Birthdays

We are only a few days into 2019 and we have already celebrated 3 birthdays in our immediate family - we'll have 4 more by mid-March. It's funny how the importance changes as time marches on. The little ones get so very excited and we plan lovely events - a princess tea party is next on our agenda. I'm currently deciding which hat to wear to that one. Wonder if I can find my gloves? As the years inch up the fervor inches down until it becomes just a blip and then gone. Themes get less and less intricate, too. In the past few years we've had everything from elegant rooftop soirees and Frozen extravaganzas for toddlers, to belated brunches and Chinese takeout sitting on paint buckets for the "adults." I use that term loosely - are any of us really adults? Rarely are we all together for birthdays anymore. We practice the Biblical wherever-two-are-more-are-gathered-principle. This sometimes results in multiple celebrations of the same person in the same year. Woohoo! More cake! The ages range from brand new to not so brand new to what we like to think of as well-preserved. Like antiques. A little worn and musty-smelling but valuable because we've had them a long time. For the record, I count myself in that category. I'm not old - I'm a vintage collector's item. A very expensive one at that.

Like it or not, the years do roll on and we continue to mark them regularly, notches in a post - hash-marks on a calendar. Sometimes they fold into one another like cake batter in the KitchenAid and some years they feel like a twelve-month-journey up Kilimanjaro. In the snow. Wearing flip-flops. But as long as there's a piece of road up ahead and breath in the body, life goes on. I used to have this urgency about me - this yearning for something more. Striving to make a life. It's pretty cool to finally be at a place where I realize I already have a life. And a darn good one. Things that used to matter so much are just piddly now. The stuff that's important is categorized less by designer label and more by who used to own this... out with Ralph Lauren and in with this-used-to- be-Mama's. Desk, chairs, skillet.

To be sure, there are regrets. But the biggest one is that I took so long to come to this place of contentment. And the thought of what all I may have missed that I will never know because I had my head in the wrong place. Stretching out for the next thing and quite possibly missing out on some pretty wonderful right under my nose. Don't get me wrong... amazing has been lavished on me more than a body deserves. And I'm not wasting a lot of time wondering about the what-ifs either. I figure I'll catch it on the big movie of my life God's going to play when I get to heaven. That is going to happen, right? Please tell me that's in the Bible somewhere. In one of the minor prophets maybe. "And God himself shall project upon a giant scroll the moving picture of one's life in many colors such as the coat of Joseph and ye shall look up with amazement while feasting upon corn which has leapt up from the fire - white as manna to the Israelites." Yeah, I think I read that when I was doing my read-the-Bible-through-in-a-year thing.

Truth is, a birthday really is just a day. That marks a milestone. And milestones are good. I just marked one myself - with Japanese food and a mini bundt cake! They show how far we've come - and maybe how much further we have to go. This year, as I pause to reflect, I've been mulling over a quote from one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis. It's found in The Last Battle from Chronicles of Narnia. "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now... Come further up, come further in!" I know this is about heaven. But if we really believe the prayer..."thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven," then we have to know there is a bit of heaven on earth. And I, personally, think we can only see it when we come home, at last, to ourselves. To belong in our own bodies like we are meant to. To realize that the life we have always wanted is not about stuff and places but about loving and being. Here and now. To fully inhabit the life we've been given and to press on with joy. Further up. Further in. Happy Birthday, to me. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday, dear me. Happy Birthday to me. Selah.