Happy Birthday Majah!

Today is my Majah's birthday. My Majah is one of the craziest crazies there ever existed. When she was younger she decided to lop off all her hair, wear cargo pants and boots and become a Commy. Then she decided that that wasn't good enough, so she grew her hair out and joined the theater. There she met many interesting, but mostly weird, people. She had a number of unique experiences and participated in less interesting and more horrifying things like killing a live animal on stage - for the sake of the arts, naturally.

This was the height of the hippie movement in the 60's and my Mom was all over it like peanut butter on bread. She got so into in fact that she decided to travel with one of her very best friends around Europe and experience the "movement" firsthand. They jumped on a boat and a hop, skip and an incarceration later they were in Europe. After wandering about eating grass with some weirdos in a commune, running away from crazed and sexually deviant Moroccans, working in a bubble gum factory, taking copious amounts of hallucinogenics and nearly freezing to death on the canal in Amsterdam, my Fajah and Majah finally found their way to the light.

The light they found was a bunch of crazy hippies like themselves who now instead of being high on everything on the planet like they were before, were now completely and unequivocally high on something much more fantastic - Christ. Yes, my parents became Jesus Freaks. For real, because that's what they called themselves back then. And they loved it. They loved every single minute of it. They loved it so much actually, that they never stopped loving it. Until today they are both full time Jesus people. They wake up everyday and do what they've done for years, serve the Lord, and they're great at it.


Majah's main thing for years now has been to help others in their time of need. Sometimes that involves helping the needy, distributing food and supplies, sometimes that means taking care of the people who are doing the distributing and heavy lifting - so to speak. Sometimes it means listening to people whine about their lives and helping them make tough decisions.

Majah can do many, many things, but one of her most important gifts is the gift of peace. She has the ability to make you feel peaceful. When things are troubling you and you feel you have no way out and that it's the end of the world, she will totally bring you back from the abyss. I know that most mothers have this gift with their own kids, but my Majah has this gift with everyone. Across the board. Everyone she knows goes to her for that, even my hubby. Yes, my husband goes to his mother in law to talk. I think that says it all, doesn't it? Once the son in law is won over in that way, you know the person is seriously special.

Recently Majah found out she has diabetes. She did not go into the depths of despair, she decided she would fight it - and she did. She now has it under control, as well as her high blood pressure, and is jogging and exercising at the gym, and doing all the things a normal 58 yr old would never do. But then again, if you read from the beginning of this post on, you already know that there is nothing "normal" about her. She really is special - and I'm not just saying that because I'm her daughter. I'm saying that because I'm awesome and I recognize awesomeness in others when I see it.

All that to say, Happy Birthday Majah! I hope you have a wonderful 58 more years (unless you're falling apart and there's no more patching you up by the time you're 100, then you have my permission to go on to your Heavenly reward).