I've got conflicted feelings about my birthday. I've had really "not good" birthday memories in my past. It makes for some confusion and unease inside of me. Yet I also have this really important memory. On December 31, 1999--I got adopted by the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's my "Gotcha Day."
I'm only starting to understand what it means to be a Spiritual Daughter of Mary. She's an adoptive mother I feel like I don't know very well yet. I sort of flash around her name and I'm stunned at the doors that spring open to me. Saying her name in prayer is like this "passkey" that opens up everything on earth and inside my own clenched and locked down heart.
Thank you, Lynn Rupp for giving birth to me. Thank you, Mary, for watching me over in my hospital crib on the Eve of your Feast Day. Thank you for calling me into my vocation of marriage and into the Catholic Church on my 25 Birthday. Everything good in my life comes out of one single Hail Mary I said to you inside a dark church in Paris.
