My 41st birthday is on Sunday, and I always seem to do a lot of reflecting around this time. The other day I headed to the beach to watch the sunset and to consider who I am, where I have been, and how I want to live the next 41 years of my life (God willing).

During this reflection time I started thinking about stories. Whether you are watching a movie or reading a book, a good story can really keep you on the edge of your chair. Especially the dramas.

Have you ever noticed how the best dramas tend to be filled with anguish, love, death, joy, and suffering? Who would want to watch or read something that didn’t have at least a few of those components? Imagine a movie or book that just kept going on and on about how great someone’s life was — with never an illness, a heartbreak, or a loss. Boring!

Each of us are living dramas every day, being played out on the big screen of our lives. The storyline includes intrigue, anguish, longing, and loss. Family, friends, careers, and hobbies.

Sometimes our life stories place us front and center, like the protagonist in our favorite movie. We get to make decisions that are important – even though they could be heartbreaking.

Other times we cast ourselves as extras, watching the action from the sidelines. Feeling, quite possibly, like intruders in our own lives. That happens when we feel disconnected to the choices we have made or disappointed in the opportunities that we have allowed to pass us by.
Here is what I have learned, almost 41 years into my own story: no matter what has happened so far in our lives, we can still write a different ending.

Your happy ending can be filled with the love you have been waiting for, the career you always wanted to try, or the attitude you’ve always wanted to exhibit.

Whatever the story of your life says about you so far, take time to reflect and to evaluate it as if it is a movie you are watching or a book you are reading. Then decide how you want it to end.

You are, after all, the author.

Have you seen the movie Avatar?

One of the main char­ac­ters, Jake, is par­a­lyzed. But every time he gets into the ves­sel that trans­forms him into his avatar body, he knows that in that body he will be able to walk, run, and enjoy life.

Can you imag­ine how that must have made him feel? Know­ing that his per­ma­nent hand­i­cap wasn’t so per­ma­nent after all.

In the end (spoiler alert!) Jake chose to live the rest of his life as that avatar — free from his paral­y­sis, with the love of his life beside him.

The truth is, we all live with hand­i­caps. The phys­i­cal ones are eas­ier to detect, and often dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to rem­edy. But some are less obvi­ous — and as it turns out, these are often curable.

Take, for exam­ple, the per­son suf­fer­ing from addic­tion. What would it look like if that per­son could wake up one day com­pletely free from ever hav­ing to deal with that addic­tion again?

Or con­sider the emo­tion­ally hand­i­capped. A per­son so inse­cure that they go through life telling oth­ers around them how impor­tant they are, how wealthy they are or how beau­ti­ful they are. What would it look like if they could see the beauty and impor­tance in themselves?

Are you liv­ing with an emo­tional hand­i­cap that you would like to get rid of? Can you imag­ine a life where that hand­i­cap does not par­a­lyze you?

Find the ves­sel that will allow you to break free from its chains, because a life free of them is so much more enjoyable.

Some days are bet­ter than oth­ers.  It’s just a nat­ural part of being human.  We have our “on” days and we have our “off” days.

Yes­ter­day started as an “on” day for me…but for some rea­son I started feel­ing a lit­tle blue right after lunch.  I blame the clouds that came in dur­ing the after­noon, forc­ing me to take my lunch inside and to put on a sweat­shirt.  That always makes me a lit­tle crabby.

But don’t worry.  I fixed my prob­lem imme­di­ately.  Want to know what I did?

I took a Strengths­Finder test.

After 35 min­utes of answer­ing ques­tions, I received a computer-generated report with detailed infor­ma­tion about how cool and tal­ented I am.  Who wouldn’t cheer up after that?

We all get down from time to time, but it is how we choose to pick our­selves up that makes the dif­fer­ence.  It may be that you always feel bet­ter after a run. You may feel more chip­per after lunch with a friend. Or for you, it might take a reminder of the WHY behind what you do.

What­ever the “fix,” just know that dark days will come, but if you have a good plan to make them lighter you can decrease the amount of time you feel crabby.  And the bet­ter you feel, the bet­ter equipped you are to take on chal­lenges and pour into the lives of those you care about.

I think I will print up that Strengths­Finder report and carry it with me, so no mat­ter where I am or how down I feel, I will always have a pick-me-up right in my back pocket.

Those of you who know I’m a Bron­cos fan could prob­a­bly have guessed that I would be talk­ing about Tim Tebow this week.  I mean, come on folks, who isn’t talk­ing about Tim Tebow?

For those of you who have no idea who Tim Tebow is, he is the Den­ver Bron­cos quar­ter­back.  Tebow not only led the Bron­cos to our first play­off sea­son in six years (though it feels like decades for us fans), but he pulled off a win in Den­ver Sun­day against the heav­ily favored Pitts­burgh Steel­ers.  It has cre­ated quite a buzz in the sports world.

No one thought Tebow had the tal­ent or the where­withal to make this vic­tory a real­ity.  Every­one thought that the Steel­ers were a far supe­rior team with the apti­tude to run us into the ground.  Every­one thought that Roeth­lis­berger (their quar­ter­back) had the knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence to upset our young team.

Every­one was wrong.

What do peo­ple say or believe about you that is wrong?

How could this year in your life turn into a vic­tory?  How could you defy the odds and come out a win­ner?  How could you quiet the crit­ics and do amaz­ing things no one thought you could do?

How can you make “Tebow Time” YOUR time?

Life, as we get older, becomes less magical.

