My Special Day
(Written for the
Sandhills Writers who celebrated my 88th birthday with me – 7/25/25)
By Sandi Fischer
The month of July, 1937 holds records of many significant
events of various types: Amelia Earheart’s disappearance, Joe DiMaggio’s first
grand slam home run, Buchenwald Concentration Camp opening, Japan invading China,
and the U.S. Senate rejecting FDR’s proposal to enlarge the Supreme Court.
And on July 25th, in a small town in Indiana at
the home of the Little family, Dr. Flanagan, the town physician, made a house
call and delivered a baby girl, named after a female character in a dime novel—Sandra.
Voila! Me!
Today you can join me in saying, “You’ve come a long way,
baby!” And it’s been a trip, through the end of the Great Depression, several
wars, the civil rights movement, the start of the space age, the new
millennium, the COVID pandemic, and more important segments in my personal
journey. College, teaching, marriage, (63 years soon to be celebrated with the
same man), three daughters, three granddaughters, bookstore ownership,
retirement, southern transplanting, book publishing, and joining this group.
My life includes a history of some poor
choices and investments as well. As time began to take its toll on my body,
adding some pounds and flab, I bought an exercise bike at a garage sale, put a
map of the U.S. on the wall with push pins to mark how many miles I would pedal
across U.S. 6 from my hometown in Indiana to where it terminates in California.
Within a few months I had pushed two pins, one on Waterloo, three miles away
and one on Corunna, Indiana, six miles away. I sold the bike at our garage sale
the following year.
As time went on I wished I had pooled the money I spent on
wrinkle creams, vitamins, girdles, underwire bras, hair enhancements, and diet
drinks and used it to buy stock in IBM
or Amazon. I wouldn’t be here to celebrate how far I’ve come with you; I’d be
hiring my author friend, Lew as my yacht captain to take me on a world cruise
like he did for others before retirement.
Aging is nothing new. Eventually, gravity will take over our
bodies. What was once in one place will be slipping down to another—chins,
waists, you name it. Even hair migrates from our heads, sprouting out in
unseemly places—noses, ears and chins. Tweezers have become one of our favorite,
well-used grooming implements.
So here I am still living in this
tent that is sagging, wrinkly and grey on top, but there is good news afoot. I
am blessed and grateful, because of the most important discovery about who I
am. Composed of a material, mortal body and mind that is decomposing and will
die, I sensed there is something more within and I found my spirit, an
intricate, unique me that is eternal. As I searched for how to reckon this, I
learned about how other people have done the same and have embraced various
ideas about it. I believe that all people at some point recognize their
individual being, their whole being of body, soul and spirit, so intricately
made we are like snowflakes, no one made like any other.
I discovered too that it takes more faith to believe
everything in existence happened by chance. I embrace a reasoned faith—everything
that exists has been made and requires a supernatural Creator to have made it.
Just like the watches we wear did not evolve but were intricately created, so
are flowers and fish and us. Reckoning this I believe in the Triune God as the
one Creator, Sustainer, Eternal, Sovereign LORD of all creation. The next
discovery I made was how He gave us a conscience within us to discern the
difference between right and wrong. He gave us the free will to choose and
because our progenitors chose wrongly, we inherited that same nature.
Recognizing this about myself, I made many wrong choices and suffered the consequences.
Guilt and shame come from within us; no one ever taught us
to blush; it’s a natural response of the conscience put within us. Seeing my
need for help, I met Jesus, the Savior, God incarnate in the flesh, coming to
earth to offer Himself for my sins and those of the whole world. I accepted His gift of grace, the best
decision of my life, and I look forward to a forever life not measured in years
but without time’s constraints.
That brings me to share how I view today and what you see of
me and what you don’t see. You see my thin skin, easily bruised by a light
touch, my thinning hair, slowing walk, fading voice, all under siege by time
and trouble, but inside? The apostle Paul wrote about what’s going on inside in
his 2nd letter to the Corinthians. It describes me today and each
day as getting more glorious:
And what greater joy can I have than sharing and bearing my
soul to you, who love words as much as I do and want to use them to instill the
love in this season and time where God has appointed us! Thank you for
celebrating this one day, a small dot of eternity!