Special Day (Spiritual Journey Thursday)

Welcome to Spiritual Journey (first) Thursday, hosted here today. This month we’re exploring the topic “special days.” Following my thoughts, below, is a widget where you can leave the link to your post.

Somebody’s turning seven! (Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)

The look on the face of my four-year-old granddaughter—of excitement, anticipation, I’m-ready-for-the-spotlight—said it all. This was her special day.

It doesn’t take long for kids to realize that not every cake with candles and pile of presents is for them. How quickly they learn to let the special person of the day blow out the candles and, hard as it is, open all the presents.

But today was our little four-year-old’s birthday and the expression on her face, even though seen only on video, showed that she knew it was her turn.

I think it’s a great thing to celebrate each person one day a year. In our family we do that on the anniversary of their birth (birthday). Letting the child choose the food for a special meal, the guests to invite for a party, the party theme and decorations, the destination if the activity is an outing are ways to appreciate and affirm each little and bigger one.

We are all created in the image of God as one-of-a-kind beings. What a privilege and joy it is, then, to acknowledge this by giving each person entrusted to us, especially in the family unit, a day of celebration.

Special Day

Each year we celebrate Valentine’s Day
giving our hearts as a present.
Hearts gifted back make us feel special.

Other days we circle too, as special:
Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas day
occasions we want all to be present.

But there is no other like the one I now present
a different date for each of us to feel special
our cake, candles, make-a-wish Birthday!

The day we celebrate the present of each special self.

© 2018 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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Now it’s your turn! Please leave your link with Mister Linky.

 

I sit in a circle of women …

My mother with her newborn granddaughter, my daughter

 

BABY SHOWER

I sit in a circle of women,
exclaiming over sleepers, booties and bibs,
careful not to startle
the porcelain doll –
soft unaccustomed weight in my arms.
I glimpse, across the circle, my baby
almost 17 and beautiful
laughing with her friends.

© 2004 by V. Nesdoly

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Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter! Just before she was born, my husband got a Bible promise for her life from Luke 1:14—the angel’s words to Zechariah about John: “(S)he will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his (her) birth” (NIV).  That has proven true over and over!

I well remember becoming a mom for the first time (she was my firstborn). What an experience—an initiation into a season of life which never ends. Once a mom, always a mom, and I love being a mother and now a grandmother.

I wrote the poem above around the year 2000. It was first published in my 2004 chapbook Calendar.