Happy Birthday to me

Today is my 57th birthday.  I am grateful to be alive and healthy, which is a result of being sober.  I have been sober 42% of my 57 years.  In only 7 more years, I will have been sober one half of my life... One day at a time of course.

I don't want to wish my life away.  I spent so many years doing that.  Waiting for this or for that.  Thinking all would be well after some event or another.  Thinking that the people in my life at that time were just stand-ins for the really great people who would be in my life later.  I would hate to tell you how old I was when I realized that this indeed is the real deal.  This is it.  All I get it what I get.  

So I will just go gleefully into work and make the best of this day.  I am truly grateful to be the person I am today.  I am so grateful for the love of God who gave me the chance to live fully.  

"I am reminded here of a rabbinical tale recorded by Elie Wiesel.  He tells of Jehel, a little boy, who comes running into the room of his grandfather, the famous Rabbi Baruch.  Big tears are rolling down his cheeks.  And he cries, 'My friend has totally given up on me.  He is very unfair and very mean to me.'  'Well, could you explain this a little more?' asks the master.  'Okay' responds the little boy.  'We were playing  hide and seek.  I was hiding so well that he could not find me.  But then he simply gave up and went home.  Isn't that mean?'  The most exciting hiding place has lost its excitement because the other stops playing.  The master caresses the boy's face.  He himself now has tears in his eyes.  And he says, 'Yes this is not nice.  But look, it is the same way with God.  He is in hiding, and we do not seek him.  Just imagine!  God is hiding, and we people do not even look for him.'  In this little story a Christian is able to find the key to the ancient mystery of Christmas.  God is in hiding.  He waits for his creation to set out toward him, he waits for a new and willing Yes to come about, for love to arise as a new reality out of his creation.  He waits for man."  --  Benedictus, Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI, p. 378 (December 15)