Refocusing

I suppose that due to my shameful lamenting regarding my birthday on Thursday...I needed a reality check about how blessed I am...

I got an email from a dear friend who herself crossed over to 40 last month...and a few other encouragements (thanks Donna) that life on the "other side" seems to be going well...

The email from my friend said that she too had been feeling a bit out of sorts with the changing of the decade for herself and then that day, two guys came over to meet with her husband, each with MAJOR challenges in their lives...and she felt like she received a big wake-up call from Him to count her blessings.

I received such a jolt last night about welcome news for my birthday this Thursday...

Qian Qian has recovered from his fever, and is admitted again to the hospital.  If all goes as planned, he will have his lip closed on Thursday!  That is a magnificent birthday present! 

I was standing in my kitchen when I got the call.  I was thinking of how tired I felt at 6 pm...how I still had to make sour cream for Thanksgiving...and roast the pumpkins so I could make pumpkin pie...how I had to make sure and reinforce the flimsy rack in my big toaster oven so that the turkey would not fall down on the little heater elements...and make some sort of cream of mushroom soup for the broccoli casserole base...of the boys fighting raucously over a truck...two girls complaining about having to help me make the salad and set the table...Daddy being home late again from school...two other sisters in a verbal combat over whose turn it was to turn on the heaters in the beds...

I nearly missed the phone call due to the din (in my ears and in my mind)...

Then, like a ray of sunshine from above...He gently reminded me that This (Qian Qian, the Thanksgiving outreach, the precious children he's given me, the husband who serves his family with love and diligence, the school and the people who gather there each day and make our life full)...THIS is what it is all about...and I am blessed beyond compare.

How silly I've been.  How utterly ungrateful. I am ashamed.

What a gift to mark the occasion in my mind of my 40th birthday as the day I wrshped Him by helping a young boy have a future and remain with his birth family.

My life is abundant...as He promises all of us who follow Him...each day worthy of celebration and Thanksgiving...how could I ask for more?  Each day of each year has brought me to this place and I would not go back to some earlier day for anything.  To sacrifice anything He has brought me during these 40 years would be unbearable. 

I am once again, full of anticipation...how much more I will learn of Him...how many more thrilling journeys will He lead us on...in the next years should He give them to me.

I'm embarrassed to have written so much about this...really it is too much navel-gazing...but it has crowded my thinking over these past few days...and I can only write about what has been on my mind.  Otherwise my writing is forced and too dry for reading. 

Taking my eyes of Him produces such silliness...of focusing on things that are meaningless...and missing the matters that are of preeminent value.

Returning my gaze to Him swells my heart with Thanksgiving...