Birthday

"Life isn't about your age. Life is about living. So when your birthday comes be thankful for the year that has just past and anticipate with a happy heart what the coming year will bring." 

Catherine Pulsifer

Today I get the amazing opportunity to celebrate my 35th Birthday.  

What an amazing life I have had so far.  

I have a wonderful wife that I have blessed to have by my side for now almost 16 years.  

4 kids that for the most part are great kids.  They play hard and push the limits way toooooo much.  (to be honest, I'm glad to push the limits, which means that when they get older they will continue to push themselves to new levels).  

I’m blessed to be able to raise my kids on our family's homestead and they are the 5th generation to be raised here.  

My parents are supportive of me, even when they probably should have told me how crazy my ideas are.  

Our business is doing great. Shameless plug, www.eclipse-dot.com

We started a nonprofit to help serve God, Shameless plug www.godfirstlifenext.org

I am truly living a blessed life

One thing that I learned early was that I couldn't compare myself to anyone other than the person I was yesterday. 

As a youngster, I was constantly trying to compare myself to my older brother.  He was 4 years older than me and gosh darn it I was just as big as him (in my eyes). I could and should be allowed to do everything that he did.  

I’m sure that he looked at me a nuisance most days, but he still made time to spend with me.  He let me hang out with his friends and I started comparing myself to what they were doing.  

I never felt as though I had accomplished anything.

Then one day it hit me.  How can you compare yourself to anyone?  No one has had the same life therefore there is no real way to compare your lives.  

Today I want to encourage everyone to take a good look at your lives.  Look hard to see where you have had success, and look even harder at your failures to see what you learned.  

One of my major successes is writing these blogs.  

When I was in school I did not like reading and definitely did not Like to write.  Now I write a devotional and blog every week. If I look back over the past 2 years I'll bet that I have written a couple of books.  Lol

What was once a failure, is now a success!  

How amazing is that?

Another pretty massive failure in my life was when we were in pretty major debt.  At one point in our lives we had several credit cards maxed out, were having a hard time paying our bills, and just surviving. 

We weren’t really making too much money and supporting a family of 6 was tough.  

My wife and I worked out a budget though and stuck to it. And in doing that we were able to get out of over 35K in debt in less than 2 years.  

That may not seem like much, but to a single income family of 6, that's a ton!

It was amazing what we learned from that experience.  

When we were in the middle of the storm it was tough to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There were days I wasn't sure we would ever be able to say that our only debt was a mortgage. 

Now it seems like in the blink of an eye that I felt like we might just drown.  

The point is that we all have things that we have worked through.  

I know that we have been blessed to live the life we have and that God will continue to bless our lives in so many ways.  

My first 35 years on this rock have been amazing and I look forward to many more years on this earth and know that they will all be extremely blessed.