JOURNAL RECORDS A FRIENDSHIP
Ever since I was in junior high, I have been an avid journal keeper. I love spending a bit of time each day reflecting on the events of the day and recording the elements of it that I want to reflect on again in the future. It helps me to keep my world in balance.
During my first semester in college, I found myself journaling quite a lot. On one of my final days at home before leaving for college, I bought myself a thick leather-bound journal. I christened it on the first day in the dormitories. Before the first week was out, I had filled up a couple dozen pages with various thoughts and reflections.
While I wasn’t too worried about other people reading what I had written (because I don’t typically insult or deride people in my journal), I was worried about losing it. I wanted to have that journal for posterity. So, dutifully, I had written my address and phone number on the first page.
Unsurprisingly, sometime during the second week of classes, I left my journal on a bench or somewhere in the grass on campus. I was really upset with myself for being unable to find it.
About ten o’clock that evening, a girl with long black hair knocked on my dorm room door and handed me my journal. We struck up a conversation, and, yes, she had read some of it. She admitted that she took the effort to return it because I seemed like an interesting person.
This woman became a lasting friend for many, many years. We helped each other get through some very difficult times in our respective lives. She eventually chose to do missionary work in another part of the world, in a remote place where communication would be very difficult, but not before being absolutely instrumental in helping my wife-to-be and me form the foundation of our relationship.
I still remember hugging her as she was about to leave, wishing she was staying behind instead of departing, and thanking my lucky stars that it was this woman who had stumbled upon my journal so long ago.
Something lost sometimes becomes something truly found.
