…It’s my birthday too, yeah! 😉
Does anyone think of that goofy kid on Sixteen Candles sitting backwards on that chair in the high school wood shop (right?) singing to Molly Ringwald. I always think of that movie on my birthday. And being ‘others’ birthdays, I do want to make a quick shout out to my younger sister who is exactly to the day 3 years younger than me. You know, she’s 26 and I’m 29??? 😉 ha ha ha
Okay, so some pretty cool things happened today and I’m going to go ahead and share them despite what you might think but I need them to journal them for my memory. First strange, yet ‘cool’ thing was when I was in a new exercise class this morning. I went to Gold’s Gym for the new BodyAttack class (which KICKED MY BUTT, but I LOVED IT) and I was standing in the back row. We had just begun so I was not yet winded (emphasis on yet) and I wasn’t standing too close to anyone. I had someone to the left of me but not directly beside me and to the right there was someone a good two people spaces away. We were running in place and thrusting our arms forward and then up to the ceiling when I felt a hand gently squeeze my left side. I stopped running, at the same time looking to my left to see who was trying to get my attention but there was no one standing there. I looked at the girl who was to my left (but, like I said a bit behind me) and she was still exercising and I could tell it wasn’t her. Besides, it couldn’t have been her because it felt like when someone stands to the right of you but puts their arm around you and then squeezes your side. When I’d stopped I’d even put my hand to my side to touch the person’s hand but obviously there wasn’t a hand there. At the moment I recognized no one could have done it (that was in the room) I thought maybe it was a cramp or something but there was no pain nor was it coming from inside, it truly felt like someone had touched me from the outside.
I probably stood there maybe a total of 3 seconds (but it felt like minutes) and started exercising again but it didn’t leave my mind. Of course, if you know me at all, you know that if I didn’t find a physical person who could have done that then I am going to assume it was ‘someone/thing’ else …but good. 🙂 I don’t know why it happened but it was crazy, in a cool way. And it never happened again (nor did I get any cramps through the class so it wasn’t a cramp!!!).
The second cool thing that happened was when I got home. I had just gotten out of the shower and was getting dressed. While putting on my clothes my mind began to think about my age. I’m 37 by the way. 😉 And it dawned on me that two weeks ago was 20 years since…well, even though I talk about it I feel by even saying it today that it brings a downer to everything. But let’s just say my ‘first time’. I thought about that moment and all the crazy things that I’d been catapulted into since and I began to cry. I thought about how many times I’ve spoken to thousands of teens and said ‘Two weeks before my 17th birthday…” and didn’t feel the need to cry because that didn’t have a hold on me. Twenty years later I looked at myself in the mirror and I cried. Not for what was done, not even for me now in the sense of it affecting me now, but tears for what God had done in the 20 years since that moment that I walked away feeling He would never be near me again.
And then I realized that on the 10th ‘anniversary’ if you want to call it that, was when I was asked to join a Bible study by Beth Moore called ‘Breaking Free’. Honest to God, exactly 10 years…we had begun just around my birthday when I had turned 27 and that was the beginning of me opening the doors to fully receiving the fact that God wanted me fully and completely to be His. This realization made me cry harder and in an effort to stop seeing my ugly cry in the mirror I looked down at my phone to see what time it was.
11:11am
If you haven’t read the blog on my love for double digit times then I think you go nearly all the way back to the beginning. But a quick reference is that I was given this special understanding that when you look at a digital clock and it says the same numbers (especially 11:11) it is your guardian angel and all the legion of angels that are fighting around you letting you know they are near.
Every time I see 10:10, 11:11, 12:12, 12:34, 1:11, etc etc I say ‘Thank you God, Gabriel (my guardian angel’s name) and all the angels and saints in heaven for protecting me.’
It was as if I was receiving a message that all these ‘thoughts’ that had come to me about this unwanted anniversary were meant to remind me of my purpose. And I think what a great thing to do on your birthday, after living through yet another year in this crazed world, instead of dreading the age remember the purpose we’d been given since He created us in our mother’s womb.
Thank you to ALL for your well wishes and happy birthday’s! 😉 It is one good thing about FB. lol
Blessings
Shannon