Today is Joe's birthday; a moment of honesty

It's true, today is Joe's birthday.  He is six.  Birthdays around here are primarily celebrated with liberal  doses of food along with a conservative dash of disapppintment.  The disappointment arises from an inevitable realization that the piles of presents, the birthday piñata and a never-ending day have failed to materialize.

The failure of the birthday plans is usually my fault and I try to cover my tracks by promising more presents by nightfall.  Plan B ultimately fails as the vehicle is gone for the day and Amazon doesn't do same-day delivery.  So, I move to Plan C - the grandma trick - find a ten dollar bill, a birthday card and a big, "Surprise!  here is your final present."  Sometimes this works.  Hopefully tonight is one of those times.

I did make a cake this year:  a Betty Crocker gluten-free chocolate cake with butter-cream icing.  The only glitch is that I was craving fruity butter-cream icing.  Searching how to do this on the internet led me to adding raspberry jam.  It worked and it tastes good.  The one oversight is that it is pink.  So, for my son's sixth birthday I have managed to bake a very large pink cake.

An inclusive cake.

How I manage to get swept up in the current while swimming decidedly upstream is beyond me.


All in all, today has gone well.  Our fourth child, our third son, our Joseph Michael is six.  He is the child who burst into our family with a cry, a hug and a ray of sunshine.  He pushed us into the "you really are Catholic camp" and caused me to radically trust God in a way that I had never before.
Coming only 19 months after Benjamin, he was the most surprising of our children.

His positive pregnancy test felt like I had handed God my plans only to watch Him tear them to pieces and throw them to the wind.  What I didn't know was that in trusting God I found that He is trustworthy.

In fact, six years ago, after a day of on-and-off labour, I sat down on the couch at 6:30pm to watch "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", a show that I had never watched before and never have since.  Five minutes into the show, my water broke with a tremendous gush, labour began with a frenzy and Dave, just back from a run, asked if he just might be able to shower.  Considering we had only a five minute  trip to the hospital, I conceded.  Joe was born 1 hour and 23 minutes later.

His first act upon entering this world was to throw his arms around my neck in an embrace.  (He can
still reduce his mother to tears as I write this.)  What the next six years taught me was that my original plans were worth very little in the grand scheme of things.  My idea of our family amounted to a few dollar bills; God's idea was Joseph, worth more than millions and millions of dollars.  I don't think that it was any coincidence that his arrival was heralded by that particular game show.  His name means God adds to the family.  Indeed, He does.