Lily,
I am at work, but want to take a minute to wish you a happy birthday on our blog. In the past six months, I have been particularly in love with you, and I pray you have not only a happy birthday, but also that your 36th year will be your best year yet!
In this past year, you have shown so much courage. Courage to explore, courage to think for yourself. Courage to be yourself. Your spiritual breakthroughs have catalyzed my spiritual breakthroughs, and what you have taught me is that we all hold different pieces to the puzzle of human experience, and as soon as I can drop the idea that I have the whole puzzle, I can embark on a life that is dazzled by all of the pieces others can share with me. It has been breathtaking to learn to learn, and that is something you have taught me.
Thank you for creating new passions in me. New passions for classical music, for reading, for travel, for adventure, for amazing food, for new ideas. Thank you for your spirituality, for introducing me to Nas, and Richard Rohr and sharing my love for Paul. You have brought SO much color to my life. Thank you for being a friend. For making me feel I can be myself around you. For forgiving my errors SO graciously. For making me feel important, capable and loved.
Thank you for the way you love others. For the experiences you have that uniquely translate to others. I’ve seen the way you’ve ministered to so many other people this last years, especially those with spiritual wrestling. You are wise, loving and so so so empathetic.
Thank you also for the sacrifices you have made for our family. You are currently on medication and wearing orthopedic shoes (I still think they are cool!) still coping with one of the many physical pains you face from all your body has been through in both baring and raising children. Thank you for giving beautiful experiences to our children, even when you are in pain. When you cut up fruit so they could do fruit art on Monday evening, I was so happy to contemplate the creativity and fun you bring to their lives, not to mention the month-long trip you have just organized for them. So much of what you do is for them, and for me. I hope today, your birthday, will be much more about you.
Most of all, thank you for sharing life with me. For sharing dreams with me. You are my joy, my life song, my best friend, my sun and my stars. Thinking about you makes me smile, and your love is the greatest gift of my life. Among other joys you find on your birthday, may one of them be my shouting from the rooftops, “You have filled me with joy! I’ve never been so in love!! You are a dream-come-true to me! My oasis!!I love you!!”
