I'm Turning 50! and 50 Golden Memories that Define Me

So I’m turning fifty this year. The big day is fast approaching, in fact. I have spent most of my 49th year dreading this birthday.

 I never thought I’d be one to dread the golden birthday so much. But, alas, it has about eaten my lunch.

Until recently. In recent weeks I’ve taken a new approach toward my 50th birthday. I’ve decided to proactively welcome it rather than nervously dread it. I liken it to the difference between being victimized by an unwelcomed intruder and flinging the doors open with a hearty and well-prepared welcome, complete with flowers on the table and dinner in the oven, for a long anticipated guest.

My 50th birthday, from here on out, will be treated like a special guest for which I am putting out the red carpet.

That said, today I give you one of what will (hopefully) be seven or eight Lists of Gold. I will post one such list each Sunday leading up to the big day. I’m just kicking this thing off with a hair brain idea, so I’m not really sure what the other lists will be, but I think you can look forward to things like:

• 50 Golden Blessings for Which I’m Thankful
• 50 Golden Lessons I’ve Learned
• 50 Golden Moments I Treasure
• 50 Golden Scriptures that Have Blessed Me
• 50 Golden Places I’ve Been

You get the idea. It’s all gold. And it’s all my effort of setting the table and putting on the Ritz for my big golden day, so that it doesn’t show up all unexpected and unwelcomed and leave me all undone!

Here we go:

50 Golden Memories that Define Me

during childhood...

• When I was about four, running down Red Oak Drive, falling down and skinning my knee, then being carried home by my daddy, where he and mom bandaged my "gaping" wound with a Bandaid and love.
• When I was five, breaking my leg by sticking it through the bottom of the carriage swing to stop it because Greg McDonald was swinging us too fast. (They say your first memories are usually painful situations. Evidently “they” are right.)
• My daddy carrying me down the aisle in my Aunt Ida’s wedding because I was a flower girl...with a broken leg.
• Catching lightening bugs and putting them in a little plastic contraption we got in a box of cereal.
• Playing Batman and Robin with Mark, Rodney, and Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane always got to be Batgirl and I was always Cat Woman.
• Throwing up before almost every class party for Valentine’s, Christmas or Halloween from 1st through 5th grade and therefore missing most of them.
• Setting up a “beauty shop” in my bathroom, sticking a sign in the front yard advertising my services and waiting patiently for customers who never showed up...thank God!
• Asking Jesus into my heart and being baptized by the interim preacher who mistakenly called me Kathy Winton. I’m assuming it took anyhow.

during adolescence...

• Going shopping with my friend Michelle. We were such big girls!
• Reading scores of Nancy Drew books and discussing the ridiculously improbable plots with my friends Candy, Gayle, Laurie, and Kim.
• Being wildly in love with my social studies teacher, Mr. Gary Medford, as were my friends Candy, Gayle, Laurie, and Kim.
• Travelling across the United States with my family for four weeks in a van and pop-up camper to see the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Mount Rushmore. Swearing the one place in this country I would never return to was Arizona. Ahem.
• Learning to water ski with my Aunt Ida and Uncle Gus in Pennsylvania. Hearing from them about the Appalachian Trail that went through the mountains bordering their backyard, and promising myself that one day I’d backpack that thing.
• Playing softball for the 76ers and thinking I was all that...and I really wasn’t.

 during the teens...

