It’s that time of the year again. Today is my birthday. While it is probably the least celebrated birthday ever, it is the most appreciated. What a year it has been! There is no way that I could have imagined the monumental changes that have taken place since this time last year.
I have this thing about birthdays. I think that a person’s birthday is their very special day of the entire year and that it should be treated as a very special event. I think that your birthday is the day that God gives you a promotion. Remember when you were in school? If you completed a successful school year and learned your lessons, you got promoted to the next grade. Well, that is how I think of birthdays. If you complete your year successfully by learning the life lessons that you need, then God promotes you to the next year.
Now I also think that we all have some subjects in school that were harder to learn than others. And when we didn’t make the grade in that certain subject, we had to repeat the lessons until we learned what we needed before we passed. I look at life lessons the same way. I really believe that we get a chance to learn many lessons in this lifetime and that we have to repeat those lessons over and over until we learn them and then we can move on. Therefore, we can pay attention to what we are doing and learn the first time over keep repeating them as many times as it takes to get them right.
Oh, life can be so easy if only we would allow ourselves to make it so. Each day can be such a pleasure that we can enjoy by doing a quality job and sharing our time with lots of really incredible people. And we can laugh and enjoy our experiences and grow in life by learning from each other.
So today I got promoted. This was the hardest year ever but I can truly say that despite all of the obstacles that I encountered, I learned so much more about all of the people around me. I cannot begin to tell you what it means to have the best husband in the world who not only has been there in the good times in the past but who proved how awesome he is through all of the toughest times that came my way this year and he showed me what it means to share them all successfully and come out the other end better than ever.
I had family members with whom I have not had much contact in recent years suddenly come forward with offers of support and help in every way imaginable and they have not just faded into the sunset after the hardest hurdles have been crossed. I have had friends and co-workers with whom I have reached levels of understanding and appreciation that I could never have imagined.
All of this has added up to one understanding in my mind and that is that had I taken the time to appreciate all that I have in my life with so many awesome people, maybe I would never have had to go through the whole cancer crisis to learn this lesson. I hope that I am wiser for understanding how I have grown and that I will never be foolish enough again in the future to have to learn a lesson the hard way. What a wonderful life I have!!!!