One For The Good Guys

Here's one for the good guys this Christmas season:

A few nights ago I was with friends enjoying the music of a delightful duo and then a local band who were performing at a local Columbus neighborhood nightspot. The friends, Phil and Holly (who actually I regard as family), were experiencing a rather devastating loss of his guitars which were stolen a week prior during a home invasion.

Music has long been a significant part of Phil's heart and soul. And so too, has the love husband and wife share for one another, as well as the love of family and friends. It thus was difficult not to see the soulful pain Phil and Holly tried to obscure as their musician friends played on to a sparse, but growing bar crowd several nights ago.

To say Phil is a musician is like saying the sun is bright or that a rose is a flower. Like so many others, the man openly shares his soul as he shares his music with the rest of us -- often in impromptu fashion beside a bonfire at a cabin in the woods, on a well worn sofa in a living room with a cold, bare wood floor, maybe out in a park and certainly somewhere while sitting on a porch step.

So when the recent home invasion resulted in the theft of Phil's guitars -- all of them -- it was much more than musical instruments that were stolen -- it was a piece of his soul and a large part of his wife's heart, not to mention the disbelief of many friends who offered their support as best they could.

Word went out immediately after the theft occurred. Flyers were made and distributed to music shops, musicians, local bars and other establishments. Friends and family were alerted, but to most of us it surely seemed the damage was done and it would be among the saddest and empty Christmas seasons for Phil and Holly.

And soon there was a rare occurence.

The flyers, the notifications, the messages to friends and family, and perhaps also the prayers of a vigilant wife and deep tears of a soul becoming silenced --- came to fruition. The Angels on High, maybe it was Phil's angel, or Holly's, but somewhere a new angel earned its wings and it became a wonderful life for these two as alert employees at a Columbus area music center notified police when they recognized the stolen guitars someone had brought into the store to sell or trade.

Phil went to the police station, was able to indentify that part of his heart and soul recently taken and returned home with the knoweldge and experience that yes indeed, some times the good guys win. Holly then shared a photo with their supporters of a man successfully reconnected to all of his soul -- not only through his music, but also through his love for her and her love of him. You could see that in his face.

 Angels work, so do flyers and so does praying and so does a lot of love in our Universe.