“It can take a lot of work to assimilate [our challenges] into our lives in a way we can live with, but each experience is an important integration point, an opportunity to align the ego with the soul.” – Lauren Artress, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE

When I was a little girl — curls wrestling for dominion between red plastic barrettes that barely contained their sway — I spent the entire month of February anticipating my birthday and dreading the arrival of what was inevitably Detroit’s worst winter storm. If the Great Storm arrived before or after my birthday, I was happy; if it arrived on my birthday, I was bereft. Big Birthday Snow always meant The Six O’clock News was filled with stories of pile ups on the John C. Lodge and of fathers who had heart attacks shoveling the snow from their driveways. I did not know, then, that loss is an integral part of every day, of every season, and spent many a February 25th determined to reroute my birthday to a sunnier (presumably deathless) Spring day.

Like most childhood apprehensions and desires, this one found a temporary resting place in my subconscious, then resurfaced when I least expected it. Many birthdays later, as I’m driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, windows rolled down, radio cranked, listening to the tin bells on my earrings plink in the warm, offshore breeze that swept through my car, I suddenly realized I was experiencing the fruition of my oft longed for Spring birthday. That the desire which had defined the winters of my girlhood was actually satisfied, nearly stopped my heart. It was a defining moment, one that fed my growing hunger to learn more about a God who paid attention to my secret longings and answered them at times and in ways far better than I could imagine.

Like all of us, there are still things I wish were “Springier” in my life. My little girl self did not know that these things, even the things that are dear to me alone, may not be possible or may not be in my best interest in the grand scheme of things. Learning to move through this ambiguity is grist for Life’s mill. But when you reach a certain age, and when you have enough “Sunny Birthday Experiences” under your belt, you begin to trust that eventually your best interests and best answers will find their way to you.

There is Light at the end of the tunnel. Pass the word!

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