Today is my birthday. For me, birthdays conjure up thoughts of milestones and of beginnings. In this case, the milestone is that I have no way around being in my LATE 30s. But, that's OK. We also have beginnings. That's a whole different story. A big, wide landscape ahead of me. I spent the first nearly 32 years of my life marching along, building the life I thought I was supposed to lead, putting the blocks into the places I thought they were supposed to go. That was, until all those blocks crashed down around me when my marriage fell apart and ended. Endings like that bring about beginnings, and when you really think about it, beginnings are what really give us hope. And hope sustains our lives.

I am truly blessed with neatest and most diverse group of friends, and we all went out tonight for dinner to celebrate. I got all sorts of neat girly gifts, from pedicure stuff to fun jewelry. 37 isn't so bad. I'm thinking I'll kinda like it.

Moments

This morning on the very familiar straght-arrow drive to work, my thoughts wandered off... I've quite often thought to myself how much I'd like to really "write something." Well, on the drive today, I had a really profound thought rise up in me--the idea of writing about those things that are just completely engraved in your brain. I mean those thngs that years and years later, you can recount like it just happened. After I absorbed the idea a minute, I have to tell you, all kinds of those moments began surfacing in my mind. I nearly broke down crying because I was so awash with emotion over it all. I've been thinking about it all day long. And so many of those "moments" have been playing on that little tape in my head: 1st date, nearly having the boat swamped at 4 years old, walking down the aisle, walking across the stage to get my diploma(s), signing papers to buy my home all by myself, going to court for my divorce, buying a car solo, walking into the therapist's office, building a house from scratch, having your husband leave 3 months after moving into said house, hearing that your father has had a heart attack, hearing that your dad is very ill and will be having surgery in a few hours--and he is more than a few hours away, arriving to see your dad right when he's awakened from surgery..and so totally thanking God for his life and his health. Wow! So much going on. I am so totally thrilled my dad and mom and family in general are OK. PTL!