Tag Archives: family

The 29th Year

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Reflecting on the last 28 years of life. A letter of gratitude.

Birthdays, the day of the year everyone celebrates you…or as I found out yesterday, National Puppy Day or National Chips and Dip Day. (Seriously. I had no idea, though I did some research and National Puppy Day started 10 years ago, and I’m pretty sure Tostito’s just made up Nat’l Chip and Dip Day). I’m not complaining. In fact if my birthday went by as barely a blip on peoples radar, I’d probably be okay with that.

She says wistfully, though fully realizes that to make this more achievable she’d have to take it off of Facebook.

2015 has been a busy year, I don’t know where the month of February even went, I can look at my calendar and see I did stuff, but I don’t think I ever registered it was February and now here we are bringing March to a close with April sneaking up quickly.

2014 was a year of surprises and new adventures, I received a grant that has allowed me to continue my education in hopes of a master’s degree, I got to spend 6 weeks in Boston and explore the historic city with the knowledge that I get to do it all over again this summer. I got to celebrate the weddings of good friends, and see others welcome beautiful children into their lives. I was asked to be a bridesmaid, and will soon have a sister who is kind, funny, gracious, and brings out the best in a brother I love most dearly. And there is so much more that took place in my 28th year, those are just some of the highlights.

I have a pretty good memory. I’m not trying to brag, its more just a statement of truth. I remember a lot if not all of my birthdays. For most of my life, my birthday seems to come and go, during my schooling years this was because my birthday was almost always during spring break, I have no complaints, just an understanding and desire for quiet birthdays. Yet as the day came to an end yesterday, I found myself reflecting on the ones that truly stand out.

My fifth birthday, when a friend made me a shirt with puff paint that said Princess Kelly. Yes I still have it. It’s hanging on the wall in my bedroom at my parent’s house.

My eighth birthday, when my mom and dad pulled off a pretty incredible surprise party.

My 10th birthday, when my parents wouldn’t let me open any gifts until 8:30pm because that was my time of birth.

My 14th birthday, the birthday of all the LipSmackers and lip gloss.

My 16th birthday, when I made my own Batman cake and watched the Oscars. And yes the Oscars used to happen in March. I’m not making that up. It didn’t move to February until my senior year of high school.

My 17th birthday, when my teacher made me grilled cheese sandwiches in class.

My 20th birthday, when my friends pulled off an epic surprise dance party.

My 21st birthday, on Easter Sunday (and all the continued/belated celebrations of the following week).

My 26th & 27th birthdays, spent in Butte, MT with a 100 high school youth working their butts off for their Diocesan Convention…

And lastly my 28th birthday, where I was supported and loved by family and friends around the world. Where I was flooded with good wishes, laughter, hugs, and prayers.

Yesterday was my birthday, and to be perfectly honest it was a rough day. In the midst of all the Facebook post and texts wishing me a perfect day, I was dealing the the possibility of loss. Sadness threatened to overwhelm, but thankfully happiness and peace won out and for that I cannot truly express my gratitude in words, but I’m going to try.

My day started off pretty normal…I woke up at about 7:30, not to my alarm, but to the sound of notifications and texts…ahh yes, it must be my birthday. My mom called from Nashville we chatted about the ordinary day that I would have, and she reminded me that she would be heading to St. Louis the following day to spend some time with her mom who has been in the hospital for a while. I told her I’d continue to pray from Grandma and that all would go well. The day started, I went to work, no staff meetings (Reconciliation day) and all was good. Later in the day I talked to my Dad who told me that his mom had had a stroke the night before, and to please pray for her. In need of lightening the conversation we then laughed about my abysmal NCAA bracket. After the call with my dad, and the earlier conversation with my mom, I just needed to be alone. Needless to say I was feeling pretty blue, after a text exchange with a friend, a Facebook post asking for prayers, I received a Facebook message from a former youth who is studying abroad in Rome this year. She sent me a picture (above) and message…

“Hey Kelly! Lit a candle for you at Notre Dame today, I hope you have a wonderful birthday! Thank you for your friendship and guidance throughout the years…”

The message went on, but how can you be upset after a moment like that? I talked to both brothers for 49 minutes each. I swear that wasn’t planned, it just happened. I was sang to over the phone by five beautiful girls. I was sent Jack Handy Quotes, and Snapchat videos, and at the end of it all, as my younger brother said so confidently, “I know it’s been rough, but you’re a good person and today is your birthday, so nothing bad will happen, not today, it just won’t. Got it.”

