Today is my 55th birthday! How time flies! I feel good today. My friend, Muffy called this morning and sang Happy Birthday to me. I told her she had to sing "and many more" at the end like my dad always did...so she sang the words back to me...she said it seemed appropriate. That was a fun surprise!
Sometimes the little things in life mean so much. This afternoon another friend called proclaiming Happy Birthday! when I answered the phone. Several "young people" from Pennsylvania wrote on my wall on Facebook and sent birthday wishes to me. One is now married and is a missionary in Africa and was in our youth group growing up and graduated with our oldest son.
My husband is stopping at a local nursery to buy me 2 lilac trees. My mother always had lilacs growing in our yard, and they will remind me of home. It's something how certain smells can take us right back to a childhood memory. And immediately we feel comforted.
I read a story once about a family whose baby was born prematurely at 24 weeks--was 12" long and weighed a mere one pound 9 ounces. The doctors didn't think the little girl would make it, and if she did, they told the parents she would probably never walk, never talk, never see, and would most likely have other major problems from cerebral palsy to mental retardation. They couldn't touch her as her nervous system was so underdeveloped. After 2 months her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the first time. Two months later she went home from the hospital. Five years later, little Dana showed no signs of any problems.
In the summer of 1996 their family was sitting in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother, Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several adults when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting a thunderstorm Diana, her mother replied, "Yes, it smells like rain." Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain." Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest." Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what the family had known in their hearts all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest, and it's His loving scent that she remembered so well.
"And He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like an emerald." Revelation 4:3
Does God smell like rain? He has a rainbow across His throne. You decide.
