the happiest kind of birthday

My hands  and wrist are sore and my stomach is a lot more than full….

but so is my heart.

I’ve got 25 minutes before “my special day” comes to an end, and the books are  closed on yet another birthday. But I’ve got so much that I want to remember before January 9 slips into the past.

Like most years, feelings of dread and moments for humility made up a lot of the week before. Every year I have a love-hate relationship with my birthday  - mainly because of selfishness and pride as well as the common struggle of letting go of the familiar for the unknown. With its  feelings of rejection, expectations not being met, excitement and being blown away by undeserved love all mixed in with accepting that I’m just not as young as I am in my mind sometimes make January 9 one of the most sanctifying days of the year for me.

This year and especially this past few months, unexpected problems and struggles colored alot of 2011. Things that never bothered me before became points of tension, both externally but even more internally. I moved a few times within the year and traveled even more… saw most all of my closest friends move on to the next life stage while I stayed behind. I struggled with unrealistic hopes for my future and then struggled to pick up the pieces when they came crashing down. I was reminded there are sins that  I am not beyond committing and  had to bear the sting of being rebuked by the word of God. Challenged to reconsider how diligently I must be diligent to seek wisdom and holiness. And of course, the theme of the year was humility. Moments of heartbreak and seasons of heartache brought me down from idolizing myself or anything else that I choose to worship other than the one true God. Wish I could say that I grew more humble in this past year – but I can say for sure that I was made aware of how prideful I am and how ugly that pride is. And for that, I can’t believe I am saying this, but I am thankful for the moments of humiliation that were sprinkled in this year.

Its not to say that the past 365 days were only doom and gloom. There were lots and lots of blessings, really happy moments, new friendships that formed, found kindred spirits at unexpected times….and everything else that was gifted to me by God’s amazing grace. A lot of that ended up being represented and wrapped into today. I got more Facebook messages and text messages than I’ve ever gotten in my life from all the corners of my life. I had friends celebrate with me two nights in a row and shower me with the simple blessing of their company. Just that alone means more to me than I could accurately describe…truthfully,  because of the season of loneliness that has hung around the past few months. The  one thing I didn’t want was to be alone on my birthday or to feel terrible about being in this stage of life when it feels like other people have better, or at least, busier places to be.

Its pretty amazing though that even though I am so thankful for the tangible good things from today, what I will remember the most are the reminders and well wishes to see God at work in my life. There are cards and messages that came in and some of them held such striking words because they held a similar wish for me: people were praying and hoping that I would know God more this year, tthan last year. As common as it might be to wish a fellow Christian, the lives of the people praying it upon me left me without doubt that this was something they wanted and that I should be praying as well.

Honestly, to have someone pray that I could know God more, love him and hope in him more, and pray it with all their hearts is probably the best present I could have received. So I’m praying that too….that I would really know God, appreciate Christ more and have all my hope be found in Him, more than the year before. The truth is, I’m celebrating another birthday because the Lord still has work he plans to do in me and through me, not for my kingdom, but for His.

So thank you all for celebrating God’s faithfulness to me, yet again. Soli deo gloria.=)

Advertisement