My birthday came and went the last week of July without any fanfare. Kyera hates it that I don’t like being fussed over or celebrated with a party or special stuff. I don’t know why I don’t! Maybe it’s because being an only child, I was spoiled and had all the parties I could ever want when I was young so I feel all partied… out? (I need to think up another blog for why I’m not the self-birthday partying kind.)

I lost a friend in early July to breast cancer. Mine was just one life that she had touched by her friendship and faith and her losing her battle made me appreciate life in an even more profound way. (More profound because as an orphan, death had already left its mark on my life at least twice over.) Her battle was swift. She was brave and because I believe in Eternal Life, I rejoice that Maileen has ultimately won. Freed of her earthly body, she is now cancer-free for all eternity.

Maileen Hern and I may not have been best friends, but throughout the years, we shared moments wherein we connected — as moms, as fellow outreach leaders, as longtime members of Victory.

I welcomed my 41st year uneventfully perhaps because on some level I was afraid to change the status quo of my existence — wake, work, sleep, repeat — and rock the proverbial boat. Two days after my birthday, something in me changed.

I turned on our neglected-after-its-first-week two-month old Wii and fired up the Wii Board and its Wii Fitness Plus. I did a six minute routine and felt like I had just run a marathon. I woke up the next day, and the next, and today, I’m a day away from hitting my three week mark and proud to say that on a recent Saturday, I did routines and played the games for more than an hour. An hour!

But thinking of Maileen leaving this earth at thirty-eight only helped me get on the Wii the first day. That same day, I learned of a college acquaintance who tragically died of pneumonia. Miguel Fabie was a campus heartthrob in my book in 1986 when I was a freshman. We didn’t run in the same circles and I don’t remember us being properly introduced but we did smile and say hi to each other on occasion — I probably did more of the smiling and hi-ing— on campus or out on the town on a Friday or Saturday night when I occasionally ventured over to the higher-end places where he hung out.

My friend and bassist from a band I sang for in college, Robbie Dinglasan, sent out this tweet about Miguel passing away on July 29. I was shocked. I wasn’t sure how old he was but I cried thinking he must’ve been in his early 40s. My age. Robbie and I tweet direct messages and I found out Miguel had a wife and a son and a successful career as a photographer. My heart went to Robbie, one of Miguel’s closest friends.

A couple of days ago as I inspected my Twitter follower list for new people to follow, I chanced upon Gerdie Francisco’s name. We had worked together several times on voiceovers when she was an audio engineer. I checked her Twitter profile. She had been battling cancer. I wandered over to her Facebook profile and found out she had passed away a few weeks after her last tweet. I was crushed. She was forty-three.

My body aches in a good way these days from taking on the Wii every morning for six to eighteen minutes depending on how crazy the morning is. I think about my friends, I think about how short life is, I think about my possibly being at the halfway mark — or beyond — of mine.

Since I turned forty-one:

1. I’ve stopped putting off tomorrow what I can do today: fix my filing cabinet, bite my tongue when I’m angry, walk past the cupcakes…
2. I’ve started ignoring the temptation to click on the dozens of links that swim by my Twitter stream because my InstaPaper, Twitter Favorites, and Evernote are full, full, full of articles I’ll never read.
3. I’ve started setting goals for my life for real.
4. I try every day to show up to life, live on purpose, and love it.
5. I realize that the God who found me as a lost, angry, fearful twenty-one year old, has never left my side — even when a husband did — and He finds me still even when I feel lost, angry, and fearful at forty-one.

(I sure hope that someday I’ll make it to a Smucker’s Jar, God. I have a daughter to see thrive and flourish in Your plans for her and I hope that grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are in the picture.)

But that’s entirely up to God.