Things that made me happy this past week.

Connecting with friends. A random bird in the wheel of a truck parked next to me. Seeing a “Randy Travis” concert.

It is always great to connect with friends. I have a natural tendency to self isolate, which is not always the greatest for my mental health. Last weekend we had some friends that we met about a year ago come stay with us on their way from Illinois to Tennessee. Great food, great conversations, quality time with great people. Good for the soul.

Parked outside my weekly massage appointment this little guy caught my eye. Admittedly I was not always the biggest fan of birds. A lot of that probably had to do with me living in Las Vegas and we really only had pigeons, and pigeons suck. Maybe it is just what old people do, watch birds.

Randy Travis had a stroke in 2013. He is an icon of country music. When I got the email about an upcoming show of his I definitely wanted to see him. As the event neared, I started wondering what I was going to actually go see. Was he even able to perform? Was he going to be dominating the stage like he once did, or was it going to be something like “A Night With Stephen Hawking” type thing where he just sits there while his music just played? It was kind of both. He is struggling health wise. He and his wife came out, he had a difficult time walking onto the stage. They sat down on a couple comfy looking arm chairs, and essentially watched a cover band perform his hits, while they showed some videos between songs and his wife would talk between songs at times. My first reaction was “this is going to be dumb”. It was not. It touched on all the emotions. It was sad seeing a man in his condition. Awful to imagine being trapped in an uncooperative body. It was sweet seeing him and his wife interact with each other during the songs. She said something that really stood out to me. Something like “enjoy and cherish the people in your life you have on loan from God, because at some point He is going to want them back”.