Birthday ponderings...in short.

It used to be that every year, on the night before my birthday, I would spend the hour between 11 p.m. and midnight journaling.  Being the sentimental girl that I am, it was important to mark the time...the last hour before I hit that next number.  I remember sitting on the window seat in my dorm room lobby during my freshman year and journaling...that was probably the first year I did it. Now, these many years later, that hour has shrunk to 20 minutes...

...and now, as could have been predicted, that 20 minutes has shrunk to 10 minutes past midnight.  Rex came downstairs, and we laughed, talked a bit, and made plans for tomorrow. And I traded my melancholy journaling time for a sweet few moments with my eldest, my heart, the little boy who made me a mama...and who has grown up quick before my eyes.

On my birthday next year, he will likely just be calling me to say Happy Birthday, rather than walking downstairs close to midnight so that he could be the first to say it and to give me a hug.  I'm so grateful that God knows where he will be and what he will be doing....nothing is a surprise to Him, and amidst my doubts and the many unknowns, I am eternally grateful for that.

Someone once told me that if you are trying to write, and you are stuck, just write something.

Something.

It's been awhile...let's see if we can't get this thing going again.  That, after all, would be a rather good birthday present.

Transfuse

He reaches out and offers. The pokes, the prods, the pain. And no. He tries to hold in the tears, stuff the discomfort, refuse it to come....but come it does.

And then, finally. The red drips, flows, streams. In. And brings life again. And he sleeps.

The Great Colliding

It has been quite some time now that I've considered shutting down my old blog and starting a new one, but tonight--or rather, in the wee hours of this morning--it seems rather appropriate. A new normal--again--has violently and without permission crashed into my existence.

I didn't tell it it was welcome. I didn't tell it to come.  In fact, I screamed "Noooooo! I don't want you here!!!  I am just learning to live with the last new normal!"

But the great colliding has come anyway.  Whether I like it or not.