Gifts Outside the Box 3/2/2025

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

While I am and have always been a very dedicated procrastinator, my delay in writing this week hasn’t exactly been due to my usual gleefully pushing things until the last minute but moreso due to the fact that it has just been an insanely busy week. Maybe you can relate to the goings-on of everyday life craftily weaving their way into every second of your day and before you know it the day as over and though you have done everything it feels like you have done nothing. By the time you are up and do your work, family staples like dinner, homework and baths you are left with just enough moments in the day to flop worthlessly into a chair and realize it is the first time you have stopped all day but now you don’t have time to enjoy it because it’s time for bed. A great deal of my days are similar to this and this past week had pretty much every day like this.  So here I am now writing this on a Saturday morning and this blog publishes at midnight tonight, last minute indeed, or last day at least.

Today just so happens to be my birthday. I am sitting here on the first morning of March with my back door ajar enjoying the crisp spring like air and the sounds of very spring-insistent birds.  They have been going for several weeks now adamantly proclaiming the coming season.  I am sipping coffee from a cup given to me as a gift by a dear friend. It was one of those gifts you didn’t see coming. I have only known this lovely lady for a relatively short time but her unexpected expression of outright appreciation caught me beautifully off guard. I didn’t feel particularly unappreciated but when someone suddenly palpably portrays to you how valued you are to them, well, it is a beautiful and powerful thing. The coffee even tastes better out of this cup because of it, I kid you not.

Last night my husband and I went out on a date night for my birthday and my daughter spent the night with her grandparents.  Just as a side note, I did not get rid of my child for my birthday. I asked her would she prefer what we call a “family date night” where we all go do something fun or would she prefer Daddy and I to have a date night, and she spent the night with grandma and grandpa. She chose the latter and yes, I was mildly offended. It certainly isn’t that I don’t want a date night with my husband, but I was a tad hurt that my parents are more fun than her parents but, I suppose that is just the nature of things.  They do have the title “grand” for a reason I suppose.  Later today she and my parents will come over and we will have delicious food and there will be gifts for me. And while all that will be and always is lovely, I’m sitting here pondering my life as it stands after 44 years and realize how ridiculously blessed I am. I have a beautiful home in which I will today be changing over the décor from winter to spring. How joyously frivolous is it that I have different curtains, throw pillows and wreath for the door for the changing seasons?  What wealth of unnecessary pleasures am I undeservedly showered with that I can do such things for no other reason than that they bring me joy?  For the love of Pete, I even handmake the wreaths for these seasons, going to a craft store and buying silk flowers and the like! Never in a million years did I think I would be in such a place to have life so good.  All these little, seemingly simple things add up to an undeniable treasure trove of an existence.

May I always be grateful to be so fortunate to have a wonderful home, a loving husband, an amazing daughter, parents that are fantastic and close enough to enjoy all the time. I do not deserve all the favor that an inexplicably loving God and lavished upon me. There is not anything I could do or say to thank Him enough for the life that I call mine. It falls on me like a glorious weight as I think of it all. I have friends that tell me I am appreciated. I have family that tell me I am cherished.  And for some magnificent reason, the God that spoke the universe into existence has made it abundantly clear, time and time again, that in spite of myself I am loved beyond measure. Happy Birthday to me!