Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday!

I was talking to my homeschooling friends today at our co-op school and some of the moms moaned at the mention of birthdays. I remember being a young overwhelmed mom with lots of little ones and a husband who was still learning about how to make me feel loved. I am afraid I cried every year on my birthday for the first decade of marriage!

Thank goodness this life is all a learning process.

And thank goodness for little girls!

Life being a learning process means that we need to be patient with each other. Young husbands tolerate burnt meals and too many toys on the floor while we figure out how to manage raising kids and housekeeping. Young wives endure forgotten birthdays and anniversaries, sometimes feeling their hearts will break, while their husbands slowly dawn awareness that happy home-life revolves around an appreciated woman. Time helps both of these, as we practice on each other and learn how to love and be good to each other. Don't despair, young moms, if you have one of those absent-minded husbands. They eventually learn to remember our birthdays, just as we eventually figure out how to manage our homes and govern our children.

And thank goodness for little girls! . . . because they grow up to copy our consistent modeling. And if our modeling includes celebrating birthdays, showering love on others, demonstrating kindness and sensitivity—it will come back to bless us! Once those little girls grow to even 8 years old, they will start prodding Daddy to buy balloons or flowers or to make a birthday cake. Boys are great too—I love 'em—but many of them have the same awareness deficits as Daddies, and are not always so quick to remember to lavish love on the women in their life. Little girls often delight in planning, card-making, fussing over, decorating and remembering!

This year, being the mother of 3 girls who have schemed and assigned "to-do's" to my boys, I am being spoiled on my birthday . . . and it is so fun! All the forgotten birthdays are dim in my memory. Grown kids who are good are an enormous pay-back for all the intensive years of having young ones when you really put in huge amounts of caretaking with little recognition.

So, here's an advance "Happy Birthday!" from me to every mom who might feel a little neglected on her special day. You are so very important!

And . . . Happy Birthday to me!