Good morning…
Grateful to turn fifty-seven today, I am experiencing my most extreme birthday ever.
The word “extreme” is a multifaceted one. As an adjective, “extreme” means very far removed from the ordinary or an outermost point farthest from the norm. As a noun, “extreme” means the highest degree, like “cautious to an extreme,” or two things as different from each other as possible, like “the extremes of joy and grief.” During this pandemic period, we are very far removed from our ordinary normal. Held close to home, we are experiencing a heightened awareness of simple joys while collectively facing gut-wrenching griefs, physically and relationally, financially and spiritually.
Grateful to turn fifty-seven today, I am experiencing my most extreme birthday ever.
In the growing shadow of danger, the sacred and secular blur their lines. Big cities slow down to the pace of small towns. Daily we count a death toll while counting more keenly life’s basis pleasures. Breath. Health. Family and friends. We are physically distancing ourselves while connecting more collaboratively, with loved ones, with strangers, and with the God who is with us day in and day out. We are unsettlingly uncertain while understanding with more clarity the essentials that bond us. Loving kindness. Creative expression. Lifting into the LORD’s care our fears, our future, our human frailty.
Grateful to turn fifty-seven today, I am experiencing my most extreme birthday ever.
With schools and businesses now interacting virtually, the biggest birthday present for me is the presence of our four maturing kids under the same roof, together for an undefined time. Twenty-five. Twenty-three. Twenty-one. Eighteen-years-old. When again will my husband and I happily host all four children, to converse with us over coffee, to “work from home” beside us, to cook and clean with us in the kitchen as we enjoy family meals? What lucky mother receives extended time hemmed in at home with her four young adult children, before spouses and grandchildren might someday bless the branches of our family tree?
Turning fifty-seven today, I gratefully receive.
…Sue…
