Happy Birthday Momma..

  If you walk into my dining room which used to be a porch, you can see this on the chinking on the south wall: 1937.

The kitchen is 4 years older, with 1933 scrawled into the east wall.

My momma and a portion of my log home are the same age: 78.

We braved the sloppy, sugar, sludge snow and went to lunch, ate yum food, talked about her mom, received a sunshine assortment of flowers from one grandchild at her workplace, then topped it all off with home made German Chocolate cake at our Bible study tonight.

It was a good day I hope.

Mom has two children.  Steve and I. 
She has 8 grand children, not including 3 "new" additions to the family with weddings in 2014. She loves them all.  Every, single one. Still.

Her husband died from lymphoma at age 49. 

Her only son died from squamous cell carcinoma at age 45.

It seems too much, to even read this.  I do not want to write a birthday downer,

but when you've had so much loss in your life, it becomes difficult to get upwind, away from the stench of pain and sorrow. To smell newness and life.

Special days like today magnify losses. Years provide perspective. 

Mom is short, 5' 2" on a good day, I tower over her and this makes hugging her easy.

I hugged her tonight, and thanked You God for her life.
Thank Your for crafting her--in what we call at the Zowada house-- "the baby pool" of Heaven. You made her wonderful and fearfully---Your Word states this truth of all of us in Psalm 139:14.

Most days when I walk into her "cozy little nest" she has Your Words on her lap.  I can tell there is a holy connection and the picture of her with You God, settles in the nooks and crannies of my heart, like butter finds the holes in toast.

I am thankful for the example she sets.

She is generous, she is faithful, she has a fantastic laugh and she is a front lines, stay up at night, prayer warrior.

She has brought many, many requests to Your throne God.

Thank You for my mom. For the gift of who she is.  For her prayers answered and ones she still beseeches You for. You know of these Lord, before I even type them.

Thank You for her steadfast faithfulness in how she loves You. Genuine.  Transparent.  Willing to learn.  Studious. 

Tonight God I pray she will know Your precious, tender presence in her cozy, little house.

My brother and my daddy and me, in 

the U.P.

Mom and I at Hannah's wedding 7-14

4-14 Grand Canyon! A dream made real. 

:)

You are faithful God,
Bonnie