Birthday Love

I was conflicted yesterday about what to do. One of our daughters-in-love is great with child, lives about an hour away, and it was her birthday. Our son-in-love, who lives thirty minutes the other direction, shares the same birthday (and his wife, our daughter, is great with child as well). There were lots of pregnancy hormones in the ozone layers, so I just invited everybody over for chili and a potato bar. Birthday politics can be complicated in a big family, but after all the mess and mayhem was over and I was laying exhausted in bed, I thought about how sweet it is to have such precious people in my life.

The grandchildren are getting to an age where most of them now spill out to the yard and play like there's no tomorrow. They run in and out, sweaty and happy. I get hugs coming and going, but they're really here for the cousin love. The adults can even (mostly) eat in peace now. It's amazing. The big ones entertain the little ones. Our grown children are teaching their children well, so they're learning to work out their fusses by themselves and there's little to no whining going on. At the "big" table, there are serious theological debates being had - last night's was about baptism and Paul and Silas and the Philippian jailer (look it up). No light subjects here. And then in the next chapter there's someone joking about something, cracking us up so I can hardly breathe. All of this thrown together on a wing and a prayer and a group text yesterday morning. That, plus some extra pantry items from my daughter-in-love and a trip to Walmart. Sometimes I think the best things in life are done without a lot of planning or forethought.

Life is fragile, then it's not. People are a mix of many things, all of us with fatal flaws that could threaten to crack us plumb down the middle. All of our relationships are subject to the whims of our humanness; they are precious and worth protecting. Sometimes they are beyond saving, no matter how hard we try. Then again, sometimes, God makes ways in the wilderness when everything else is impossible. Love your people while you can.