Is this even news? Today is my birthday. Happy birthday.
I think I’m just going to write approximately three hundred words and call it a happy day. Several minutes of brain-on-page, go.
I feel like I turn older on January 1 every year, not April 4 although I am undoubtedly older today, just as I was on January 1. So, twenty-seven, to me, started as 2014 started. BTW, twenty-six was pretty fun, we kicked off last year with a surprise party planned by my sister, I went to Spain, took some circus classes, learned how to swim, started playing ukulele.
Today I woke up, remembered it was my birthday, so I said a SPECIAL prayer reserved for SPECIAL occasions (memorized when I was a kiddo, so it’s short and rhymes*), but brushed my teeth and started my Jillian Michaels DVD just like I do on other non-birthday days. And I chided the piggies when they started squealing and I started a load of laundry.
And then my aunt stopped by with a birthday-gluten-free-cheesecake for ME because it’s MY BIRTHDAY and my coworker gave me a HAPPY flag and another gave me CHOCOLATE and that was kind of enough birthday for me because sometimes gifts make me uncomfortable. Give me a stage with hundreds of people staring at me and I’m happy as a clam, hand me a card and I feel clammy. For a little bit at least, and then I recover. ANYWAY, no one cares, right?
For a project today I started to read this Sunday’s reading about Lazarus and the sisters and Jesus and the Jewish-folk and I promise I started crying (but ducked under my computer screen so my coworkers wouldn’t be able to see me) because there’s SO MUCH in that story: the siblings who are split and the sisters who are like, “God, I’m trying to believe, but I just don’t understand” and Jesus who is like, “Dang, I love you people and this death thing tears at me” and the people who are touched not because of the miracle but because they saw the love, Jesus’ love, for a friend.
It touched me because every year is a good year and a special year, but every year also brings challenges. All of those things in the reading were there last year: questions about how God works and questions about Jesus’ flippin’ timing, yo and tears and also blessed, blessed miracles. They’re all there.
And I have every reason to believe they’ll be here this year, too.
People still believe births are miracles, right? Maybe not. But, I do. Life is a miracle. Today is a miracle. And I look forward to another year of discovery and light. And Jesus.
And I’m stoked for silent-retreat, even though I’m also terrified. Love of God–COME AT ME.
HBD 2 me.
*Another year is dawning,
Dear Father let it be,
In walking and in waking,
Another year with thee.