Rollin' With The Homies

That song was in my head all night last night. Maybe that's because we all kept singing it...and only that line. Last night I hosted our Bunco group at my place. We have three tables of four people and every time you start a new round you yell, "Rollin!" to get everyone started at the same time. So every time some yelled it we all started singing, "Rollin with the homies." And we sang it just like the girl in the movie "Clueless" with the hand movement and all. That's the only place I've heard it. We had a great time last night. We are mostly a group of girls from my church that decided to get together and play once a month. We have prizes for winner's of different categories and I never win. I did get the hostess prize. I was bound to win that anyway because once you win you can't win it again until everyone gets it and we are close to the end of the list. I think it was between me and two other girls. :) It's a lot of fun though. At least I enjoy it. I know others get frustrated because you give $5 each month for prizes and if you never win and others win multiple times, it can get pretty irritating. But I'm involved mainly for the fun and being with my friends. But I won't complain if I win now and then.

As I was playing last night and singing that line over and over I got to thinking about my other "homies". When my parents started our current church my family became close with a group of people. There were about seven couples and me. We were a very tight knit group. We did everything together. After service every Sunday morning we would all go out to eat together and every Sunday night we would go to each other's places and play games, eat, watch movie, and talk. We talked all through the week and basically anything we did, we did as a pack. We were very close. The girls were like the sisters I never had they were my best friends. We all went through so much together. We were together through weddings, birth of babies, graduations, job losses and gains, losing of grandparents and even a baby. We were all there for each other everyday. But as the years went by they all started to move away for jobs and some went to get their masters. It was very hard on me because they all left. I really felt abandoned even though I knew they all did what the Lord wanted them to do. I felt so alone here without them all. I felt like I lost a limb. Church wasn't the same for me at all. It was hard on my parents too because they felt like they were losing their children (and two of them were...my brother and his wife were one of the couples that moved away for a job.) I'm part of a group of friends here at church but it's not the same. I don't think I will ever find the closeness of a group of friends like "the old gang" as we affectionately call ourselves.

I love what Paul writes in Colossians 1:3. It says, "We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you." I know that that is our group. I know that we are all praying for each other. Last January my dad celebrated 30 years in the ministry and as a surprise I was able to get all them back into Nashville to surprise him. So they all came in and hid in my parents kitchen and the look on his face when he saw them was priceless. That weekend was the best I had had in a long time. It was like old times with everyone. It's just now the group is bigger because they have all had kids. So there were a bunch of young ones running all over the place. It was wonderful! What I love the most about "the old gang" is that we are all still very close. We call each other often. Just this week I've talked to three of them at length. It's nice to talk with people who genuinely care about you and your life and who still miss you like crazy. At least I hope they miss me because I sure miss. We are planning to have another reunion sometime really soon if we can get everyone schedules coordinated. That's the hardest part. But hopefully we can get it organized so we can start "rollin with the homies". I know that was cheesy. :)

The Old Gang