I had lunch with a friend last week and she said something profound. Profoundly simple. I just live everyday like its the last.
And I want to too. So a good place to start is with celebrating life and all that’s worth celebrating about it. Daily. In the ordinary. In the mundane. In the big and in the small. In the minutae and in the grand. The footnote asterisk moments, and the all out worthy of champagne and caviar celebrations. The all. The package. The whole entire messy and grandness of it all.
Around here today, this momma’s heart is celebrating.
So I write. I write to celebrate and mark the worthy and the good. To describe the layers of living and life. Tear stained keyboard marking milestones. Sweet and bitter co-mingling on the tongue-tip places. Tasting the past. Savoring time since birthing a firstborn son into a world where he becomes the teacher, an anchor, a place to look for inspiration. A place to go for contagious exuberant passion for life and all that it grants.
Time blurs in the remembering. So I write. And the fingers, the heart, the mind, and memories meld together and weave in and around, back and forth, and swirl up the all good.
I write and remember. Track back and gather up. Gather up moments, milestones, time and time spent. Ways love appeared and the ways love was shown. Beautiful expressions of love. Deeply handsome gestures of care, concern, love, and compassion.
I write to proclaim and give voice to the story. A good story worth telling in bold and in all caps. A story starting with love in love and continually marked by love. Bookmarked with good and great and worthy of being raised up.
A story of a boy becoming a man. Growing in manhood. Tenderly, kindly, strongly, compassionately walking out love. For His God. For His family. For his friends. For others.
A story of gentleness and a passion for life and creation. For the small in the world, the fragile, all that God created with feathers, and wings, and fur, and skin.
A story of caring. Caring deeply for others, always. A story of a heart which seeks to nurture and love. To protect and pour into. Standing firm in Faith. Standing firm in Family. Going long, running hard after friendship. Always digging deep into work, into love.
Happy Day of Your Birth. Happy you have made me. Joyful, joyful I adore you.
Your life is a beautiful praise song to God. You love all His creatures and you love His people in a way that touches deep in me. You have woven your love throughout our family, always caring and searching for the needs of others.
Thank you for walking back into this home, my man-child, your passions, your joy, your love and your hopes. Grateful for your strong tethered heart to this home and this momma. I weep with joy, I weep with gratitude.
Happy Birthday, my son, I love you.
When we celebrate life, we celebrate Him, the Giver of all great gifts. Thank you Father God for pouring out so richly into this life, this home, this day.
And all God’s people say “Amen.”
Amen.
elizabeth w. marshall 
Just sitting here soaking this in, and it’s perfect timing, really. Just tonight, my daughter was discussing this same thing … the value of a single day, and what if the next day was our last? You capture it all so eloquently. … And I want to thank you for your encouraging comment over at my place. It meant a lot.
(Not sure if this went through the first time, so I’ll try again… 🙂
Such a beautiful post, addressing a question that is so timely for me. My daughter and I were discussing just this very thing tonight: What if this day was our last? How might we live differently? … You’ve captured it so well here. Thank you.
And also, thank you for your encouraging comment over at my place today. It meant a lot.
It is a pleasure to have you stop by. Please come back any time. Your visit is a gift. Thanks for kind words. They wrap up this day in tender kindness. Always a good thing. I will look forward to hopping back over to your place soon. Blessings on your mother/ daughter time. Cherish it all.