Dear Reader:

Has a whole year flown by since I got the call from Mandy (early morning on September 24, 2014) saying that she hoped I didn’t mind sharing my birthday…because Mr. Jakie was on his way!

Mind? Was she kidding? What greater birthday gift than to have one of your precious grandchildren arrive on the exact same day of your birthday! I figured Jakie had it already planned and we had beaten all the odds…. Out of 365 days to choose from … he chose mine! The gift of all gifts!

Brookie had planned to come from Walterboro to help me celebrate my birthday last year….we were on the phone back and forth last year at this time… since Mandy had already had one “false” alarm… we were waiting to see if this was really it. It was!

I went flying to East Cooper and found Tommy watching Eva Cate because John had just left to go into surgery (Mandy had a c-section) with Mandy. As the morning went on….more family arrived and we had started growing a little anxious by lunch time with no news….only to discover that Jakie had come earlier and everybody was doing good….the information just hadn’t gotten sent out.

The little bell “ping” that announces new babies finally ‘tolled for us’ and my birthday present began unwrapping as we watched Jakie’s first sponge bath and indignant squawks.

We were all holding our breaths how Miss Eva Cate (large and in-charge) would take to having a new sibling to vie for attention… but to everyone’s surprise…she was and is very protective and loving of Jakie from day one.

She told me last summer (when she stayed with me for Vacation Bible School) that she had been lonely before Jakie came. She wanted (actually a little sister-“Lucy”) another child in the house!

I had forgotten that a little thing called “lymphedema”  (swelling in the limbs through fluid retention…fairly common in breast cancer patients) showed up about two weeks after Jakie’s birth which made it a little harder to feed him but do-able! If there’s a will…there’s a way! And there was a will!

Obviously Jakie managed to get enough nutrition and today he is quite the eater…where it goes in that long thin frame we don’t know but he sure loves to eat. Jakie today!

As I was going down memory lane from last year…I started thinking about birthdays in general. By simply being alive  and on this earth…isn’t every day of the year, for as long as we live, our shared birthdays with the world….with everyone else alive at the same time?

I think every day when we get up…we should thank God for another day of life and sing “Happy Birthday to Me!”  From the day of our physical birth…our journey through life begins. The hardest part was just getting here….we should all be proud of ourselves for that first accomplishment…no easy task in itself.

It was and will be the first day of great adventures to come….let us never get bogged down in an acceptance of dullness, routine, boredom, or mediocrity….what a disservice we do to ourselves…our personal birthday gift of life…if we do.

So until tomorrow…Let us never squander our lives away and never, never settle for less than what God intends us to be. Happy Birthday Jakie….Happy Birthday Everyone! We are all the luckiest people in the world ….simply because…we are alive with possibilities!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*I am getting gifts galore from my garden….all my moon flowers are celebrating life for and with me.

*Walsh emailed me this u-tube video on Chris Singleton, CSU baseball player, who lost his mom as part of the AME Emanuel Nine Massacre.

Walsh emailed me yesterday…letting me know that Chris’s story had affected his heart profoundly….and the story did the same for me. Just Walsh sending me this story was a beautiful birthday gift of love from him…the same love that conquers all. It is the strongest force in the world!

Chris knows it, his mom knew it, and all the world should understand that beautiful concept too. Then we all could say “Happy Birthday Everyone Everyday…You are loved!”

*This birthday card arrived yesterday from Kirk and Pam and I just howled…she looks just like me in my gardening attire and the card says: “Birthdays…You spray and spray and the little buggers just keep coming back!”  (Perfect!)

*A “shout-out” to Linda Schmidt who came on board the chapelofhopestories.com/Facebook/blog and changed the total number of subscribers to 650 …today! Perfect timing!