525,600 Minutes Post 1

525,600 minutes (times 42)

From the musical Rent,
525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love. Seasons of love.525,600 minutes! 525,000 journeys to plan. 525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man?In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried. In bridges he burned, or the way that she died.It’s time now to sing out, tho the story never ends let's celebrate remember a year in the life of friends. Remember the love! Remember the love! Remember the love!
Measure in love. Seasons of love! Seasons of love.

How do I measure a year? Is it a calendar year or school year? Is it from birthday to birthday? It’s all of the above. I am celebrating my 42nd birthday on December 6. It’s not a milestone birthday and generally for me, it’s just another day with cake (the best kind of day). I have been thinking though, that 42 years is a long time. That’s a lot of minutes. So in honor of my 42 years, I’m going to share 42 events from my life over the next 6 days. (Otherwise this would be a really long post. So feel free to join me on a trip down memory lane, or just come back next week when it’s over.) Mostly they are in chronological order. It was hard to condense down to 42 events. I thought about giving you 525,600 minutes of my life but that was too much for me to remember.

1. One of my earliest memories is when I was five years old and I played in my mom’s lipstick. I had it all over my face and the bathroom. When she asked if I had been in her makeup, I lied. She explained that made Jesus unhappy and it was a sin, and we knelt by our itchy, ugly, 70’s circa sofa and I asked Jesus to be my Savior. I remember skipping to the phone to call my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Morris to tell her.
2. Standing on an old milk crate to get baptized because I wasn’t tall enough to keep my head above water.
3. When I was five, my dad was attending Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO, and I was in half day kindergarten. I went to the Jack Van Impe Crusade with him. Event at that age I remember hating being surrounded by all those people I didn’t know sitting in the bleachers.
4. My first grade year we lived in Turon, Kansas. My dad was the associate pastor of the Baptist church there. The school was for Kindergarten through 8th grade, and I was in a combined 1st and 2nd grade class. We still return to Turon for our family reunion on Memorial Day and I believe I’m related to everyone in the cemetery, including the current gravedigger. - Hey, Uncle Rolla.
5. We moved to Larned, KS when I was in second grade. Lived there for 3 years. I hated living there, hated the schools, and that was where the meanest girls I ever knew in my life lived. (The two Shellys, Mary, Susan, Janet. How’s life treating you?) I never had friends, never fit in, and remember a lot of pain that was inflicted by the kids there. This is where I first learned to love books and escaped to the library and to books on a regular basis, and to this day the library is one of my favorite places, so thanks for the meanness. Something good did come from those three years.
6. My favorite toy was a small stuffed panda.
7. We moved to Wichita when I was in the fifth grade. I remember sitting in the car in the parking lot of the Christian School I would attend for the next 8 years while my parents enrolled us in school. (I take my kids to enrollment; I wonder now why we were banished to the car? Maybe my folks were afraid they wouldn’t let us in if they met us first.)