The Best Birthday Ever

My birthday was this past week. It was not the best birthday ever, although it was very pleasant.

The best birthday ever ... that I can remember ... was my 20th birthday and here's why:

Daisies.

Yup. My sophomore year of college, I had my own room on the same floor as my best friends'. I, being from a small town in Indiana and then living in the South, never locked my door. Seriously. If something got stolen (which it never did for real), I was going to be okay with that. And sometimes people needed things that I had when I was not around, so I just left my door unlocked. Of course, that is bound to lead to unexpected discoveries and practical jokes. More than once I returned to my room after class and opened the door to find Cary-from-down-the-hall asleep in the papasan chair. And whenever I would see that, I would smile and quietly close the door, puttering down to another friend's room. That was why I left my door unlocked. Cary needed a place that was clean and quiet ... a place to rest and retreat ... and I could offer that.

So on my 20th birthday, I went to class. And when I came back from class, I opened my door to find a veritable daisy explosion before my eyes. There had to be no less that two dozen vases of assorted shapes and sizes filled with handfuls of daisies. There were some actual vases and several makeshift ones as well ... emptied bottles of water, mostly.

Daisies are my very favorite flower. They are commonplace, unassuming, and yet, beautiful. I dare you not to smile when you come across daisies. [I don't actually dare you to do that, because if you happen to be able to, which is I'm sure possible, then 1. I lose and 2. that's really sad.] And there they were, everywhere I looked there was a vase of daisies clearly visible. There were so many vases that even a week later, I was still discovering new ones.

It's pretty simple. No rock climbing, or death defying, or expensive shopping trips. But I really felt loved that day, that moment, when I walked into my room and was greeted by a visible expression of my friends' care for me. They weren't even there when I found it, but they were at the same time. In each of those flowers, telling me a story of joy and leaving me a message of love.

Sometimes I forget that story, but I hope I keep remembering it at just the right time, so I remember how important life is. And how great people can be.

"I know the heart of Life is good."

-John Mayer

Good Friday and Children

I just finished with a Good Friday service at my church. It was a Stations of the Cross experience. There were five stations, each accompanied by a portion of the crucifixion story of Christ, a reflection and an action of response. It was good. Very good. While I was going through the Stations, my visits lined up with a mother and her three daughters. The oldest was probably 13. The youngest, probably ... 7? I'm really terrible at guessing age. And weight. Those carnival guys win big on me every time. Anyway. One of the stations pointed specifically to the brokenness in the world, for which Jesus died. It was a flash movie filled with tragic images from the world - natural disasters, the holocaust, starvation, abandonment, massacres, accidents, explosions. It was pretty ... dark. And this mother stood with her three young daughters and watched it and reflected on it. And that was amazing to me. At first, I didn't really think anything of it. But then it hit me as they walked away ... it seems so strange to take children to a Good Friday service. Almost bad parenting, and borderline extreme/brainwashing. But I admire those parents. This world is broken. And though it's true that we don't want our children to experience any more of that brokenness and pain than we have to, although we want to shield them as much as we can, want to bear the weight of it for them, we cannot. They will encounter the reality of this world the second they step out the front door. There is no shield, there is no protection. But to enter into that pain with your children. To acknowledge it. To recognize it. Is somehow to take away its power. It's still horrible, but the brokenness of the world does not have to become your brokenness.

I do not particularly want to have children, or if I do have them ever, I'd rather adopt them at an older age -- where no one else wants them, where they're almost beyond help. Part of why i don't want to have them is that I don't want to break them. But I'm learning, from my friends who have children, that kids are resilient and much stronger than I'm inclined to think. Madeleine L'Engle, of A Wrinkle in Time fame, has a quote that says something like "If you have something important to say, put it in a book. It it's really important, put it in a children's book." There is something in a child's spirit that can endure so much more than adults can, I think. They are not tired. They have not been disillusioned. Their imaginations (and therefore their hope for something better) are still fully intact and functioning at optimum levels.

And no one really knows how to raise them, children. But somehow, we all have gotten to be adults, who are, and we're none the worse for the wear. We all have problems and we all have victories.

I hope that mother and father go home with their children and talk about what they thought about, what they saw, and the hope that we have through it. Perhaps it is bad parenting to expose young children to that pain without the hope of redemption, but because we have Christ, because we have Hope and because that does not HAVE to be the end of our lives, I think it is beautiful and right and strong and hard.

Life and Movies

As you know, I'm a fan of Donald Miller's and at some point in the past couple of days he's suggested (not personally) that I try writing a scene from my life, because 1. our life is a story made up of memorable scenes and 2. writers should write every day, like musicians should practice. Now, I don't consider myself a writer, but I do like to write.

So I've been wracking my brain to come up with a memorable scene for me to write about. And I can't come up with anything. All I come up with are intensely boring or painful scenes ... neither one do i want to write about. And the ones I do come up with that I could write about are not more like something out of a movie.

And that got me thinking. Why do we so frequently refer to events of our lives as "just like a movie"? Why don't we ever watch movies and say with the same sort of fondness "that's just like real life"? What's wrong with real life? Okay, so I know what's wrong with real life. People say mean things to and about each other. People hurt each other. We get disappointed. I get it. But sometimes life is all right. Just the way it is. It doesn't need to be like a movie.

But with that said, I'm watching Driving Miss Daisy right now. I've tried to watch this movie/play so many times through my life, but have never been able to get all the way through it. But watching this movie now makes me understand my grandmother a little bit more. My mom's mom, that is. I think she and Miss Daisy have quite a bit in common. Quite a bit. I wonder if I'll interact with her any differently after seeing this.