Birthdays and Growing Up

Tomorrow is my birthday. Growing up, birthdays were always exciting. My mom would make me a yellow cake with rainbow chip frosting every year.  I haven't seen a can of rainbow chip frosting in years, but I can still remember the taste.  It was the taste of joy.

As I've gotten older, birthdays are just as big of a deal, but for different reasons.  When I was younger, the emphasis was the presents. Now the focus has shifted from presents, which are still exciting, to relationships and service. 

I have friends both near and far and my birthday is an excuse to connect with ones I don't get to keep up with often. Even something as simple as a Facebook greeting can be a conversation starter and a reminder to touch base with loved ones I don't see regularly.

I express my love for others through acts of service, and my birthday is a time when I stop and let others take care of me. I pause to remember that I am loved and that people are thankful for my service and presence in their lives.  It's also the time when I can get the kids motivated to help with chores all weekend long.  I have asked Paul to clean his bedroom as his gift to me.  Claire fed the dogs and everyone helped with laundry without complaint.

The past year has been one of great personal growth for me. At this time last year I had accepted that I would eventually enroll in seminary, but it was still far off in the distance and I wasn't brave enough to voice that dream to most people around me. Now I spend my free time studying and I am relishing every second in the classroom learning more about faith and church history. In the fall I'll stretch myself even more as I take two classes instead of just one.  I also know now what each class will require of me so I can prepare for the demands.

Today I am a better writer than I was last year. I know more about myself now than I did then. I've always been comfortable in my own skin, but self-discovery has led to even more self-acceptance.

My baby is in kindergarten, my daughter is blowing everyone away with her intelligence and perceptions, my husband has found he loves reading almost as much as me.

So while I'm not physically growing anymore, this past year has been one of great personal growth. I can't wait to see what my 36th year will hold.

My Magnolia Tree and Faith

I have always loved Magnolia trees.  I love their scent, I love their flowers, I love the strength of their leaves. 

 To me, a tree is always a metaphor.  A tree with a strong trunk represents inner strength.  A tree that has survived a drought represents perseverance.  A tree's roots grow deeper as the tree ages, similar to my own discovery of my spiritual depths.  Depending on the season of my life, I feel like a sapling or a California Redwood.  I can be blown over with a gust of wind or withstand anything thrown at me.

Last Thanksgiving we went to Adam's godparents' house in Texarkana to celebrate the holiday.  Kaa and I spent an afternoon gathering pine cones and magnolia cones to create a beautiful wreath for our front door.  The kids and I asked what would happen if we planted one of the magnolia cones.  She supposed it would grow into a tree but wasn't sure.  As an experiment, I saved one and planted it in my kitchen window.  

Last December the pot was just a pot of dirt with something inside.  I faithfully watered it and watched little green sprouts come up.  I was ecstatic until I realized that the little green sprouts were actually weeds.  I yanked the weeds up but held onto my faith and waited for a tree.

Close to a year later, we have one.  It's a tiny, three inch tall magnolia tree.  It reminds me of faith every time I look at it.  Right now it's still small, but it took 10 months to get this big.  I can't wait to watch it grow and develop into a tree with deep roots and beauty.  Faith or trees don't grow overnight, but it seems that the longer it takes, the more beautiful it is.

Life Truths

In Gretchen Rubin's Book The Happiness Project, she lists "Splendid Truths."  These are proverbs about life.  You don't have to read her book to learn about them; I linked it up above.  I've been trying to think about what my own life truths are, and I've come up with three.

1.  Efficiency does not always equal productivity.  I blogged about this one a few days ago.

2.  Don't volunteer unless you really want to. 
In the various groups I'm a part of, there is constantly requests for volunteers for any number of activities.  A Life Truth I have learned, though, is that I shouldn't volunteer unless I want to do the action.  If I volunteer unwillingly, or agree to do something I don't want to do because I was asked, I resent doing the action and don't do it well.  If I say no, somehow, someone else always comes up and does it, usually with joy.
One example of this is at church in the Children's Sunday School area.  I used to volunteer to be a substitute teacher for the kids' classes.  When I did it though, it was work and I didn't really enjoy it.  I missed the interaction in my adult Sunday school class.  One day I was asked to do it and had double-booked myself, so I had to get Adam to teach for me.  He loved it.  He does a good job and enjoys it so much that he substitutes regularly now.  So once I got my grumpy self out of the way, it allowed Adam to do it with joy.  I love how that works out.

3.  What you get upset about is in proportion to how big your world is.

When I was in high school, I actually got upset about who was chosen to pray at our bacclaureate program.  I am ashamed to say, but I had a petition floating around, getting friends to sign a paper saying that the selected person wasn't "Christian" enough and that I would be a better choice.  Nowadays that's laughable to me.  There are a  number of actions that I did in that situation that were not "Christian" enough.  But the point is that my world was high school and church and so small details of life meant a lot to me.  I cared passionately about the littlest things, like if my necklace clasp had sunk to the bottom of my pendant and who was praying for the class.  My world was very small and I couldn't see out of it to a bigger picture.

When I was in college, I had a larger worldview and got upset about bigger issues like whether or not the president of the university was trying to suppress the freedom of the university press and whether or not I should get my belly pierced and was it okay to smoke a cigarette even if I didn't know how?  Although my world had grown, it was still pretty small and centered on the most important person in the world; me.

After college, I got upset about items at the workplace.  At my bookstore job, if someone put books in random places on the shelf, I was enraged.  At school, we fought over how much copy paper each teacher had, and was someone pilfering it for personal use?  The important things in life again weren't a part of the big picture.  I giggle now thinking back...Had I been on my deathbed during that period, would I have confessed to taking some paper from the office?

Now, after having children, I have gained a little more perspective.  If I lose friends because my hair is crazy or because my toenails were painted by a four year old, then those are friends that I don't want around anyway.  Fashion, schmashion.  If it's clean, I'll wear it.

My world has definitely grown.  Part the growth is realizing how small my world is.  I have concerns for people I can see and I can't identify yet with those from faraway places like Pakistan or Japan.  I worry about the homeless man that gives me a bookmark each time I see him and making sure my friend from church has life essentials.  I try to make sure my children are generous and caring and empathetic to those who are different from them.  I am concious of sharing love with the Wal-Mart cashier or a frenzied friend.

So one thing I've learned about myself is that my concern for the little details in life fall away as I focus on the big details.