The Best Gift

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I’m celebrating the first day of the last year of my thirtieth decade today. I’ve been sipping a hot cup of coffee in the pre-dawn darkness this morning and thinking about the flurry of years.  


It seems like not long ago my birthday cake boasted sixteen candles and a clunky white Mustang waited in the driveway in anticipation of its new driver. Just yesterday I hugged a brand new baby to my chest and blew out twenty-six flames on a gooey chocolate cake. I watched the flickers of gold disappear as I coddled my tiny firstborn and I thanked my husband for giving me the best gift ever.

 
Time has a way of racing ahead of me and leaving me breathless and dazed. My best gift ever is now a gangly-legged teenager, while my other four best gifts are jumping at his heels. I have no infant to hug to my heart as I blow out thirty-nine candles today. Just a toddler to help extinguish the flames with a spittle torpedo and a grin. 
 
I don’t mind growing older. In fact, so far each decade of life has been sweeter than the one before. But I DO MIND growing numb. I don’t want the race and rush of life to blur my moments, the unstoppable tick of time’s clock to dilute my joy. I don’t want to gaze at seventy candles on my cake one day and wonder what I did with my gift of time. 
 
In the beautiful words of Anne Voskamp, “I don’t really want more time. I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, wild to get it done- yesterday…” (1000 Gifts)
 

There’s nothing I can do to slow the hours, but I can savor the minutes. I can not lasso the years, but I can linger in the moments. I can fully enter the current of life with the weight of all my attention and I can let the grace of today swirl about my soul.  I can dance in its drips and spin in its splashes, and lift my aging hands to Heaven and say, ‘THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THE BEST GIFT!’


The Overflow: This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.-Psalm 118:24


(Check out that photo of me and my first “best gift”! I don’t think I can hold him while I blow out my candles today!)

 
 
 
 
 
Alicia

3 Comments

  1. I AM THE WORSE FRIEND EVER!!!!!!!
    HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALICIA!!!!
    I AM SORRY I CAN’T THINK PAST THE RIGHT HERE AND NOW!

    Reply
  2. Rachel Allord says:

    Happy birthday, dear friend! So glad God linked our paths! Love the pic of you beside your TALL son!

    Reply

  3. Happy birthday to a very special niece! May God bless you today and everyday. Can’t believe how tall that Lukas is!! What a handsome son. But then he comes from some pretty handsome genes!!!

    Reply

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