Thirty-Nine

Today is my birthday, and I love it.  I truly love everything about my birthday.  I love that my family spoils me and lets it stretch out into a week or two.  I love thinking about my mom holding me for the first time.  I love the phone calls and text messages.  I love the special meals and desserts.  Being born is a special day.

And, as much as I love my birthday this year, I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to next year’s birthday even more.  Forty sounds like so much fun!  It is mature and confident and comfortable.  When I told the littles that I could not wait to be 40, they looked surprised and asked me why.  I told them that I love my life.  I am so happy and comfortable where we are as a family, the stages that they are at in their lives, as well as how good it feels to be so in love with their papa.  Yes, I am all of those things at 39, too, but there is just something that sounds so great about being in my 40s.

However, today, I will live in the moment and just savor it being my day.  I will remember the stories of my own mother telling me about her labor day.  How she told my papaw during Monday night football that she was having contractions.  How she told my sister that she would have to stay behind and meet me later, to which she responded, “Well, I guess I’ll just go back to bed then!”.  How my mother’s sister-in-law was there to welcome me into the world and still holds that memory near and dear to her heart, even though she is not an official sister-in-law anymore but will forever be a special aunt.  How she knew from the moment that she held me that I was all hers and would later heal her when she was almost broken.

Yes, today is special, and I get tearful just thinking of the lives that have changed because I was born.  So, when I think about it being my last year in my 30s, of course I am excited.  I am grateful.  I am blessed.
And, I hope that everyone feels that way on the day of their birth.

Perhaps Nancy Tillman says it way better than I ever could:

So whenever you doubt just how special you are and you wonder who loves you, how much and how far, listen for geese honking high in the sky.  (They’re singing a song to remember you by.)  Or notice the bears asleep at the zoo.  (It’s because they’ve been dancing all night for you!) Or drift off to sleep to the sound of the wind.  (Listen closely…it’s whispering your name again!)

For never before in story or rhyme (not even once upon a time) has the world ever known a you, my friend, and it never will, not ever again…Heaven blew every trumpet and played every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night you were born.

Happy last birthday in my thirties to me!