"Bright, strong, and golden...Shine it all around"

So the big day has come and gone. And I survived. My 40th birthday flew by in a flash of family and gifts and tattoos and crying. Crying? Yes, crying. I had anticiapted the day all summer. Two days before my birthday I lost it. Maybe it was the fear of all the attention I was anticipating. Believe it or not, I don't crave birthday attention. Maybe it was the build up. Whatever it was, I began crying Sunday morning and I couldn't stop. I put my hubby through heck that day. He didn't know what to make of it and honestly neither did I.

By 3:00 in the afternoon I had to pull myself together for a family birthday dinner planned by my wonderful mother. The rest of the day I was pefectly fine. The next day I was too busy at work to freak out. Then Tuesday, Sept.15 arrived. The day I had been dreading. My 40th birthday. What a great day I had!

So what was all the fuss about? As I look back 5 days later I still have no idea. I am not freaked out about turning 40 because I am getting old. I really don't care about saggy boobs, and wrinkes, and gray hair. All of that hit me at 25 when my daughter was born.

I realized that this past year I have really been dwelling more on the passage of time. I might even admit that I obsess over it. Not about death and dying, just the passage of time. It really does fly by. My son was just yesterday playing with action figures in the bath tub and now he is 20. My daughter only just learned to ride without her training wheels and now she is a sophmore in high school. Only last week I fell in love with a cute boy with glasses in 10th grade biology class, and now we are in our 20th year of marriage together.

Time flies by, and dammit, it just won't slow down. I have become one of those annoying "deep thinkers". I find myself dwelling on things like the meaning of life, the passage of time, the "we only live once and it's just a short time", and the "I don't want to look back with regrets".

This week I realized that I have been "dwelling" just too damn much. I have been spending too much of this precious time worrying about precious time. What an ass I have been. Time will pass. There is no stopping it, no slowing it down, no denying it. So we need to embrace every moment of it. We need to live each moment not with the thought that we will never get it back, but with the thought of how precious that moment is and how blessed we are to be living that moment. In the moment.

That is my goal for this year. To really live in the moment. No more worrying about my kids growing old. No more worrying about what a short life we have. Because the truth is we do have just one life, and how beautiful is. How beautiful it has been. And how beautiful it will be.

What a beautiful life I live!! Ready, Set, 40!

You can visit Melissa at The Inspired Room to hear others tell about what is Beautiful in their lives.