And Friends are Friends Forever...

It's Thursday evening and I am sitting here taking a break from my packing to go to Los Angeles for 10 days. I checked my e-mail and I received a letter from Amsterdam, written and sent with love.

How do I know?



I have written in earlier e-mails about the wonderful friends I met from Holland - Angelica and Jerry.

Tonight I want to share them with you. They can become your family too.



Jerry and Angelica are both accomplished artists in Europe - he a pop singer and her a jazz singer.

BUT that is not where their strengths lie. Their warmth, humor and ability to give and receive love is the greatest gift that they shared with me when they were in Nashville.

Let me tell you how I met these incredible people that are entering your house tonight with this introduction.

I am a speaker and a life coach. I coach musicians (among other professionals and not-so-professional people, and I was downtown Nashville a month ago to support and encourage an artist that I had been helping.

The artist (with an award-winning singing voice) asked me to walk the tip jar around the tables to ask people to give. Of course I will - it gives me the opportunity to get to know every person in the establishment.

As I walked around I chatted with people at every table, found out where they were from, and why they were in Nashville.

As I approached one particular table, I asked the obviously-in-love beautiful couple where they were from, and they told me Amsterdam.

In all of my years of talking with people (which is all of my years!), I have never met anyone from Amsterdam. So I dug into the deep recesses of my mind to try to come up with something that I knew about Amsterdam - to connect us.

Ah! Anne Frank!

So I proceeded to tell them that the only thing I knew about their country was Anne.

Angelica replied, "Ah yes! Anne Frank in the little closet."

And then I commented that Anne's death was so untimely because one day later she would have been set free... ONE day!

Angelica looked right at me, waved her hand in the air and retorted, "Oh yes, but then she never would have had a bestseller!"

I burst into a fit of laughter that took on a life of its own, and Angelica sheepishly said, "THAT probably wasn't nice...but if she had lived she would have had a journal - just like everyone else!"

And that started the flood gates of love and laughter opening up.

One thing led to another and I asked them where they were staying, they told me, and then they got their belongings and moved into my house - and my heart! - for the next two days that they had planned on staying in Nashville, and added three glorious days to the stay!



You may wonder why we spent so much time together when they were just going to go back to their country anyway. We have no answer for that; only that the love was so evident and strong between us.

A couple of days before Ang (Miss Happy Hat...another story for another day!) and Jer (Mr. Happy Shorts) were moving on I mentioned that they don't have to hang around me; they can take their rental car and do whatever they want. I had given them a key to 'our' house...the house that God built!

Jerry looked me in the eye and said, "We are only going to be here with you for a couple more days. We want to stay as close to you as we can. We were talking today and we were saying to each other that 'we miss you already!" People I had only met days earlier!



We loved and laughed the days away: eating, laughing, sharing, dancing, meeting friends, touring Nashville. Jerry even had the opportunity to sing on two stages in Nashville - and boy is he good! - and he got a standing ovation in a crowded bar! That was a first for me to see!

We always made sure that we were in bed by 4 a.m....a couple of days...actually three in a row were pretty close to not making that curfew. We could not get enough of each other.



The day came for my new 'family' members to leave. I closed their fingers around the house key and told them to keep it on their key ring so they could have it when they came back. The house was theirs now too...they had come home!

We all stood in the front foyer with tears streaming down our faces as we soaked in one last look at each other, with Angelica in her cute style saying that they were going to send me a windmill, piece by piece, for my front yard!

And then they were gone, as the tears that had grown out of love, flowed down my cheeks, off of my chin, onto the brick porch on the front of my house.

My house is empty now, but my heart is so full.

People from so far away...loving in a language that is almost incomprehensible. As I pore over the 316 pictures I took in that seemingly short, but eternally long period of time that they danced through my life, I am aware that these two wonderful people have become my family...my family by choice...and will never be out of my heart.



I will see them, and I know that it will not be long. Amsterdam is calling to me as Nashville is calling to them. Thank God for technology because we are in close contact, and as impersonal as e-mail seems, the words sing when I read them from the monitor. And in that one click of the SEND button, Angelica and Jerry Givens (Griffin) are transported back into my/our house once again.



People from other churches? Cities? States? Countries?

Why get to know them? They live too far away!

Hearts are never far apart. Tear down the walls and let someone into your heart; someone that you would not have considered getting to know. And feel your heart grow! The miles will disappear....