gratitude on the occasion of my 59th birthday

my mother raised me to keep the number secret after the age of 40. we know our mother’s actual number, yet, even now she hates that we know and hates the number. the last year of my fifties, wow. i remember panicking early (to avoid the rush) about the new number to come when i turned 39 and 49. i feel a twinge of that now, but mostly surrender.

and speaking of which, the universe has been coaching me more sweetly to surrender lately. probably it has been coaching me sweetly all along but in the past i have tended to wait until i break a limb of some kind to listen. the past few weeks all sorts of wonderful teachings have been calling to me, particularly, glenda green’s love without end: jesus speaks and matt kahn thy will be done

 

 

 

while i’m walking around congratulating myself in my head about how surrendered i am to god’s will i hear a friend (also turning 59 this year) say, “i’ve lived a full life, i’m ready to go whenever my time is,” and my internal will screams “no! not ready to go. not even close”—which doesn’t strike me as all that surrendered. i consider that to be what my 86 year old mother should be thinking, not me. it true that i’ve lived a wonderful full life. and it’s also true that i’m not ready to go by a long shot. it’s also true that i’m aware that i have no control over the timing of my death, and so much more. having lost a two month old brother when i was 2 and a half and 55 year old father when i was 25, i learned that lesson early.

anyway, thank you, god

for another year of life in this human body

for loving me unconditionally every single day whether i loved myself or not

for giving me a greater experience of your love every day

for letting me experience the fittest healthiest most energetic body of my life

for my beautiful strong, sexy, healthy, contributory husband

for our independent, healthy, brilliant, beautiful children

for another year of life and time spent with my mother

for the rest of our wonderful loving families

for our beautiful home

for my many loving communities

for allowing me to write more

for allowing me to be and experience more of your love in my many communities

for the glory of yosemite national park and my great privilege to spend so much time in it

for the glory and resilience of nature

for everything else that you have given me that i have either forgotten to mention or haven’t yet noticed.

i am so blessed. i am so grateful. i am so grateful for all that i have and all that i am.