I Have Returned, Sort Of

I have returned, sort of.
The Wednesday Journal in Oak Park, IL included an item this week titled The Return of Ray Pritchard. They based it on a press release relating to my appearance at a pastors’ meeting in Aurora (a Chicago suburb) last week. I appreciate the plug for Keep Believing Ministries, and I enjoyed the reference my tussles with the Oak Park Lesbian and Gay Association, which brought back a lot of memories. If you read all the way to the end, they even mention a novel someone has written that is set in Tupelo. I’m not familiar with the book, but the column gave me a chuckle. It’s good to be remembered seven months after we moved to Mississippi.
On the other hand, there are times when I feel like we never really left. For instance, I have a cell phone number, and a home phone number for the cabin in the woods where we live. Our cell phone is area code 708 (Chicago suburbs), and our home phone is area code 662 (Mississippi). Keep Believing Ministries is headquartered in Tupelo, but our bank account and our mailing address are in Elmhurst (a Chicago suburb). Go figure.
I got a call tonight from a friend who is going through a similar life transition. A few months ago I told him that our life is like “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” The same thing has happened to him. In the last two weeks everything in his life is suddenly up in the air. He had a grand plan (don’t we all?), but the Grand Planner evidently has his own ideas. I told him I’m pretty much clueless about where we’ll be or what we’ll be doing in six months. When he said I should write a book about our experience, I said I would be glad to if we could ever get to the end of this chapter. In the meantime the only advice I have is to put your seatbelt on and enjoy the ride.