More Birthday, Less Belly

One of the most frequent hits I get on this blog is for the term belly button birthday, which I wrote about nearly a year ago and reread today. It's a term used to differentiate between your birth day and the day you celebrate your sobriety.

This will be a full week. For those of you who are so inclined, my spiritual director, Fr. Charlie, is having surgery in a few days and prayers would be appreciated. He often talks about the ripple effects of transformation in a person's life. I am a beneficiary of the ripples of his own transformation. And I think you may be, too. He has held out a beacon of hope for me when I've been unable to see any way out of the miry clay. This past week he kept asking me the same hard question half a dozen times during our session. It took that many tries before I was willing to consider the question and answer. Fr. Charlie's seen every avoidance tactic I employ and is not fizzed by them in the least. God bless him.

The radio documentary airs this week. That same day I will see my therapist, say goodbye to a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer and has only a few weeks to live, and visit another friend who has been on the brink of death so many times that I've pulled back from the friendship because I can't handle that we're not going to grow old together. Those are more words than any sentence should contain. Oh well. Trying to wrap my head around death continues to befuddle me.

My birthday is the following day.

This year I have more birthday, less belly. Typing that makes me grin because my brain goes into overdrive with too much information. Sorry. Sixty pounds less weight means less belly. The same wonderful rising bread dough punched down flesh that comes after babies and more babies and weight gains and losses and the ageing process that makes it all go south eventually. When you live as far north as I do going south has a nice ring to it. Okay, okay, I'm done being corny. Considering that I was born 12 weeks too early in a time when survival was not expected, I'm grateful for every year I age. No, I don't always embrace that pimples, wrinkles and grey hair can coexist. But in the whole scheme of things, every day is a bonus. I get to live this day.

Friday night I will be on a team for Relay For Life. For 12 hours through the night, one of our 10 member team will be walking around the track with 140+ other teams. The event is held at night to remind us that cancer never sleeps. You know, with my chronic health issues, what a gift it is that I can take part in something like this. Yes, I'll be spoonless for a while afterwards, but I will bounce back. I will bounce back. Well, with my extra skin and less belly, I'll bounce a little further. Everyone should be so lucky. And they aren't. And I'm really aware of that today.