But You Got to have Friends

I was in a meeting in Delray Beach, Florida yesterday visiting a homeless program called "The Lord's Place."

"That's quite a name you have," I said to the Executive Director, "it must be a bitch to live up to it all of the time."

She looked at me for a moment as though I were speaking another language, then she burst out laughing. She and I quickly found that we liked one another a lot and after spending the day together, made plans to visit one another again.

I was with Polly Seitz, Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Local Funding Partnership Program, and Mary Kaplan of the New Hampshire Health Care Foundation. Both are friends. We've spent the last three days together looking at two amazing programs in south Florida. One is a 26 member collaborative and the other offers services to children who are primary caregivers to their parents. Holiness abounded in both meetings because special people were doing special things.

One of the ways that I have survived in my career for almost 30 years is to take advantage of opportunities to go and see what other people are doing. Staying at Union Mission all of the time leaves me self-absorbed. Seeing amazing people doing amazing things in other communities gives me hope. And ideas to steal! Probably half of what takes place at Union Mission was stolen from places that I have visited.

Fortunately, I take after my Dad, and have collected a lot of friends over the years. And last night, I was taken out to dinner by Hugh, Patti and Haniah. They are dear friends who live in south Florida and people who I really enjoy being with. They have been wanting to get together for the past several weeks and have been very supportive of the things going on in my life. So we drank and ate and laughed and hugged.

Today I am mindful of my friends. I am a very fortunate person because I have a great many who have taken the initiative to care for me when I haven't been in the best place to take care of myself. There are too many to mention but I think that I have thanked them all and told them how much I love them.

So, what keeps people homeless is their lack of significant social suppoort systems. Meaning they do not have family or friends. I am not homeless. I have a lot of friends who may as well be family.

The sun is bright in south Florida right now and it is warm and the ocean is blue and beautiful. This is the kind of environment that I enjoy. Almost as much as I enjoy my friends.