It's my birthday. I'm 39. My 14 year-old son and my 11 1/2 year-old daughter are still sleeping...it's 8 am in the morning. I've been up since my husband's alarm went off at 5:30 so that I could be held and celebrated first by him. I sat in the morning sunlight and listened to the birds while spending time with the One who knit me together and desired my existence to walk this beautiful planet.
Here are some of my thoughts as I have now transferred from my bedroom to my porch that graces the trees of the lake:
No one deserves love. Love is a gift that we have the privilege and opportunity to give- not in order to receive it back, but to give- without strings attached, without obligation, without demand...we give it, because we can.
The degree to which you have received love is the degree to which you can give. Not human love, not emotional love, not sexual love--the degree to which you have received TRUE love- the love that comes in and defines you, refines you, knows you- that love empowers you to give love freely.
Words are POWERFUL. They are SO powerful. They created everything we know and continue to define and affect and establish or tear down everything we know. Use them wisely and find every opportunity to bless with them- especially when it is undeserved- because- none of us deserves anything.
CELEBRATE YOU! Not celebrate how you would define you- celebrate YOU, your existence, the life that you have been given, the opportunities yet to have come and simply the breath in your lungs now and the very moment you are in...celebrate, choose joy and find hope in right now.
Be an invitiation. Everything each of us has access to through experience gives everyone else around us the invitation to access the same...I believe this will all my heart. Bill Johnson posted a few days ago that "in us there are seeds for our own dreams and gifts and in us there are seeds for other's dreams and gifts" (modified by how I remembered). All of us have a purpose and a desiring- but all of our purposes and destinies are also intertwined to provide the wonder, affirmation, inspiration and encouragement to the world around us, we NEED one another to unlock the gold we each possess.
It is not selfish or vain to acknowledge you are beautiful, talented, significant, amazing, etc....Owning who you are gives others the opportunity to own who they are, we aren't in competition we are in community and I choose a community of people who value and praise and call-out the amazing things in one another! A community of self-deprecating and falsely humble peeps are the last kind of people I want to be a part of- royal, noble, powerful, wise leaders KNOW who they are and RISE up to that truth! KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!
Who you are is completed in whose you are and whose you are is quite important. I choose to recognize I belong to a complete, loving, all-knowing spirit---not a human being. My strength in identity comes from the foundation in which it is built upon, where is yours?
All deep thoughts can absolutely be interrupted by said 11 1/2 year old opening the door to the porch dancing to "Hey Shorty, It's your Birthday....."
With that said, it is my birthday, and this is your invitation into a life of joy and process and beauty and gratitude through me- BE BLESSED!!!!!
It's time for me to go celebrate....
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