I know I’ve been quiet here lately, but my life has been anything but the last few weeks. Work has been cuh-RAY-zee. I’ve been packing up to move into my new home in Forest Hills (don’t be too jealous; its a guest house and I’m renting… but still, it’s back into a home and out of the apartment crap).  And Randy and Jon Tyson have kept my mind reeling with good, deep contemplations and meditations (Wendy, Jon knows Mike Tafoya and started telling his story during his sermon; I kept thinking, "gosh, this sounds familiar! But there are a lot of people in New York…" Isn’t it wild how that whole 6-degrees thing keeps coming around; it really is a small world!).

I’ve started several posts, only to never publish them because I was just too dang tired and wrapped up in thoughts and God-conversations to finish them.

But now it’s time for this tired girl to rest and play.

I’m going to Disneyworld!!!!

Yep, I’m going to the Land of Magic —
for a full 5 days of Moments to remember and cherish forever — to celebrate my 40th birthday. I thought it was an appropriate place for a girl to renew her vow to never grow up, or, more accurately put, to never grow old. 

In commemoration of this event, I will ride Peter Pan; the experience that first introduced me to a magic beyond what my own imagination could create. Flying over the city of London aglow with city lights was a wonder of wonders to my little 3-year-old mind. I have delighted in the experience ever since. Perhaps it is even the reason I dreamed and yearned to visit London for so long. When my wish finally came through, God gave me a special kiss on the cheek.  Due to heavy delays at Heathrow, my plane was put in a holding pattern circling London. I looked out my window and there, between puffy clouds lay Peter Pan’s London, aglow in the December night. Amazing! I realized at that moment just how long I’d been waiting to see London; since I first rode Peter Pan at Disneyland when I was 3: 34 years.

Have you ever had a moment like that? A moment when, as if suddenly seeing Life for the first time, you realize a dream is coming true, unfolding like a fairy tale right before your very eyes?

When I look back — turning 40 has a way of causing you to reflect on all that’s gone before — and I take in the whole of my life, I see many such moments. Unfortunately, I was unaware of many of them. I was so caught up in the busy-ness of life and on always looking ahead, looking to the future and planning the "next big thing" in my life that I missed the dreams unfolding into reality right in front of me.

For years God has talked to me about taking the time to enjoy the ride of life He’s laid out for me. For years He has quietly, consistently pointed me in the direction of the turn-outs on the road, where I can stop a moment and catch a glimpse of the beauty and majesty of His amazing creation. For the last few years in particular He and I have wrestled and argued and struggled with the idea that, Life and the radical are experienced in the midst of the routine and mundane, the seemingly ordinary and every-day, contrary to everything my mind and heart have come to be convinced of.

What would life be like for us if we chose to live this way? To live as if everything we do, no matter how routine and ordinary, were the stuff magic is made of? The possible plane ride over London?

(I have so much more to say, but I’m falling asleep…)