27 birthdays

It has become a bad habit of mine to not like my birthday.  I mean, who wouldn’t like a birthday properly celebrated?  As a kid, your life pretty much revolves around your next birthday.  What kind of party you want, who will be invited, what you will be asking for, what kind of cake will you have.  Of course I have analyzed the why and wherefores of this transition from a kid who loves a day dedicated to pool parties in her honor, complete with presents and one of Momma’s famous mountain cakes, to an adult who nearly cringes at the thought of her birthday. Instead of making this post into a book, i’ll do give you the abridged version.  Consider it my birthday present to you.  Suffice it to say, my attitude toward it all has become “what have I done worth celebrating”? I mean this is the anniversary of me doing absolutely nothing.  I was born, sure, but that was thanks to the grace of God, the labor of my mom, and some doctors and nurses to catch me.  I cried, it probably hurt a lot, but all in all, I did a whole lot of nothing.  So what’s the big hullabaloo about birthdays?  I have, mind you, no beef with other people enjoying their birthdays.  I have enjoyed many a birthday celebration of other people.  Really my rule is, I am the only one not worth the attention.  

However, thanks to the grace of God, and some similar sentiments being expressed by my bro and rebutted by my big sis very recently, I have been handed a new set of lenses to view this birthday thing through.  Sean said something very similar to the whole “what’s the point? I did nothing, why are we celebrating this?”, to which Christina very wisely replied (paraphrasing here) “that’s precisely why we should celebrate birthdays”.  What she likes about it is the very fact that we did nothing to deserve it.  Upon further reflection, I agree with her.  

I began to think about a little over a month ago, April 17th, when my second beautiful niece had her very first gulp of air.  Her original Birth Day.  I thought about how, like me and every other human, she had literally done nothing.  She was willed by Love into existence in my sister’s womb about 10 or so months ago, and then He set to work knitting her together, while Lianna did her (often times painful) part.  And then, like the rest of us, she came out through the suffering and toil of another, and was placed in the arms of her parents who were commissioned by our Creator to take care of her every need.  She is completely dependent on our Heavenly Father, and her parents, for every. single. thing.  She can do nothing for herself.  And we all started out this way.  

But what happened on her Birth Day?  We all prayed, and waited none too patiently (at least I wasn’t too patient) to hear of her arrival, to know her name, and find out when we could go meet her.  According to my clearly skewed version, there should have been no fuss whatsoever.  After all, what had she done to deserve our happiness and excitement and celebrations over her birth?  Nothing.  Yet she had a party of her ecstatic parents, sister, grandparents, aunts and uncles chomping at the bit to celebrate her.  To catch a glimpse at this new immortal soul on her first day on earth.  Even though we will have countless other opportunities to celebrate her, to see her, to hold her, it turned out that being there on the day of her birth was important to us.  Because we love her, because she is God’s beloved little girl, and because He has given her to Ed, Lianna, Sophia, and our family, to be a part of our lives for always.  We love her because she is.  She exists, and that's enough for us.

We don’t celebrate birthdays because we are super impressive and have wowed everyone with the awesome things we have done with the lives we have been freely given.  We don’t celebrate birthdays because we did anything to earn our existence, and we certainly don’t celebrate it because we chose to be created and deserve recognition for this.  We celebrate births because we are infinitely, intrinsically, completely valuable.  From the instant we are willed into existence by Love Himself in the wombs of our mothers when only our Savior knows our name, our face, our heart and soul.  We are worth celebrating because God created us in His image and likeness.  We are worth celebrating because Jesus saw each one of us from eternity and wanted us to be with Him so much He left Heaven for us and died an excruciating death for our sake.  We are worth celebrating, because we were made for Paradise.  And just like little Madeline Cecilia, we are all completely dependent on God’s grace to live, move and have our being.  As much as we were on our original birth days.  

I hope that every birthday I celebrate from this day forth will serve as a reminder that I was created by Love for Love eternal. And I can never do anything to deserve that destiny or earn it.  I am utterly dependent on Grace, Mercy and Love Himself to make me what I was created to be.  Every year on this anniversary of my birth I hope to remember that I am worth celebrating because I exist, and God wants it that way.  

There but by the grace of God go I. 


And a special shout out to my Momma for this 27th anniversary of her suffering a great deal so that I could take my first gulp of air. Thank you for all the pain, prayers, and love that you put into my life from before I was born until now, Momma. I love you.

And cheers to my Dad on the 27th anniversary of the day we met, who has taken wonderful care of me all my life. I love you, Dad.

And now the photo deluge.  A picture for each month of this year.  Have a beautiful May 23rd.