Birthday Wish Come True

Alex has had so many lame birthdays in his life due to newly born siblings or tough high-risk pregnancies of mine, that I am surprised he even chooses to celebrate his birthdays with us anymore. But these last two have made up for all of those bad days of yore. This morning, I started his day with a surprise coffee from Mocha Monkey, and some birthday doughnuts from Kwik Trip. But that wasn't the best part(um, thankfully!). Tonight, he got to celebrate his birthday with Pastor James MacDonald....for the second year in a row. And this time, James came to us.

Well, truth be told, he didn't come exactly to us, rather, he came to speak at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, the first stop of his countrywide bus tour. A location that was easy for us to get to----and it just so happened to be on Alex's birthday. A 35 minute drive this year vs. a 16 hour round trip drive with two feverish, puking kids, last year. So, yeah. It was pretty awesome.

While we had been eating spaghetti at the elementary school, Grandma ? and Lyle had been standing in line, awaiting entrance into the church sanctuary. Their waiting paid off, as they found the most fantastic center aisle seats, only 3 rows directly behind Pastor James. We were so close, and had so much direct eye contact as Pastor James moved up and down the aisle during the worship service, that if Alex had still had his long hair, I am certain that James would have remembered meeting him last year in Chicago!

Meredith Andrews sang beautiful and moving songs of praise and worship throughout the evening, stirring and preparing our hearts to be moved by the Word of God. James preached from the Book of James, which is one of my favorite reads. It is full of truth, word after word, packed with wisdom, without any fluff. Thought provoking for sure, and direct in direction(makes sense to me!). Add the wisdom of the preaching from James MacDonald to that, and whoa! We have some pretty powerful statements flowing around the church!

Alex was thrilled to be there, as was I. There really is not a better way he could have spent his birthday (except perhaps a private dinner with James, himself). And I was so thankful that things fell into place the way they did that allowed him this fantastic opportunity. Originally, Alex was to be spending his birthday evening at school for a solo/ensemble contest until 9pm. But times had changed at the last minute, allowing him a late afternoon departure from school. Divine intervention from God? Could have been!

As I do not have the gift of verbal explanation(only that of understanding what is spoken to me), I encourage you to check out Walk in the Word, the home site of James MacDonald located on my right sidebar under "Favorite Links". God has blessed him greatly with the gift of sharing Biblical wisdom and truth, and we have learned so much in our walk through our online and CD studies. I can tell you this, since diving head first into the true Word of God several years ago, our lives have been forever and eternally changed......for absolute good!

We arrived home rather late, but had an amazing few hours of retreat and respite from the daily grind of regular life. Even though Alex did not get to eat his cake, blow out any candles, or open his presents today, I think he had a pretty awesome birthday anyhow. He got to delve into the things in life that matter most today. We'll get to those other things tomorrow.