Almost 40

When I first sat down to write this post, I intended to write a sequel to this post, which was a random collection of unrelated tidbits. Instead, I ended up writing stuff to help me process what's currently happening in my life. I think I'll keep it that way. Thank you in advance for reading my rambling, possibly unrelated opinions.

"He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes -- with the princes of His people. He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 113:7-9)

I guess that's what happens when you turn 39 and your life turns out waaaaay differently than you originally thought it would. You look around and see that you're not married, you don't have kids, you've gone almost 21 years without a date or a real reciprocated love interest, and all you have is God and 2 cats. But ultimately, that's enough. That's plenty, especially when you realize that your 15-year-old felines keep defying the longevity odds and keep surprising medical professionals with their ages at the vet's office. I have breath in my lungs, blood in my veins, fire in my heart, a roof over my head, and a God who likes to hang out with me. I'm OK.

No, I don't have a husband, children, or a network of stay-at-home moms to pal around with. Maybe instead of that kind of life, God decided to give me a giant playground. And I'm OK with that. And if He decides to change His mind about that sometime in the future, I want to be OK with that, too.

Social media is truly incredibly wonderful, but not everything is Facebook-able. It isn't good to share every tiny little life occurrence with your friends. Some things are sacred enough to be kept private. Perhaps this is one reason why Jesus said to go into your room and close your door whenever you pray in secret. Your moment needs to be kept between you and Him.

Not that it's completely wrong to share your life with people online. If it were, I wouldn't be blogging. I'm just saying that if you rob a bank and post your note to the teller on Instagram, the police might catch you. Then people like me will read about what you did, because it's all over the internet, and we will be quite entertained by your egotistical escapade. I'm guessing that's not the type of attention you wanted in the first place.

My current job is located in a metropolitan area which seems to highly respect dogs and wine. (Not sure what the connection is, but it is an interesting phenomenon to witness.) For a while, one of the ladies who works in my building used to take her dog to work with her. I knew this because she would take him into the ladies' room with her while I was there. She explained to me one day while she was wiping him off that the dog had a broken leg, so whenever he would pee, it would get on his leg. Poor pooch.

Yesterday while I was shopping at the Dollar Tree near my workplace, I saw a lady shopping with a one-eyed dog in her arms. The pooch looked right at me. I don't think he/she was in there with his/her owner for service-dog purposes, e.g., as a seeing-eye dog, um, for obvious reasons. And the pooch wasn't barking or doing anything disruptive. I just didn't realize that Dollar Tree allowed canine shoppers. No, the dog's owner was not Hispanic.

My current job is located a short drive from a vineyard. This might explain why everyone who lives in the vicinity has an interesting obsession with wine, and I wonder if it may also have something to do with why one of my bosses has wine delivered to the office. No, I have not dipped into that stuff. No worries. I have plenty of other bondages to work my way through in the privacy of my own home.

In spite of the terrible experiences I had years ago in spiritually abusive environments, I had a mentor who prayed a really cool prayer that stuck in my brain many years ago. It was my birthday, and she prayed that God would give me little presents throughout the day. Perhaps she meant things like His presence or His peace. But I think God my Daddy likes to give me tangible presents, too. For example, a few days after I turned 35, He gave me some cool white hair. It's fallen out since then, but it was still a very nice, very Facebook-able birthday present.

About a dozen years ago, I heard a very nice Andrea Bocelli song playing on a wine commercial. I really liked the song, and I looked for it but had a hard time finding it (especially since it was in Italian, which no hablo fluently). A few days ago when I was buying birthday presents for myself at a used CD/DVD store, I found an Andrea Bocelli CD that seemed very interesting (and cheap), so I grabbed it. This morning when I finally had a chance to listen to the CD, I discovered that track 2 was the cool wine-commercial song -- the song that I had given up looking for, the song that is now in my possession. And I cried. Am I obsessively sentimental? Of course I am. And my Daddy knows it. He loves me, and He loves to give me cool little tangible birthday presents like that. That, in my opinion, is better than any wine.