Shauna Niequist
For Ginger, on your birthday--
A few thoughts on Thirty:
Age is, of course, one of the most arbitrary ways of measuring a person. I have friends in their sixties who continually teach me about discovery and possibility, and friends in their young twenties who are as crotchety and set in their ways as Archie Bunker. Age, like numbers on a scale and letters on a report card, tells us very little of who we are. You decide every year exactly how young and how old you want to be. Choose to be very young, believing that all the world is new and possible, and very old, believing that patience, endurance, and faithfulness are more important than unlined skin.
On the topic of tattoos, I have one from high school--a Chinese symbol for love, because at that time, I was unlearning almost everything I'd been told about religion, and was left with a deep belief in love. And then a vine in college, because in addition to my belief in love, I began to believe in growth, and as I became once again over time a person of religion, love and growth have remained cornerstones of my faith. If I were to get another, which I might, I'd like an anchor, because over the last three years, the anchor has come to remind me that while it seems like everything is changing, some things hold fast: faith, family, love, forgiveness. I met a woman in Houston recently with a killer anchor tattoo just below her collarbones, practically over her heart, and am now filled with envy. We'll see.
Happy Birthday to you. I spent my thirtieth with my family and dearest friends. I felt blessed and lucky to see each of their faces on that day, and that their presence in my life was and is one of God's greatest gifts to me. My prayer is that on your birthday you feel just exactly the same way.
Love and cake--
Shauna
2 comments:
Shauna, You are my new favorite writer and I am so happy to have a birthday post from you. Thank you for the words on age and for telling me about your tattoos. I hope to meet you one day soon and show you my tattoo, but more than that, to say hello and let you know just how much your essay on THIS IS IT meant to me. I heart Cold Tangerines. Thank you for writing that book and for writing me this post.
Ginger - I just have this feeling of what an amazing thing this is - this birthday blog. To take 30 days of one year and cram alot of love and encouragement into it for one person - its like after reading this blog with you everyday for almost a month, I actually start to feel healing in myself in places I can't even pinpoint. It feels like wisdom you would learn from your grandmother over a childhood and then realize later that it did actually change you in someway. Maybe this month will change you - maybe if we were able to love ourselves and encourage ourselves every day we would be albe to make big drastic changes for ourselves. But since that's so much harder, it's like TJ created this for you. He did it for you and all these people loving you and helping you and nurturing you and I bet its planting these seeds inside that will grow. And I bet when you look back on this month later in your life, you will be able to say - I changed or Change started. It makes me feel so encouraged that we don't have to be stuck with things that we can't shake that started a way long time ago before we knew to filter or protect and that seem to have this really enduring hold. It's like I feel a difference that concentrated love could make in a person. Maybe that is what family and marriage and friends are - love concentrated on the few people in the world that make up our lives and our teams. I love you Ginger and I just had this moment (sitting here at my desk at work, now crying) of sensitivity to the biggness or this special birthday blog. I hope your heart is open to receive all the love from these blogs together at once like a green fruit smoothie to the soul. I love you. Holly
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