Happy Birthday to me.

Tomorrow, September 27, is my birthday. I'll be 38 years old. I have a newspaper clipping with my picture as a newborn in the hospital with my parents. I have countless birthday cards and letters from my parents recounting that Sunday morning in 1970. I have lived a life always knowing how very special I was to my parents. I have never doubted the love they have for me. Tomorrow will still be my birthday. But it will be so strange. My first without my Mom here. The truth is I've spent many birthdays away from Mom and Dad. I was a big "youther" in the church and every fall on my birthday we the youth group, would be away on the fall retreat. Then after graduating from high school I went to NY state for a year of Bible college...far from home. I will never forget that year though. After classes that day I returned to my dorm room to find the room filled with the aroma of birthday cake and a beautiful cake waiting for me on my desk. It was signed from my parents. They had some friends close by and contacted them to give me that surprise. It was precious to me! Then during the years I lived in VA, Mom and Dad would aways make it a point to come to see me and Rob for our birthdays. (My brother, Rob and I shared an apartment in Chesapeake for several years and our birthdays are six days apart.) It was amazing...Mom and Dad would drive 12 hours to spend some days with us, bringing with them a grocery list, a sewing machine and a tool box. They would fill our pantry with food, making home made meals each day, being sure to leave extra for when they would go back to TN. Then Dad would make sure everything from faucets to car brakes worked well before leaving and Mom would mend, hem, add a button, sew a dress, etc. anything that needed her attention. Mom and Dad have always been a team to make me and Rob feel like the most important people on the planet on our birthdays...whether we were together or not.



Although not seeing Mom on my birthday isn't something I've never done before...I've always at least gotten a call. And if we were together I would receive a gift, a card, a hug, a kiss, extra attention from my biggest fan. My overwhelming feeling going into tomorrow is sadness. I know it will still be a great day surrounded by family who love me, but there will be an obvious absence that I dread.



Sheila leads the grief class I'm part of and lost her husband in a plane crash. She describes herself as having a big hole right in the middle. She says it's like you are a wreath, you know the kind you seasonally decorate and hang out for others to see. You try to keep pretty and presentable on the part that shows, but truly you just have a big hole in the middle.



As I turn 38, I'll miss my Mom terribly. But I'm so thankful that I have beautiful, blessed memories to hold onto. I realize many can't say the same things of their lives, Mom's and birthdays. Yes, I am thankful and blessed, even with this big hole in the middle...better go find some birthday confetti to decorate the rest of me.

Why tightly woven...?

So, the title of my blog...tightly woven. It just came to me and immediately made perfect sense. You see, Mom was a seamstress. Not just any seamstress, she was amazing, paying close attention to details and finishing seams. You should have seen my wedding dress which she and I designed and she made by hand-fabulous! She loved fabrics and would carefully choose them for each project. She had a bumper sticker up in her office that said, "Whoever dies with the most fabric wins." Funny, she would have won big time, but gave a ton of fabric to a project in Russia several years ago. Mom was so accomplished that she could throw a dress together in just a few hours. One time in college I needed a dress for a choir performance. She had a box of patterns and fabrics pre-cut. She sewed a dress for me in less than four hours that day so I could have it for the performance the next day. I loved that dress and wore it for years! Mom and I would go to the mall and she would shop not with her credit card but with her pen and paper. She and I would find dresses, skirts, tops, etc. that we liked then she would draw them off on her pad of paper noting the details. Then off we'd go to the fabric store to find a comparable pattern (she could tweak anything to make it work or just make it up) and fabric that would make it one of a kind!

Beyond Mom being a seamstress, I chose "tightly woven" because that describes how our family always was. We were close. We talked about everything, nothing too sacred or off limits. We were encouraged to talk and share and we listened to each other. She and Dad were tightly woven too...many people have looked to their marriage as the ideal. Certainly I did.

So now, without Mom, I remember and try to tightly weave my own little family much like she and Dad did. I realize this takes a balance of so many things...things like, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of seamstress Mom was, but I do hope to be the kind of wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend she was.

The new class...

So I've joined a Grief Share class at church. It's been good. Taking some pressure off of David to listen and try to "fix" something. I know he's grieving too and it's hard on him. The class has some pretty stiff questions to riffle through as I can. I hope to cover some of those here. Still figuring out this tech stuff with the blogging pages...I'm so far behind!