First Day in a New Birth Year

Happy Birthday to me!

I celebrated my 33rd birthday yesterday and it was an eye-opener for me on many different levels.  Let me list my realizations.  Disclaimer:  not all are happy and positive so for those who are expecting sweetness overdose, you'll get some sugar but some tamarind as well.  Ironically, I like those sweet/salty tamarind candies a lot, but I digress.

Realization # 1-  I am blessed greatly through my mom, kids, and friends.  A great number of people greeted me yesterday via SMS and through Facebook.  When I woke up, I had my excited 6 and 4 year olds greeting me, hugging me, giving me home-made greeting cards and wanting me to blow out birthday candles. My mom gave me a simple but heartfelt gift and a cute greeting card.  It showed how much they were thinking of me and how much they wanted that day, MY day, be special.  After that, all the other greetings were icing on the cake. Admittedly, there were a couple of greetings I hoped would be more (I tried to quash my expectations) but at the end of the day, I realized that those who love me, remembered, and thought about me, wished me well, and that was more than I could expect or ask for.

Realization # 2-  That I am a long way from achieving contentment.  I struggled at times during the day not to feel disappointment or to expect lavish gifts.  See, occasions have always been a big deal to me.  Birthdays, Anniversaries, Valentines, and Christmas were important occasions that could not be forgotten and I thought should be marked with a physical manifestation of how important the date, and I, am/was to a person/certain people.  This was my struggle with the couple of texts I mentioned earlier.

Realization # 3- That I need to pray more and to trust in Him more so that I may not feel alone or afraid over uncertainty.

Realization # 4-  That I am so much better today than I was on the same day one year ago.  So many things have happened over the course of 12 months that it is amazing to look at as a timeline.  Amazing to me.  I have been blessed with this knowledge and relationship that there is this loving and forgiving God who will never leave me, whom I can lean on and trust, and who has my best interest at heart always.  And because of this acceptance my life is brighter and filled with more hope than it has ever been, and this in spite of the same, persisting problems.  I don't know how to verbalize this well here except to say that I am blessed.

To end this post on a lighter note, I will include here a picture of a home-made cake.  I made my very first chocolate cake yesterday, mostly to please my kids, but I only took a picture on my cel phone and I don't know how to upload from it so....

..here is one that looks very similar to the one I made except mine was sans sprinkles.

I am blessed and I pray for the strength, focus, and discernment to live a life pleasing to the Lord, to make decisions and plans according to His will so that I may have the overflow of a fruitful life.



xoxo,
Vicki