TWENTY NINE Plus Shipping and Handling

This was my dad's joke. I didn't turn 34, I'm twenty-nine plus shipping & handling. Although the shipping is more every year. It's okay not to laugh. I did, but that's because I'm his daughter and I get BOTH of my parents' humor.

Yesterday marked the beginning of my 35th year on this planet. I had some phone calls early in the morning to wish me a happy day, hugs from my kids and a kiss from my husband - but, I didn't feel like I was actually 34 until my mom called me just after 3pm. I'm so glad I wasn't born in the middle of the night - that would be rough.

My birthdays are generally marked by an introspective review of the sum of my life so far...a life that, as far as I can tell, is fairly ordinary in all respects. Which is just fine - excitement is just a breadth above drama as far as I can tell and I've had enough of that.

But two specific things always cross my mind: the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on my fourth birthday and the circumstances of my birth.

I've always known that a volcano ( a dormant volcano) erupted on my birthday, spewing ash as far south as Oregon. What I've always wondered is how I didn't notice it. My mom told me that I was getting dressed for church. Well, that sounds like something a four-year-old would be doing and being fairly absorbed in as to not notice an erupting volcano. I only remember the dress and how it reminded me of Halloween - black with orange flowers - and the cake. It was chocolate with little marshmallows encircling the candles. And in my defense, we were far north in Marysville and the volcano was south...and the ashes were blowing south.

I also recall having my birthday at a park with all of my aunts and uncles - who were, by far, my most favorite people on the planet next to my grandparents. I still love them all so, so much since I think at one time or another they have been my extra parents. It does take a village, you know.

My birth is another tale...I was born in the coastal Portsmouth, Virginia in a naval hospital. My mother had gone in for a routine prenatal check-up when the doctor discovered leaking amniotic fluid. My mother - being quite young at just twenty year of age - found herself amid a flurry of activity as the doctor determined to perform an emergency C-section. The due date wasn't until July, so mid-May was quite premature.

I was born just after 3 in the afternoon (or 15:00 hours) at 4lbs and 4oz and fit in the palm of my father's hand. His hands are big, but still.

I try to imagine myself in my mother's place: being hurriedly prepped for an unplanned surgery, doctors and nurses scurrying about without so much as a word to their patient, being scared and alone and 3,000 miles from home and a mother who had been an obstetric nurse. But, I can't imagine it.

I went from my mother's womb to an incubator, my lungs not fully developed but fighting to stay alive. When I was born, my mother said I didn't cry. She was afraid that I had died. It wasn't an irrational fear: her sister's young son had died days after his birth not very many years prior.

I was given a fifty-fifty chance to live. My lungs were not fully developed and were therefore weak.

When I was a teenager and exhibited my rebellion by smoking, my mother was very angry. Not just because I was smoking and its bad for you, I don't think. I didn't think about it then, even though I know she told me. She watched me fight every day to live in an incubator, the one thing between me and being alive was just being able to breathe.

I have had pneumonia ten or fifteen times, most of the incidents early in my life. I started getting bronchitis every year - whether I needed it or not - just for fun, I'm sure. Me and antibiotics, we have a happenin' relationship. They keep saving my life, I take them til they're gone.

It's about at this point that I think to myself...God must have had a plan for me. He must have wanted me here, must have wanted me to be who I am to do...something. I think that sometimes its easy to get caught up in the fray, easy to get lost in to-do lists and busyness. To have hurt feelings because it seems like other people don't really care, when the truth is - maybe those people are just self-absorbed. It's possible. We all get that way to some extent. I am no exception. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and that when things aren't going the way you planned, they aren't going well. I've learned that sometimes, in those instances, maybe God had other plans.

This gift, this LIFE is altogether amazing and glorious spun together with its mountainous peaks and cavernous valleys. Of the many things I find myself admiring about God's handiwork is the seemingly ironic juxtaposition of darkness and light, of joy and sorrow. We are taught early in life that some things are bad and some things are good. But, if all was good, how would we know it? If everything was light, how could we appreciate it if darkness never lifted to reveal its magnificence? My sorrows may perhaps have made my joys so much sweeter by its variance, my thrills so much more exciting.

My life has been interesting thus far, I admit. Marked by some very painful lows and the consequences of poor decision-making and some just plain difficult circumstances. I have regrets, of course. I hate it when people say they have no regrets because if they hadn't done what they did, they wouldn't be who they are. I don't believe that for a second. It might be true, but I think it's okay to have regrets. It's a visceral reminder that you can't paint a sheen on your mistakes in order to lay them out as accomplishments. For me, its a reminder that what I do matters - and it will matter to me in the future. Today matters.

Also, if there was nothing to regret, I would have nothing to be forgiven for. Of all the things I value most in my life, my forgiveness matters the most. Grace given as freely as this amazing life, as the gift of breathing. I can kneel in my regrets and sorrows and be lifted into forgiveness, the slate wiped clean.

One of my very favorite movies is Life Is Beautiful. It is marked by tremendous juxtaposition. As is my other favorite movie(s), Jean de Fleurette and Manon of the Spring. Foreign. That's what subtitles are for. Although the latter is more cruel irony.

I think we all face unique struggles - unique in that they are our own yet some are perfectly ordinary in their probable frequency. Those struggles make us who we are: champions of our own lives, inspirations for our loved ones (particularly our children), and blessed every day with the gift of breath. So, as I contemplate where I am and where I am going in this life, I find myself just purely grateful to be alive. For my husband, my children, my family, my friends and Facebook Scrabble. ;-) Haha...