Birthdays are special days–and at times in our lives when we’ve thought we wouldn’t have any or many more of them, we learn a new appreciation for them. Actually, it’s a new appreciation for life itself, but the day is the perfect day to acknowledge and celebrate that.

Today is mine. And I’ve made special plans, but none more so than what I’m doing right now, and that is sharing my birthday wish and hopes with you.

My birthday wish.

Wishes are special things. They speak to the desires we hold close in our hearts. And to accomplish mine, I need your help. Someone very special to me is having surgery today, and my birthday wish is that she have a successful surgery and a speedy recovery. A full, speedy recovery.

So if you’ve a spare moment in your hectic day, please join me in wishing her well by whatever means feels right to you. Prayer, healing light, wishes for the surgeon’s skill and the medical staff’s expertise to be focused and sharp and on point. For her body to work in tandem with all that’s needed for healing quickly, painlessly.

This person is loved by many and needed by more. And I appreciate your adding your thoughts, prayers, and wishes to mine. I’m grateful, and I thank you one and all.

My Hopes:

Hope is a fragile thing. We dare to hope, and when those hopes aren’t realized, we fret over whether or not we should dare to hope again. But we should dare. We should always dare. There is a reason that hope springs eternal. It’s because so long as life exists, there is potential and possibility. So I do dare to hope. And this morning, these are a few of the things for which I hope:

I hope that our troops remain safe and those who come home feel appreciated and their needs are met.

I hope that the desperation becoming evident in home invasions and crimes ceases so that home is the serene haven it should be.

I hope that those in need feel the care of those able to assist, that those in pain know relief, and those grieving are comforted.

I hope Oprah’s Big Give catches on and becomes the next big thing. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something to help someone else. Wouldn’t it be amazing if doing so became all the rage!

I hope that leaders get a grip on egos and greed and actually do what is good and right for people counting on them.

I hope we don’t spend the next year trapped in the negativity of dirty politics. We’re not Democrats or Republicans, we’re Americans. It’s time we remember it and remember what it means.

I hope we get our priorities straight: shelter our homeless, feed our hungry, care for our sick, and protect our children. More than anything we need to love one another and that means not looking the other way when someone is struggling.

These are my hopes. I carry them in my heart. I cast them into the world, too. Within and without. And maybe, just maybe, if they are embraced by enough of us, we’ll see them realized.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Oh, but it would. It truly would…

And one more. A personal, work hope: let lives be touched by the work I do, and let me be strong enough and wise enough and determined enough and lucky enough to continue to do it.

In my office hangs a sign. It’s been hanging here for many, many years. It reads: “When I grow up I want to be a Fairy Godmother.”

Today, I’m daring to hope that this too will come true… and one day, it just might!

Blessings,

Vicki

Vicki Hinze
2008

Tags: birthday, wishes, hopes, authors, novelists, writing, writer’s library, Vicki Hinze