Got it.

I know I said that I’d be good if the day passed like any other and it’s not that I can’t take a compliment or don’t want the attention, it’s just that I find it hard to have all the focus on me. But I’m changing my mind, because I got the best birthday gift a person could ask for. Love.

The biggest gift of having a birthday is the love that is poured out upon you, and I want to thank you all personally, and on a much larger platform for your friendship, love, and joy.

I am blessed beyond measure by my friends and family, and have decided that my 29th year will be one of gratitude for all of you, and the blessings in my life.

It’s on the internet now, so you can totally hold me to that.

Also I should point out that Mark called me first, but that Chris was the first in the family to officially wish me happy birthday with a text at 6:30am. (It’s always a competition between them but they’re both okay…or best, I guess they can both be the best).

UPDATE

Heard this morning that Grandma Jane (my Dad’s mom) is up talking and doing well! Continued prayers and support would be appreciated. But sooooooooooo grateful for all your good thoughts and prayers!

Sympathy for the Devil

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Please allow me to introduce myself. I realize in terms of blogging that I have left out the necessary introductory post, where I tell all of you about myself and why I have decided to start blogging. Now that I have a somewhat captive audience I figured I would throw it out there.

Here’s the deal, if you’ve read my previous posts (all or some) you hopefully have been getting a pretty good idea of who I am. If you’ve been reading them and are still in the dark, well then read this, then go back and re-read all the other posts and maybe it will begin to make more sense to you. 

So I started this adventure called “my life” back in 1987 with a lot of help from my parents and some support, but more pokes and prods, from my older brother Mark. Almost three years into this new life, Chris came along and RUINED EVERYTHING! I am just kidding, but that was my reaction to basically anything he did post infancy until probably mid-high school. I love my family, seriously, they are the funniest people on earth. You should see our group iMessages. They are also the most supportive and loving people ever, despite the fisticuffs we’ve been known to engage in. Don’t worry it’s been at least a year since the last fisticuff. (I really like using the word fisticuff, I now need to use it on a regular basis.)

I am a fiercely loyal friend. I will engage in fisticuffs (see I told you I liked the word fisticuffs) and bar brawls for my friends. For real. I overuse the term “best friend” because I consider A LOT of people to be my best friends. Deal with it. My friends are just another branch on the Kelly family tree. Even if we don’t talk anymore, there’s still a branch for you, it’s why I have a hard time deleting people from Facebook.  

There are a few friends that I refer to as my brothers or sisters. These people have seen me cry, and I don’t mean just silent tears streaming down my face. I mean full on ugly cry, where I have sought them out to be my rock in the turbulent times of my life. These people are right up there with my brothers and parents, though most of the time they don’t mock me as much. 

It is because of a few of these sister/brother friends that I started writing down my stories and thoughts and put them on the inter webs. They encouraged/bullied me into pursuing my incessant need to share my thoughts and stories. It was 75% encouragement and 5% bullying, and the other 20% came from my bedroom walls and car who were tired of having to listen to me ramble on.

So here it is. I am now blogging. And more so I am now publicly posting the blog on social media. Baby steps. I am a rambler, and I get off on tangents super easily. You should be a fly on the wall when I am writing these things down, one time is all it takes. Also just be happy that the finished products are under a 1000 words, because before I re-read and edit them they only make sense to me…and trust me, no one wants to read my stream of consciousness, I don’t even want to read it. 

So thanks for joining me in this new venture I hope you enjoy the ride. 

If you’re my friend you now know that I would hit someone with a pool cue for you. And now my brothers, parents, and the rest of the world knows that I would straight up punch a person out for them. I am sure my parents would be so proud. 

Apologies to my brothers, Mark and Chris, for posting things about you to the internet without your consent or permission. And to my parents, for not always accurately portraying you. The perspective of a child is vastly different from that of semi-grown up Kelly.

To my friends who’ve seen me ugly cry…yeah…um…let’s just not talk about it.

For those of you who understand the title, congrats, I accept you.

