Celebrating Life (including mine)
What a blessing it is to be alive! I think it’s easy to take our lives for granted. But every year at my birthday I’m overwhelmed that God loved me enough to make me. I didn’t do anything to deserve being alive—it was a gift, pure and simple, from God.
I finished the last day of my 40th year by standing up in front of 17,000 people and sharing how beautiful life is at every moment—from conception to natural death. I can’t imagine a better honor than to have shared the Gospel of Life with so many. I’m grateful to the Archdiocese of DC for that opportunity.
And I started my 41st year doing the same. I gave a talk at St. Martin’s Parish in Gaithersburg, MD and got to do one of my favorite things: lead music during a Holy Hour. The same Christ present on the altar at the Verizon Center was the same Christ present in the gym at St. Martin’s. I’m honored to be His opening act 🙂
Those tricky people at St. Martin’s. When I told them it was my birthday they were like, “Really? We had no idea! You should have told us!” But then it turns out they knew it all along:
And it even had a bow tie on it! Well played.
The only downside of the weekend was not to have my whole family there, but I did have Kolbe and Bobby with me. They said their favorite part was getting busted by Verizon security before the doors to the event open.
My kids are such a blessing to me. And I’m happy to announce another one on the way:
The mysterious Rice child shall appear July 2013, right in the middle of summer conferences, because it’s not like I’m busy then or anything.
We don’t know the gender yet, but I’m guessing it’s a boy. We’ll know in Feb and I’ll tell you then. And yes, we do find out, because we didn’t find out for our first kid and ended up with a lot of green and yellow onesies.
All in all, last weekend was a beautiful celebration of life. Thanks for all who were part of the March for Life last weekend, whether through pilgrimage or prayer. Let’s continue to pray that all life would be treated with the dignity it deserves.
4 Comments on “Celebrating Life (including mine)”
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Deacon Bob Rice 
Congratulations Bob…on EVERYTHING!
Bob,
Thank you for this lovely post. I have been having a difficult time in several areas of my life and feeling quite worthless, as if somehow God made a mistake. I needed the reminder that God does love me.
Thank you
Melissa Thompson
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Congratulations, prayers for you and your wife!
Gasp! Happy birthday, Bob, and so stoked for your incoming addition. 🙂 Congratulations!