessary.  That one will be in heaven, and will be the reunion to end all reunions; all others will prove to be very pale indeed in comparison.  Revelation 7:9 speaks of it, and says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and in front of the lamb” (NIV).  Won’t that be the day!!

My very great desire, and my frequent prayer, is that not a one of us be absent.  With Job, may we say, and mean it, “. . . in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes – I and not another.  How my heart yearns within me” (Job 19:26. 27, NIV).

I am yearning.