If you haven’t figured out the significance to the title of this post and how it relates, Google it, then let me know what you find out. Enjoy the rabbit hole.

9 Innings of Bliss

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It’s the end of October and Postseason Baseball is in full swing, as an avid St. Louis Cardinals Fan and a lover of baseball since I was a kid, October is like the Superbowl to me.

Growing up and watching baseball in the 90s I saw some amazing things, I saw the Braves rise and fall, the Yankees dominate, Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks come out of nowhere, and even the year without baseball.  All that time I loved to watch the game, but would become easily bored, leaving the living room if we were watching at home, and even wandering the stadium with my cousins when we were lucky enough to be at a game.

The 90s were also a tough time to be a Redbirds fan, I don’t know if you know this, but the team isn’t really listed much in the history of that decade, with the exception of Mark McGwire in ’98 and I don’t know if you follow baseball, but that didn’t end well. However the mid to late 2000s and now the 2010s have been very good to my team.

Seriously…have you been watching baseball the last three years.

The problem with my team’s sudden surge in popularity and wins, however means I am constantly having to defend myself against a large number of people who will classify me as a bandwagon fan. This irks me. While I may not be a numbers person, and I don’t memorize batting averages, ERAs, or RISP, I do know what’s going on with my team…all the time, I follow the trades in the off season, the recruits and draftees and their ascent through the farm and triple A system. I know what’s going on, on the field and if anyone were to sit down and actually talk with me about baseball they would know that I didn’t just “hop on the bandwagon.”

However, engaging people in that conversation can be difficult. Why? Because baseball is a slow sport, there is no time clock on a baseball game; it will go on as long as it takes for a team to win. While some people find this tedious and boring to watch, I revel in it. Over the years of watching and learning about the game I have found that baseball is a finesse sport, a unique chess match that happens on the field, and one that will be different every time.

The past couple of summers I have spent a lot of time watching baseball, mostly on TV, and when I watch I become very still and calm, you never know when someone will make an amazing catch or hit a grand slam. Patience is the name of the game, even when you get nervous and the team is losing. Patience and a cool head is what keeps pitchers’ in the game, what keeps the batters cool at the plate, and what keeps the fielders from making mistakes. Even in the most stressful situations patience and calm will keep things from getting out of hand. Long gone are the days of my fidgeting and leaving the couch, and when I’m lucky enough to get to see a game in person, there’s no aimless wandering around the stadium. That’s why you show up early.

Watching baseball, has given me a better prayer life. Seriously, it has taught me to be present in the moment but to keep a calm mind and heart. It use to take me a long time to sit down and calm my mind when it came to my personal prayer, and even then within 20 minutes I was fidgeting and putting myself on the clock. (You know like just 10 more minutes and you’ll be good). The problem with this is that I was never fully putting myself in the presence of God. I would spend 10 minutes calming my thoughts, 10 minutes whining to God and asking for advice, and then another 20 minutes thinking about how much longer I needed to sit and “listen” before my prayer time would be considered adequate.

This is not how you pray.

Prayer is a conversation with God, which means that it needs to be a two way street, if prayer was meant to be one way, it would simply be called a monologue, of the internal variety. There is no time constraint on prayer no minimums or maximums, prayer is about being open, calm, and peaceful, to communicate and converse with God. 

Listening is the hard part, to do that we have to learn how to calm our thoughts, to be okay with sitting in silence and waiting to receive him.

Baseball taught me how to wait, something we struggle with in our NOW society, people find baseball boring and outdated, I think this is because we’ve forgotten what it means to be patient, how to wait, and to be okay with waiting and not having the answer come right away.

They say the best baseball happens in October, and that may be, it certainly seems more exciting. However, astonishing and beautiful plays happen in baseball all season long, you just have to be willing to wait and see.  The Fall Classic may only come around once a year, but your relationship with Christ is there everyday, if only you choose to participate.

On that note…

Go Cards!

A Joke Only I Could Get Away With…

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This isn’t my first take at writing a blog. When I was a junior in college I was a student blogger for our small liberal arts college, it was a pilot program and was supposed to show both parents and prospective freshman that we had normal lives. Apparently we were successful, because they have kept the student bloggers as a part of their online presence ever since. Score! However, we need to rewind all the way back to the beginning.