• Dancing the night away to the BeeGees, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, the Commodores, Michael Jackson, and the Village People at the dances we had all week during band camp each summer.
• Giggling and plotting and commiserating and talking for hours and hours with my girlfriends--like Michelle and Candy and Jeanna and Julie and Dana and Lee and Elizabeth and others. My, oh, my, did I ever have some of the best girlfriends a teenaged girl can have! And we’re all still friends to this day... :)
• Doing sit-ups under the direction of Ed, our rifle instructor, and being told to “keep your knees bent or you’ll pop your ovaries out.” LOL!!!
• While my parents were out of town, me and Candy driving my younger brother Jimmy and a girl to the movies in my dad’s red, white and blue pick-up truck, them sitting in the bed of the truck all the way to Smyrna and back.
• Going to the lake with Candy and her family for Labor Day weekends, water skiing and skinny-dipping at night with her and her sisters.
• Learning to snow ski with my Aunt Ida and Uncle Gus in the Pennsylvania Poconos.
• Being on stage for the first time in Pippin at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program. 
• Co-starring as Dolly in my high school’s production of Annie Get Your Gun! the next Spring.
• Going to Wallace’s (which became Johnny’s then Donny’s then Johnny’s again) for barbecue with the gang during summer band practices. Always ordering a chopped pork sandwich with Brunswick stew...even to this day.
• Going to Gatlinburg and Sevierville, Tennesee, and other such wonderful places with the marching band.
• Making paper flowers at Six Flags Over Georgia, night after night after night, all summer long.
• Riding the school bus and toting that big, cumbersome French horn case every day.
• Graduating from McEachern High School and saying goodbye to some of my best years and the best friends of my life. (No, I’m not a sicko. Life did continue after high school. But high school was oh so sweet for me.)

 in college...

• After college orientation and registration, announcing to my mom that I had registered for honors drama, economics, Italian and fencing...and her subsequent response.
• Eating the best bacon cheeseburger ever at The Grill in Athens, Georgia.
• Dressing up for football games in my red corduroy jumper and puffy white blouse.
• Sweating at football games.
• Driving the tram and parking cars at Six Flags Over Georgia...and getting a parking lot tan.
• Dealing with a boyfriend that was abusing one of the girls on my hall when I was an RA (resident assistant) in O-House.
• Seeing Hershel Walker on campus.
• The day Anna Strain knocked on Michelle and Julie’s dorm room door and invited the three of us to join her and others for a Bible study in her room one floor down. I know this was one of those pivotal days in my life for which I am most grateful, and she probably has no clue...
• In answer to his question, telling my friend Steve that if I could do anything in the world and money was no factor I’d want to make a career of teaching women’s Bible studies.

as an adult...

• Meeting my husband James at a Bible study hosted by mutual friends, me wearing sweats and no make-up, my hair wet from swimming; James freshly showered and shaven, ready to “meet someone.”
• Marrying James, with our dear friends and family surrounding us, all of us singing Great Is Thy Faithfulness during the wedding ceremony--two verses, even though James swears we sang six.
• Giving birth to my son Daniel...on a day that was both the most difficult day of my life and one of the most glorious.
• Making huge mistakes and discoveries as a first-time pastor’s wife at Bowdon Baptist Church, serving with wonderful ladies such as Kendall, Angie, Evelyn, Pearl and Beverly.
• Giving birth to my daughter Abigail on a Saturday night in Texas City, Texas, just after finishing and hanging the curtains for her nursery.
• Playing and strolling and singing and crafting and rocking and driving around Texas with Daniel and Abigail...oh so happy to be a stay-at-home mom with the two sweetest little children a mother could ask for.
• Making lovely, godly senior adult friends in LaMarque, like Frances and Beverly and Barbara and Marillas and Patty and Janice, but longing, absolutely longing for a girlfriend my age to do life with.
• Meeting Kim and her husband Brent at Red Lobster in Mesquite, Texas, when he was being considered to join James on staff at First Baptist in Mabank,...and knowing right away that I had found my friend.
• Falling down on the golf course laughing with Kim, running the Susan Komen 5k together, making sugar cookies with our kids to deliver to shut-ins, celebrating our shared birthday, and speeding back from watching movies in Mesquite to pick up our kids from school...late again.
• Attending my first writer’s conference in Glorietta, New Mexico, and rediscovering my passion and potential for writing; in fact, selling my first two articles there.
• Driving into Sierra Vista, Arizona, for the first time, tears puddling in my eyes, feeling like I was surely at the end of the earth.
• Sensing the mighty work of God as He helped us not only learn to bear living in Arizona, but to love and embrace it.
• Sharing the Satisfied...at Last message with women in places like Seattle, Canada, Japan, Kansas, and Texas. Watching God work in mighty ways.
• Watching my children turn into godly, beautiful people I now count as friends, and being amazed at God’s grace.

Whew! That was fun...at least for me. Join me again next weekend as I prepare to welcome my 50th birthday with 50 Golden Moments I Treasure.