Last week I “celebrated” my 68th birthday. Principally because I have a great family, I had a wonderful day. I did take pause to consider how birthdays change over a lifetime.
As a kid, we enjoy birthdays as “me” events. The day is all about us. We get gifts and cake and ice cream. It’s a day that’s all me.
As we get older, we see birthdays as milestones on what seems a very slow march to adulthood. It’s amazing how long a year used to be when I was 8. It seems like barely a month at 68.
Once we hit adulthood, the birthdays begin to come quickly and the youth we didn’t appreciated when we were in it, begins to spin away. I laugh now at folks who get black balloons at 40. Kids are so silly.
As retirement years approach, we experience a bit of panic as we begin to realize that our time is limited and that life has not been all we imagined and we feel we better start really living. These are the years of mid-life crisis.
At 68, I realize I could have gone on social security years ago. I finally got over the fact that I’m now part of the medicare generation. Stuff isn’t as important as it used to be. I have seen much too much rust and ruin. Family becomes so much more important as I struggle to pass on what I’ve learned to those coming behind, while knowing deep inside that some lessons have to be personally learned.
In this process I have come to so appreciate just how loving our God is. I am amazed at how he has designed life. He has designed aging so that we slowly learn that we can’t depend on our shrinking physical and eventually our mental gifts. It takes a lifetime for most of us to learn the value of the spiritual over the physical. Our lives are designed to make us slowly more alien than ever in the world in which we exist as our belief in a future and better place becomes more real.
I appreciate what a gift long life is, having seen so many get many fewer years than I have. I have learned about faithfulness from a wife who has stuck with me for 47 years. Together we have experienced a Father’s faithfulness, whose general guiding hand I can clearly see in the rear view mirror of time.
These days birthdays are a lot less cake and ice cream and a lot more contemplation, hard knocks wisdom, and immeasurable gratitude. Thank you Jesus for 68 years and for the forever that comes when you’re ready.
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