Birthday Blogging

First of all, I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for the calls, texts, messages, emails and Facebook posts wishing me well on my birthday! Not only is the outpouring of love wonderful, but it gives me an opportunity to reconnect with great friends that live in various states. So thank you for that gift. As my favorite heroine once said, "True friends are always together in spirit. " ( Anne Shirley)

I am happy. By nature, I'm a happy person I think, but lately I've been concentrating on being truly, down in-the-gut, in my very core kind of happy. And I am. At many times in my life, I've been "here". However, recent events caused some digging and soul-searching, some "spring cleaning" for the soul to get rid of outdated baggage and attachments. And yeah, I know that's annoying vague, but it's not really the focus on my birthday : ) So, I just wanted to say that I am really really happy to be me, on the beautiful sunny days like today (I mean, first time ever to have 70 degrees on my birthday!) and even on the stormy hailing days.That being said, when I'm this happy I can't help but share the joy. So I just wanted to share a few of my favorite things...

*Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens... just kidding. Ok, at least the first part ; )

*  At midnight this morning (you know what I mean), I was listening to the soundtrack from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and it played the song "Here I Am" just as it became my birthday. It made me happy. I love the lyrics: "It's a new world, it's a new start. It's alive with the beating of young hearts, It's a new day, it's a new plan, I've been waiting for you Here I am. Here I am."

* Every time I walk into my apartment, right in front of me is my bright yellow wall with a large picture of the temple in the center. Yellow makes me happy. The temple makes me incredibly wonderfully happy. Elder Richards once said, "A temple is a retreat from the vicissitudes of life, a place of prayer and meditation providing an opportunity to receive inner peace, inspiration, guidance, and, frequently, solutions to the problems that vex our daily lives. A temple is a place where the divine spark in man, or the infinite in man, can seek the infinite in God."

* Nutella. Multiple spoonfuls of it.

* Friends with whom I can have experimental dinners, show up at their doors and cry, take great vacations, travel across the country for, and always lean on when I need some support.

* Movies that never get old. Like West Side Story ( I feel pretty, oh so pretty...) Or Pride and Prejudice. And Bourne Identity or Italian Job ( Fine- freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional).

And that hilarious movie like Surfa Ninjas- "Money can't buy knives."

* And places on Earth that make you feel like you've found a little piece of heaven.

 

* And more than any of that, the Atonement of Jesus Christ is what allows me to be anchored, to find this kind of deep joy and happiness that I cannot find anywhere else. One of my favorite quotes is by Chieko Okazaki about how individual the Atonement is. Not only does he know my pains and fears, struggles and challenges, but he knows my triumphs and happy dances.

"Well, my dear sisters, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt. We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It’s our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don’t think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don’t experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism....He knows all that. He’s been there. He’s been lower than all that. He’s not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don’t need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He’s not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief. "

 

And because He knows all of that, all of me, I am truly happy.

Here's sharing some of my birthday happiness with ya'll!