Between Forty and Death: A Birthday Reflection
While the calendar celebrates life’s shared seasons, birthdays mark our life’s individual seasons. Recording our solo journey of another rotation around the sun; another upward revision of years. Another 365 days added to our lifespan. A lifecycle that will eventually end here and endure elsewhere.
Like all creatures great and small, I continue to move closer to my death in this world. I can no longer avoid this unknown, and at times, unsettling reality. It’s no longer a cerebral if, but a corporeal when. Reuniting with the billions of souls who have journeyed through this expanse.
As you might have guessed, I’m on track to record another natal anniversary; fifty-eight to be precise. An age I never expected to see when I was in my twenties. An age I’m grateful to celebrate because I remember portions of my twenties and then some. Freed from my fabricated teenage shame, I would give away my newfound freedom only to be enslaved by sensuality.
Subverting my sense of sensitivity, anesthetizing my aesthetic appreciation and finding faith in life’s finer things. My adult life was in tribute to this world and in service to an earthly kingdom. Never questioning our ruling class, always defending the Establishment when challenged and supporting a system that is in direct opposition to Love; to God: to Jesus.
As an adult, I would bury my God given gifts of introspection, intellectual curiosity and insistence to ask why. Forgotten like past childhood birthdays; discarded like past childhood toys. Avoiding the past, so I could tolerate the present. Not caring about the future, because I didn’t see one with “old Don”. Old Don; sounds like the name of a cringy folk song.
My days and decades of drinking and desires are felt as my body ages. No longer believing in the past personas I had about myself when my ego and Evil were my compass. Another soul on the highway to hell or at least down the wide road of destruction.
A life in service to Babylon and a heart in rebellion to God would ultimately betray Don. As I collected birthday after birthday, I could no longer avoid life’s reality of loss and suffering. Realizing I cannot stop the marching of time. It will trample the young and the old. Don Young and Don old.
This epiphany of my mortality disconcerting, because I had built and balanced my life on something other than God. Long ago abandoning my faith in the God of Love because I believed that God didn’t love me. Realizing later in life that religion and God are in tension with one another. One is a human created system to support a societal structure; the other is a Creator created system to support all humans.
My adult faith in myself and my worldly institutions was like a house built on sand. Unable to sustain the pain and grief we’ll all encounter as we age. The losses we will endure and the suffering we will inevitably experience. Everyone and everything eventually erased. Family and friends, people and pets, aspirations and ambitions.
Five months after clocking in a double five birthday, the fall would come. Repentant and redeemed. My prideful and selfish soul would surrender to Love; to God; to Jesus.
Everything would change about my life. My heart in service to the Lord, my life born again, and my way of living led by Love. Don and death be not proud.
Building my faith on solid salvation, not the shifting sands of secularism. Living a life of right relations by loving myself and my neighbor. Honoring God the Creator of every day, every birth, and every birth day.
I’m trying to live a life in gratitude for everything I have been given, including another birthday and birthday cake; yum. Blessed to have people in my life who choose to celebrate my birthday. Thankful to God for each new day. Grateful to God for the gift of grace and life eternal.
As my birthday candles steadily swell in number, so will my encounters with suffering and death. But Love will endure and envelop anything that’s less than love; Love gives birth to all life. The grave has no victory. Death has no sting. All honor and glory to Love; to God: to Jesus.
If it’s Gods will, in a couple days I’ll begin that recognizable journey of adding another year to my earthly life. Knowing that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me and you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Happy Birthday and happy days. Let us sing a song of cheer again and again. Grace the gift of God. Peace.