So... Who's this Randy person?

I’ve gotten several comments from people who’ve checked this blog (thank you!) and contacted me with a question. They know I’m single and that I’m not dating anyone… but on the right hand column, listed as a Contributor, is a person they don’t know.

So, who is Randy?

To answer that question I must take you back more than 25 years (ack!). Dan, my first husband, and I were in California, where he was stationed in the U.S.A.F. At church we met a lovely couple, Dave and Lisa. Lisa became my best friend in California; Dave played in a Contemporary Christian Music group called Heirship. Dan and I got to know the guys in the band, we worked with them in a coffeehouse ministry, and we became pretty good friends with some of them.

Dan and I moved back home to NC in April, 1979, and got busy with growing family and “real life;” Heirship started breaking up shortly after we moved home, and everyone went in varying directions. We all lost touch.

I’ve thought about those folks often over the years, but a couple of months ago the thoughts began to be more frequent and more intense. Finally, several weeks ago, I decided, oh, what the heck! and sat down to begin a Google search. I quickly located a link for a website for Heirship, but the site was expired. I kept looking, though, and found an email address for someone connected to the website. I tossed out an email hoping it wouldn’t come back to me marked “undeliverable.”

I was so surprised and delighted to receive a message, almost immediately, saying, “You have the right place – and I remember you very well! What in particular did you want to know?” My correspondent was none other than Randy Phillips, whom I remembered as a tall, jolly, bushy-haired, constantly-grinning guitar player and vocalist with the band. I shot him back an email – and the rest is … going to make history? He’s living and working out on the Left Coast, and we’ve been getting re-acquainted, exchanging emails, Instant Messaging, and talking via Skype every day since that first email. In large part, it’s his fault this blog exists (blame him!), because while other people had told me I ought to create one, he persuaded me I could (technologically speaking).

For this blog, Randy is sort of a technical advisor, helper and cheerleader. Of course, he has full access and if he ever wants to, he’s quite free to post. He has his own blog, though (which he needs to keep updated more faithfully! – there’s a tease for him to pay him back for mentioning me there in over-glowing terms!), so don’t look for him to be posting here.

For me, Randy is quickly proving a valuable and dearly beloved friend, and it has been wonderful to share with him how Our Lord has been working in our lives since we last saw one another in 1979. He asks questions – the right sort of questions, that stimulate my desire to understand the Faith more perfectly. But most of all, through our conversations I’ve come to a new eagerness to get my head beliefs and my life performance lined up more perfectly.

And that’s who “that Randy person” is! (in part, at least)