Happy Sixth Birthday!!!

Years ago in English class, I read a short story about a writer with MS. One Saturday, she went into the office to get some work done. Finishing up a trip to the ladies' room, her legs gave way and she fell into the toilet. For nothing in the world could she get her legs to work, so she just sat there. She wondered if it had been a weekday, if she would have cried out for help or would she have been too embarrassed and just sat there until she regained her strength. Later she told a friend what happened to her at work and her friend asked, don't you ever ask why me?

The writer turned to her friend and said, no. I ask, why not me? Because by asking why me, I'm wishing my pain, this disease on someone else and I wouldn't do that or wish this on anyone.

That story or rather her response has stuck with me from when I first read it in Dr. Postema's mandatory frosh English class. I try not to ask why me, but instead why not me. If a perfect and blameless Jesus could be beaten, pierced in His side, and hung from the cross for my sins, who am I to ever say why is this happening to me? I am far from perfect. Okay not super far, but slightly far.

I pray one day my son will fully and deeply understand the sacrifice His Savior made. I'm not one for new Christmas songs, but this one by Kirk Franklin and the Family is growing on me.

Listen to the angels
Rejoicing e'er so sweetly
Receiving heaven's glory
The night that Christ was born

Can't you see the people
Coming from every nation
Pleading for salvation
The night that Christ was born

Oh such a wonderful Savior
To be born in a manger
So that I can share His favor
And my heart be made anew

Listen to the trumpets
Shouting through the darkness
Crying 'holy, holy'
The night that Christ was born

Listen to the trumpets
Shouting through the darkness
Crying 'holy, holy' (Now Behold the Savior)
The night that Christ was born


It's making me cry. Oh what a blessed woman I am and what a blessed like boy he is. I had ideas floating around what I was going to write this day. But I'm at a loss at what to say, though my fingers keep typing. I am so madly in love with this now six-year-old. It's hard to remember what life was like without him. Well, it was empty. Okay not empty, but I had no idea how much more of life was out there, that you experience when you have a child. Your eyes are open to the good and the wondrous and the horribly, horribly evil.

I love The First 48. It can be a hard show to watch, but I never cried until the episode where detectives came to tell a mother her daughter had been shot repeatedly with a machine gun and set on fire. The mother did not cry one tear, she nodded and said, I was waiting for this day to come. I told her it was coming. I'm crying now just thinking about it. Oh, the pain she must have felt knowing her grown daughter was on the wrong path but she could do nothing to stop her. Only talk to her daughter, try to impart some wisdom and common sense, but sadly to no avail. Never more since becoming a parent has the tagline, "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?" registered in my mind. When God's hand is not on us, oh the evil and destructive things we can do to ourselves and each other.

Alrighty then, this is such an uplifting birthday message. I can't believe my baby is six. His kinda first Christmas (I say if you spend your first Christmas in a hospital nursery, it's not really your first Christmas), we both shed tears. I shed them because my arms were still empty, devoid of a child. And he cried as his mouth and nose were cleared and he took his first breath. And as doctors, nurses poked and prodded him. And he cried for the voice that he had heard for the last eight or nine months but was no longer around.

His first birthday, he spent in the loving arms of his most wonderful mother at his favorite Auntie Mona's house. Mijo and Tigger had so much fun with him that Christmas as their little baby cousin tried to walk after them and catch up to them.

His second birthday was suppose to be spent in the snow at Big Bear. Unlike his mother, he wouldn't be in high school on the way to a volleyball tournament in Mono Lake before he saw his first snow. But the best made plans are hastily cancelled so instead he could spend his second birthday with his brand new sister.

His third birthday, he opened his gifts on our bed in our cabin as we sailed around Hawaii. Later we went to some national Hawaiian park, where he barfed all the way down the curving road in-between trying to cough up a lung. (Let me just say getting sick on a cruise ship is cause for them to send out the National Guards. Understandable, but let's pull back from the overkill.)

His fourth birthday was spent at Uncle Mort's and Aunt Renee's on a rainy Christmas Day. His new trucks occupied him, as I hugged and kissed him goodbye to go to the airport to get his new little sister. (Don't you love how mommies go on trips, particularly around Christmas time, and come back with little sisters?)

His fifth birthday, his mommy temporarily lost his birthday candles at Ronnie and Oscar's so we had to improvise with real candles for him to blow out. Luckily he didn't know the difference or rather didn't care.

Today another birthday, one he shares with His Creator. I am so in awe that I'm his mother. His mommy. He is a delightful, funny, intelligent, silly, loving, caring, infuriating little boy who brings me such incredible joy. If only I could go back and tell that girl who stood in the kitchen crying, what her next Christmas or five would look like. Would be like. How God had such awesome things in store for her. That all the waiting, which honestly wasn't literally that long, was part of God's perfect timing. That nothing could have happened any sooner because she wasn't ready, because her baby hadn't been born yet. Okay, he was born when I was crying, but we were both completely and totally unaware of each other. I can't imagine a world where this little boy isn't calling me mommy. Isn't wanting me to play cars with me. Isn't trying to play me by crying, "Mommy, I want you." Isn't wiping my tears and telling me it's okay as I shed tears at God's goodness. Isn't trying to put his sisters up to things so he can reap the benefits.

"So it wasn't you who got the truck you're banned from playing with for a week?"

"No, it was Roro."

Right, it was your sister who randomly decided on her own to go into the living room and get the off-limit truck. Gotcha! And really must we copy the baby and make a nickname out of a nickname. A new pet peeve of mine.

Isn't the best big brother a set of Irish twins could ask for.

Oh my baby, who earlier this year told me his birthday was on Christmas. I wasn't trying to hide that from him, but we weren't shouting it from the mountaintops. Christmas was on Christmas and his birthday was on December 25th. I would have been okay with my future daughter telling him on say their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Baby, I don't know what today will hold other than at some point today I'll want to cover you in kisses, be amazed at how much I could love another human being, how I would to quote the Canadian, "walk the world for you/I'd die for you," and how I'll want to strangle you, but it's all good. You, Jory, are truly a blessing and I am proud to be your mommy and proud to call you my son. I will fail you. I will disappoint you. Punish you when it's not your fault. Lie to you. But remember this, my human heart loves you as much as it possible can and know, believe that the One who was born on this day, who laid in a manger, loves you supernaturally and when you follow Him down the narrow path, ohh the glory that awaits.

I love you my precious baby boy!!!! Happy Birthday!!!