Sweet Sixteen

"How dreadfully old I am getting! Sixteen! Well, I don't see as I can help it...
I meant to get up early this morning, but it looked so dismally cold out of doors and felt delightfully warm in bed. So I covered up and made ever so many good resolutions..."
                                                                                                  excerpt from Stepping Heavenward


I think that accurately describes me most mornings, and was such on my birthday-celebration day.
I set my alarm for 7-ish every night, and, in the morning when it goes off, I bolt out of bed, switch it off and dive back under the covers, "Just for a few more minutes..."
Well, sixteen I am, as of tomorrow. ;P
Does it feel any different being sixteen?
Nope.
Should it?
I don't feel any different, but its finally seeping through my thick skull that there probably should be some difference as I get older.
You know, act my age not my shoe size, get along with your siblings better great -clears throat-, etc...

-sidetracking a little bit- If you've never read Stepping Heavenward I can definitely recommend it, although guys may not find it the most exhilarating read (which, in truth, it is not).
 At first I really didn't like it. "Get a grip on yourself, girl!" was the thought running through my mind as I read into Katherine Mortimer's daily struggles which seemed waaaaay over-reactionary (if you get what I mean).
And then, with a very guilty conscience I read it again and realized that the author was describing, well, ME!
But the book really makes struck some chords with me.
Living the Christlike way is not always easy.
It isn't an instant thing. Living like Christ means taking hard steps forward, falling back, repenting, going forward again. It's a journey. Stepping heavenward.
And when you put eleven people (more or less, eleven almost twelve being us) in one house to live together and work together, etc... there's going to be someone rubbing someone else the wrong way or stepping on each another's toes.
Man, being a family is hard! It's not like in the movies where everything goes so smoothly and everyone gets along so nicely.
It's that wretched thing called human nature.
"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were placed in this world to rise above."


And so, that is what I have decided about being sixteen. It is high time I realized I was placed in this world to rise above my sinful human nature!
Okay, how about being lifted up by God's great hand?
There I go again! Making all my good resolutions which will most likely be forgotten in five minutes (okay, maybe ten).
But, "not failure, but low aim is crime."


 Right, my birthday... Well, the sweet sixteen was big enough to merit going to the coast, eating at a *fancy* restaurant (okay, well fancier than Wendy's), Mo's, (seafood beats everything else hollow!) and then beating the HEAT (heat meaning about 90 degrees here in Oregon) by dunking in the icy cold ocean.
After drowning flailing helplessly about in the little D River that runs into the ocean for about, oh, maybe and hour, I came to a very important conclusion.
I cannot swim.
Hear my awful humility? You have no idea what it cost me to say that! LOL!
Just joking!
Sure, I can float on my back--a little- and I can do the Dead Man's float.
But I'd say the only other sort of "swimming" I can do is the dig-your-fingers-in-the-sand-and-pull-yourself-along slither/paddle.
"There is nothing worth the doing that it does not pay to try!"
-yeah, I'm just full of those tonight!-