My junior year of college was actually quite unique, I had just transferred into a small college of about 1300 students from a state university of about 14,000 students…needless to say it was a bit of an adjustment. Let’s just say there is a reason we referred to Carroll College as Carroll High School.

As I was new to the school, I was really just trying to find my footing and was truly trying to keep my head down. In a school that small if you sneeze, give it a minute, and the entire campus knows you have a cold. Get my drift.  About mid-September Carroll started to advertise that it was looking for student bloggers. To apply you just had to submit a blog and email it to the admissions office. Suffice it to say, my roommate and I thought this was the funniest thing and continually joked about submitting a blog. However in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how unique to the school my perspective was, and perhaps it could be useful to someone who was thinking about transferring. *Damn me and my need to serve other people!*

One evening, after finishing my homework and messing around on Facebook, I found myself writing a blog submission and before I knew it I had emailed it to the admissions office. It was at that moment after I hit send that my roommate walked in. She looked at me sitting at my desk, took in the look of shock and disbelief on my face and said, “What did you do?”  Turning towards her with wide eyes, and moth ajar I responded, “I think I just applied to be a student blogger.”

Within two days I was meeting with the admissions staff and 3 other student bloggers and was set up and ready to go. And within two hours of that meeting the entire student body knew that I was a student blogger for Carroll. Happy Thursday!

The next day my parents were in town, for my younger brother’s soccer game. After the game they took my roommate and I to dinner. It was at dinner that I decided I should tell them that I was the new internet celebrity at school.

As we sat enjoying our appetizer I looked across the table at my parents and said, in a serious tone, “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.” They immediately looked up from their chips and salsa and I continued, “I’m pregnant.”

Let me digress for just a moment, this was not what I intended to say. I was simply going to tell them that I was a blogger, but in that brief moment my brain decided that this would be the perfect time for a joke.

I only let that settle in for maybe 2 seconds before I followed up with, “just kidding.” But those two seconds were all it took, my roommate, having no idea that I was going to say that, just burst out laughing, while my parents stuttered into recovery. My mom shook her head, a slow smile beginning to spread, while my father muttered, “two years at a public university and nothing, then a month at a Catholic college and you’re joking about being pregnant.”  Then as if it was planned, my parents both looked at each other and said simultaneously, “She’s your daughter!”  Then burst into loud raucous laughter. I told them about being a blogger and we continued dinner without any more surprises.

After that, I wanted nothing more than to write a blog about that moment. However, I realized that people would have to know my parents and understand our family dynamic for that to resonate, and perhaps, since I still wanted to keep a low profile, that this was something that I didn’t need to share with the whole world.

Sometimes there are moments that we experience and we cannot wait to share them with our social world. And in the days of Facebook, Twitter, and smart phones, it is easy to immediately share them. However, sometimes it would be in our best interest to hold back, to keep those things in the personal moment file for a while before making a world-wide announcement. Remember that moment when Jesus took Peter, John, and James onto the mountaintop and you know, was transfigured in front of them? Yeah kind of a big deal, and the disciples were excited and wanted to stay there and set up tents, but then they were scolded (gently) about trying to keep Christ from the rest of the world. But in a twist, Jesus asked them to keep this particular happening to themselves for a while, to not rush right back to the masses and tell them all about this amazing thing. Remember that moment? Do you know why he did that? I mean it does seem a smidge hypocritical, doesn’t it? In reality Christ was protecting his disciples as well as the timeline of how things were going to happen. If Peter, James, and John, had run into town screaming about Jesus, Elijah, and Moses, people would have thought they were crazy, which would have been to the detriment of all they had accomplished already, and also it would have led to a very angry Jewish community, and then Jesus never would have gotten back to Jerusalem…you see what I’m saying?

In our culture of over-sharing, it takes a wise and patient person to keep things under their hat. It also takes some contemplation, something that I think we could use more of in our status updates. I cannot imagine what the next two years would have been like at Carroll if I had told everyone about my “pregnant” joke. People were still getting to know me and I could have hindered that, by simply choosing to act without thinking (which is exactly what lead to me blurting out the pregnant thing to begin with).  We could all use a little more contemplation and discernment in our lives, because who knows if you don’t, you might just write a blog connecting an inappropriate joke to the Transfiguration.  Happy Thursday.