Love actually is... all around

I think I have finally figured out why I love birthdays so much.

A birthday is permission to celebrate someone, permission to be "cheesy" and sentimental, and tell someone "you're fabulous, and I love you".

For the second year in a row, I am absolutely flabbergasted by the wonderful sentiments people have expressed to me on my birthday.

People's kind words, generous hugs and big smiles have completely overwhelmed me, in a GREAT way!

I have documented every year about how the period of time leading up to my birthday is always a time of melancholy for me - where I evaluate what I have accomplished to date, and what I had expected myself to accomplish - and I always fall short. It makes me sad to get another year older because I feel so far behind.

But what I have been awakened to this year is - to have the love of the people in my life, and to be able to express how much we value each other: that is the greatest gift in life.

It's been under my nose in the Bible my whole life, but my full appreciation for it hit today:

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. "

1 Corinthians 13:1-5


Thanks for loving me.