A Very Specail Birthday

Day 156 – tomorrow is my daughter’s 19^th birthday. We always had this tradition in our family to celebrate birthdays the night before and tonight was no exception. We went to a restaurant and had a great meal and then we went to see a movie.  We went to see Conviction, not really your typical birthday movie, very sad and painful but also a story that celebrates the human spirit and what one brave woman did to over-rule her brother’s life without parole sentence for a murder he never committed. An amazing movie, amazing acting, amazing story of love and devotion on the one hand and a horrible story of bending justice and deceit on the other. It is my daughter’s last teen birthday and it comes to signal the end of a very difficult and challenging year. It is also a year that will be always remembered as a pivotal year, with so many forming moments, a year that will change the course of her life forever and at the same time will give her the understanding of her great strength. She will be able to achieve whatever she wants in life, but what she wants might take a turn she never expected before. This was a very forming year in her development from a teen to womanhood. We celebrated just the two of us, but this year it is exactly what we wanted, to be just the two of us after all we had gone through this year and to know that made it through and came so much better for it at the other end. This was our year, and I am sure some of it will be with us forever.

I am thankful my daughter made it to this birthday, we learned this year that even something like that is not a given. I thankful for all the gifts we got this year; it is not for us to choose our dice but it is for us to choose our reaction, our conduct when facing adversity. I am thankful that at the end of a very dark and long tunnel we found light again. This is a year where we celebrated life and love, knowing that even that is not a given, and we have to remind ourselves everyday how precious is this life and how frail. I am thankful to have my daughter in my life, I cannot even imagine it without her. I am thankful for every passing day, for everyday yet to come.