Thank you for helping me celebrate the 50th anniversary of my 20th birthday.

Seventy years ago I hit the lottery. Really. I didn’t realize it at the time, but in retrospect that’s exactly what happened.

He placed me on this planet with a perfect family, in a perfect place, at the perfect time and gave me a blank slate to work with. A new beginning in which I could do anything I wished and how I wanted to do it. I just had to figure out all the little details.

It wasn’t long before I figured out that time here is marked off in seasons and years.

My mother marked off my early years with pale green birthday cakes every year. My father placed candles on the cakes and set them on fire. With each passing year the fires grew bigger and brighter until it was no longer feasible to carry on that little tradition.

As I journeyed through these measured periods of time I slowly found my way.

There were struggles of course. There was sadness. But overall there was joy. You do realize we can choose to be happy, don’t you?

He crossed my path with many wonderful people along the way who enabled my experience here on earth to be enriched beyond measure.

Then one day he sent HER. The one I was to spend the remainder of my days with.

Until then I had aspirations of being a cowboy when I grew up. It wasn’t long afterwards I figured out we would need to eat. So I took a temporary job at a paper mill. It lasted thirty seven years.

He led us from our home in Mississippi, north, to another place on the planet called Kentucky.

There we had a family, three daughters. It was quite a learning experience going from a mostly male family to one dominated by females.

Once again, He knew I had more to learn.

Life did not come with an operator’s manual. If it did, I must have misplaced it along the way.

Then one day I discovered something better. The Bible. Basic Information Before Leaving Earth. It has been a wealth of information and inspiration during my stay here.

That operator’s manual sure did come in handy after having three daughters. He knows I spent a lot of time talking to Him about my girls and how to not mess them up.

Thankfully, like their mom, they turned out to be smarter than me. If you’d asked them about that when they were teenagers they would have told you as much.

Thank heavens for small blessings. Small blessing seem to always follow daughters and I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

In time the blessings were multiplied in the form of grandchildren. Nine of them to be exact.

After circling the sun seventy times I have discovered there is no end to learning. No end to heartaches and joy.

But the greatest of these is joy. And you, my friends, have brought me much joy. I can’t imagine being on this rock without you.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to wish me Happy Birthday. It means more than you will ever know.

_______________
Rick Algood
June 7, 2022