Speaking the Truth

We don’t like to speak the truth about evil because we’re going to hurt somebody. Let me tell you, you are going to hurt somebody, but that Somebody is God. If you would rather hurt God than your neighbor, there is something wrong with your spirituality. It’s your obligation to speak the truth and everyone can either take it or leave it. But truth must be in us. We live in such poverty of the truth today.
- Mother Angelica

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Celebrating Birthdays

Before I married my husband, my family celebrated birthdays when it was convenient. Which mainly ended up on a Friday night, or Saturday afternoon. Well, my husband's family does things quite differently. We celebrate each person's birthday, on THAT DAY. At first, I was pretty annoyed with this. I kept thinking, "Why in the world do we need to do that?? Why can't we just do it on the weekend for goodness sake?" Granted, some other words may have come out of my mouth at the time, but now I'm so glad that we do, and for several reasons.

First and foremost, our birthday is the day that God gave us life outside of the womb! This is OUR day, our very special day that we were officially welcomed into the world He created for us. So why SHOULDN'T we celebrate that day on that day? We absolutely should! It's definitely something to celebrate!

And secondly, my kids get to spend time with family. Everyone is so busy nowadays with work and other obligations we have as adults, families don't get to spend much time together anymore. When we get together, the kids wrestle around with their uncles sometimes, play with their aunts and grandparents, and have a great time with their cousins. These are things they are going to remember! They are going to know that their birth was something special and important to us.

So, while I complained in the beginning, I'm so glad that we do this now. Yes, it gets tough and tiring sometimes (we have 2 in a row twice during the year!), but it's all so very worth it.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

We do this for our own kids but my hubby is from a family of 11 kids and now with most all these siblings married, kids, even grand kids.. and to top that off.. we don't live close to them.. so we don't do this with his side and I miss that. But we do it for our kids and I know that they love it:)

Karen said...

Yeah, I think I would miss this if it was gone. It would be totally weird not to visit with family on the birthday. My daughter ended up getting sick yesterday and her birthday is today. I was truly sad that we may not have been able to celebrate her birthday tonight. But she seems to be feeling better and no one else is sick. So I'm praying everyone stays healthy so we can celebrate her big day tonight!!