Happy Birthday To Me!

Forty One.  Not a milestone year, to be sure.  Yet I find that with every passing year there are so many things to be thankful for, so many things to celebrate with each and every birthday.

For me, every birthday marks:

1.  Another year of enjoying this amazing world that God created for us, a world that despite its brokenness and corruption is a place of inexpressible wonder and beauty.  I went on a hike yesterday morning and watched the leaves float down to the trail before me (on the first day of Fall) as the morning sunlight pierced through the trees; I held a tiny toad the size of my thumbnail in my palm.  The day before I was hugged by a two year old little girl who buried her little head in my neck with such sincere abandon...  I am constantly in awe of His creation.
2. Another year of enjoying the relationships God has allowed me to be a part of, not the least of which are:
1. My incredible wife, Emily.  My world has been better for knowing her for 28 years, 19 of those as her husband.  God uses Emily to both show me His love and teach me how to love better.  She makes me a better man, and every day it is my honor and privilege to try to love her as Christ loved the Church, to try and cherish her and encourage her, and give myself up for her.  I fall short every day, but she loves me anyway.  Emily ministers to me and shows me God like no other person in my life.
2. My beautiful daughter, Myah.  What a trip parenthood is!  Simultaneously the biggest challenge and one of the biggest blessings of my life!  Each day my role as a father teaches me a new dimension of God's character as our Heavenly Father.  Getting to be used by God to help grow this young lady into a woman after His own heart -- to be tasked with pouring God's Word and Truth into her and pointing her to Him -- is a privilege and responsibility that is at once both overwhelming and invigorating.  She hungers for knowledge, and some of the best moments of any day for me are those teachable moments when I can share some new piece of knowledge with her.  She makes me laugh every day with her quick wit, and my jaw drops every day at her intellect, fierce independence, and sometimes her sheer audacity!  She's a hoot, and if I survive 18 years of Myah, I know I'll look back and count them as the 18 best years of my life.
3. Another year to learn to love God better:
1. to tell others of His great mercy and love for them, of how the Father sent His son on a rescue mission behind enemy lines to bring us home
2. to experience and share the abundant life He came to give us all
3. to experience His provision, His sufficiency, even when the world seems to only take away.  Let's face it, as upbeat as this post is, life doesn't feel good all the time.  We're not always healthy.  Everyone doesn't always get along every day.  Work is not always a success.  There are months when we don't know how the bills are going to get paid.  People we love are in pain or are taken from us.  But God has taught me that these circumstances that we tend to call "trials" and "challenges" are really opportunities.  Opportunities to place our trust fully in the God who loves us and promised to provide for us, to comfort us, to give us a peace that defies understanding.  Opportunities to see Him step up to the plate and keep His Word in spades.
4. Another year to get to lead others into the Throne room of God in corporate worship; to have the undeserved honor to help the very Bride of Christ respond to all He is, all He has done, and all He is doing.  I get to be used by the Holy Spirit to teach Christ Followers what it is to worship God, even while I myself continue to learn how to Worship Him in Spirit and in Truth every day.
5. Another year closer to going home to be with God for Eternity.  Part of me longs for that day to come soon, while another part of me hopes it is delayed so that more people would have still more chances to open the door of their hearts to One who gently knocks.  And yet another part of me is content to tarry here and experience all God has for me -- for all of us --  in this life, this mere blink in the span of Eternity on this little spinning speck of a planet in the vastness of creation.

So Happy Birthday to me!  I look forward to another year of unwrapping all the gifts that God pours into my life.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow...