Happy Birthday; January 6, 2021

As humans, we are never satisfied.

I am being sarcastic, but there is a vein of truth to it.

I had a good birthday yesterday.  I do not make too big of a deal about them.  However, it was nice to receive a well wish or two or … 200!  Wow.

Yet there was one that I was hoping for that I did not receive.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

I mean I really had a good day.  

And I had a good dinner at my favorite restaurant with my daughter.  

It is such an annual thing for my birthday that this morning – January 6 – I had a Facebook memory pop up from 10 years ago when she was a sophomore in high school.

Another wow!

Over the last two weeks, I learned from a friend who had a different encounter with an individual that I have written about extensively here the last few months.

I was asked if I was going to be announcing a certain race and they said that they always want to make sure that I get public credit or praise – or something – and I responded – without any knowledge – that I did not need the attention, especially due to some drama that I was experiencing in my life.

And then we realized that we had challenges – albeit different - with the same person.

As the New Year has begun, we have simply resolved as friends to pray for this person daily.

And not with me benefiting out of it at all.

That individual has been offered before an opportunity to talk if they need to.

I tried to ask for time to get to know them a little better.

I cannot do much more for them other than pray for them for God to lead them in their life how His will is for it.

At one point, even after some tough encounters, I had desired to invite them and their two children to dinner last night.

If they had reached out during the day to wish me Happy Birthday, I would have extended the invite, even though, on short notice, I knew that it might be likely that they would not have had time to plan.

However, this all is probably just a good sign that this is where things need to remain.

I am a little sad about that but given what I know and what I think I know, until that individual is ready to have an open, honest face-to-face conversation nothing will ever happen.

And that is OK.

Pretty incredible, though, the love that I felt all over the globe yesterday.  

From both people that I see and engage with often to those that I met one time in person.

I’m grateful.