Happy Birthday to Me!

Tomorrow I will be seventy-seven years old. The repetition of the 7 number makes an impact. 76 slid right into my consciousness, but this one waves a flag and says, Attention, Old Girl, you are reaching a ripe age — the age that obits are made of.

God has blessed me with a happy healthy life, an exceptional husband and a family that keeps multiplying the joys in our lives. God has provided many opportunities to serve Him in so many different ways — more opportunities than I can count. Each day I find something new to do, until I find it necessary to purchase an economical planner. I have to plan ahead, because the plethora of activities that rise in my life buries the planner. Periodically the planner arises again to be consulted.

This morning I opened my email and found one of those forwards…and I changed my thinking for this year. Entitled, You Are Not As Old As You Think — Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, “How old was your husband?” “98,” she replied. “Two years older than me.” “So you’re 96, ” the undertaker commented. She responded, “Hardly worth going home home, is it?

Then I opened three birthday cards from friends and from our third son….what a blessing…
Our third son wrote:

A piano in the house is a blessing that is too big to measure, I’m finding out. First we had the keyboard and Hilarie would ignore it for days. Then at the last possibile minute she would sit down, play through her pieces and be on her way to lessons. But now with the piano, it seems a spare moment can be filled with playing. Right now the piano is strewn with pieces, classical mostly. Great adventure lurks there as she asks us to find her music to learn. As I listen to the strains of Fur Elise waft through the house, I am reminded — what a blessing playing is. As I show her chords on the guitar and watch those long fingers curl hesitantly around the neck, I’m reminded of years gone by…lessons on the piano, the ukelele, as we all learned enough theory to get by. One of the the best gifts you ever gave us was the gift of music. It is the gift that gives generationally. Remember the Suderman reunion when every house we visited had a piano? Now we are firmly a part of that heritage. The Lines Have Fallen, Happy Birthday, Tim(my)

I wiped the tears of joy that memories often bring. My cup runneth over! Seventy-seven comes tomorrow. Just another pebble in the road of life.