We stop believ­ing in Santa Claus.  The tooth fairy doesn’t come around any­more, and not just because all our baby teeth are gone.  And the Easter bunny.….well don’t even get me started on the Easter bunny!

It’s enough to make any­one hard­ened and cyn­i­cal.  But then I real­ize that we have a whole new world we get to believe in.

We can believe in the sac­ri­fice of a stranger serv­ing in a war thou­sands of miles away just so we can sleep peace­fully at night and wake to unde­ni­able rights that no other coun­try in the world gets to enjoy.

We can believe in the human­ity of a cause whose whole pur­pose is to end teenage sui­cide, and in the peo­ple ded­i­cated to that cause who do it for very lit­tle pay and not enough time with their own families.

And, most impor­tant, we can believe that no mat­ter how much heartache and strug­gle we are going through right now, there is peace, com­fort, and joy on the other side.  And there are peo­ple (like my won­der­ful hus­band) who will be there through the good and the bad.

Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny may be all gone in our grown-up world.  But they have been replaced by some­thing so much more won­der­ful.  Real peo­ple, with real lives, doing good for their fam­ily, for their coun­try and for their planet.

As you start 2012, choose to make this the year that you believe in good­ness.  Promise your­self that you will also be that kind of per­son for oth­ers in your life.

Now that’s some­thing to believe in.

I don’t like to fly. But every once in a while, I have an experience while flying that I feel I need to share — a moment, an hour or more that just feels completely right.

I sit above the clouds, in the plane that is taking me to my next business trip to Portland, Oregon. I’m looking out at the darkness and realizing how huge this world is. 40,000 feet up in the air and feeling way too small.

Above me are millions of stars, hanging out in the heavens. Below me, I can see nothing but darkness, and I can only assume the earth is still down there where it should be. The only thing I can see are shadows cast by the light on the wing. And I have a complete feeling of peace.

Have you ever felt like that? Like if you were to die in that moment, you would be ok?

Just as I am relishing in the moment of complete aloneness, I am drawn to a light coming from below. It looks like the beacon of a lighthouse, except instead of reaching out to illuminate the sea, it is illuminating the sky above me. Suddenly it emerges from the clouds — a plane that must have just taken off, moving from the world of the known into a world encapsulated by the heavens, surrounded by forever.

This plane immediately fills my world, almost invading it, until I understand that there is room for both of us.

Its now time for us to start our final descent. A ceiling, a floor, and walls of clouds surround us and I am immediately enveloped in the coolest cloud formation.

All I can see are heavy clouds backlit by the plane’s light. White, cream, grey, black and every shade in between are represented in our journey towards earth. It looks like marshmallows melted to form one mass.

For a moment I allow myself the luxury of thinking of my father and sister, imagining that this is where they live. Years ago they departed our world for the one above those clouds, but I can suddenly picture them clearly through the fog, smiling and inviting me in.

For a moment I imagine I could start toward them, the promise of an easier life beckoning me to join them. I am tired, and I often feel like my fight is gone. Should I keep putting one foot in front of the other? It seems so easy.

As I am caught up in this moment, the clouds start to break and the ground comes into view, and I see the Willamette river below. I am drawn back into the world I still belong in.

I find that I am sad to leave the mystical land where heartache and heartbreak have no home. But I am also grateful to understand there is still work for me to do down here below the clouds. I know I need to put in the time and energy so that my legacy will be one of meaning.

We land safely and taxi to our terminal. The light comes on, I undo my seat belt and I head out into the world — eager to take on its challenges, hopeful to understand not only my relevance, but to believe that I am enough.

Though it may take me a lifetime to accept, stepping out onto the gangway is the best course of action I know how to take. I am ready.

I never thought I would be inter­ested in watch­ing the Harry Pot­ter movies. Mainly because my inter­ests don’t lie in mys­ti­cal stuff. But one rainy day in Novem­ber I sat down with the first movie – Harry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone — and I was hooked.

I watched all 8 movies within 2 weeks. My hus­band wasn’t too happy with me (each movie is at least 2 1/2 hours long), but I couldn’t help it. I had been drawn in and needed to know how it ended.

In that first movie, Harry finds a mir­ror at his school and in his reflec­tion, he is imme­di­ately sur­rounded by his dead par­ents. The mir­ror is called The Mir­ror of Erised.

Pro­fes­sor Dum­b­le­dore, the Head­mas­ter at Hog­warts, describes it this way: “The hap­pi­est man on earth will look into the mir­ror and see only him­self, exactly as he is. It shows noth­ing more and noth­ing less then the deep­est and most des­per­ate desires of our heart. It gives not knowl­ege or truth. Men have wasted away in front of it, even gone mad. It does not do to dwell on dreams, and for­get to live.”

I started think­ing about what I would see in that mir­ror. Would the deep­est and most des­per­ate desires of my heart be com­pas­sion­ate and char­i­ta­ble? Would my desires revolve around help­ing oth­ers and mak­ing life eas­ier for those who most need it? Or would van­ity and mate­ri­al­ism show up in the reflection?

More than likely — and as much as I would hate to admit this — the mir­ror would reveal the lat­ter. No mat­ter how hard I try to be char­i­ta­ble, com­pas­sion­ate, and altru­is­tic, I also allow those darker traits to seep in when I am not pay­ing attention.

I am glad that The Mir­ror of Erised isn’t in my home. But I am also aware that I need to be present each day, liv­ing for not only myself but for oth­ers around me.

Today I need to make choices that remove mate­ri­al­ism and van­ity, and instead reflect an atti­tude more con­cerned with help­ing others.

What image would you see?