A Portrait of the Birthday as a Blessed Thing
Reflections on a prismatic glint, refractions of a wavering glimmer.
Tomorrow is my birthday. When you read this, it will be my birthday: the Eleventh Sunday After Trinity AD 2022. My birthday is a day which has never held much beauty in my estimation. I delight in and am exuberant over others’ birthdays; but never over my own. It has to do with expectations, I suppose. As the day draws near, is it wise to expect a party? Every year I expected a party, or attempted to plan a party, the day ended up empty. If I made no attempt to plan something, parties or dinners would invariably materialize. And surprise parties appeared, too—twice—in college. One resulted in a two-year romance for which I went ring shopping and which ended in cauterization. The other, I don’t even remember, unfortunately. Each time, they were a genuine surprise, though. And I remember going out on another birthday, when I hit the drinking age. A friend gestured with a fistful of bills: “Paul, I’m gonna see what you’re like drunk, even if it takes all of this!” At night’s end, my friend’s fist was empty, and he’d not seen what he came to see. Ethyl alcohol and me got along well, it turned out. We still do.
But I have long observed people who take off work for their birthday, busying themselves in setting the details of the day to be “just so,” and I look on and marvel. To me, my birthday is just another day. Mind you, I do not think that my apathy is commendable. My view of myself is precariously low. This is not the Creational intent. Man was made for more than this.
A thorn by any other name
My name was supposed to be Mary. My parents thought that I would be a girl, not a boy. They had good reasons for thinking as much. But, after over a day of labor, the body plunged beyond the breaking point, my mother discovered that I was not Mary. No, there was no Ave. I was Paul. Certainly not the firstborn, but I was the son.
My sisters didn’t much crave my company, growing up. So I played with the dogs, I read books, I played by myself. I never belonged with my sisters, and they weren’t shy about reminding me ’bout it. If you are the company you keep, and I do believe that to be true, then I was in an awfully bizarre place as a child. I was the company I kept, which is to say it’s like I was a sorta chameleon in a box of mirrors. I was focused inward; I was, well, myself. Dad was working most of the time. Mom—well, she was busy. And looking back on it now, I’m amazed she had as much time for us kids as she did. Life’s a busy thing.
Never much fit in with other kids at church, either. Didn’t know why. I’ve got my hypotheses, now; and first and foremost it’s ’cause I used the word “hypothesis” right there. There was a specificity of language and intent that I always focused on as a kid. I didn’t like stuff that didn’t make sense. And kids aren’t known for making sense. Not that I was a child genius or anything, though. My parents tell me I learned to read far later than my sisters. I remember it as such. My one sister taught herself to read when she was 3. I’m not that smart—not even close. I think I was 5 or 6 or something. Learning to read was hard. It was around when I learned to read music, too. Music made a lot of sense. Still does. Music and ethyl alcohol both get along well with me. They’re not so different, after all.
With all due respect to Benjamin Franklin
Ol’ Benjamin wrote something along the lines of, “Most men die at 25, but they’re not buried till they’re 75.” I get what he was saying, and I think it’s probably generally true. It’s not been true for yours truly, though. In the past decade alone, it’s as if I’ve lived two lifetimes. SARS2 and the unspeakably fake, sham disaster of these latter years occupied one lifetime all by its lonesome. Before that was another lifetime, and before that, yet another much longer lifetime. And in November AD 2021, the most recent life was born into me. This lifetime is going strong, by all appearances. This lifetime has been one of crucibles, fire, hardship, rancor, pain, and a depth of abandonment I’d not previously encountered, nor even imagined.
But this life is different from all of the others. It was barged in on by Lord Christ Himself. As I lay dying in November, flanked by faceless demonic shades leering at me through lidless eyes, He was present. And He rejoined their infernal gaze with a plain Word: Not yet.
Yes, by God’s grace, I passed through that particular crucible, of having my senses put out, my health extinguished, my frame stripped of muscle and spirit. I’m stronger than ever. Wracked by lingering injuries and maladies, yes, but stronger than ever. I cannot run half-marathons any longer, but I can bear burdens hitherto unimaginable for me: for I am stronger than ever. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. There is a fight, a willingness towards violence if necessary, which was not only sleeping before, but not even realized. The goblins who sought to seize the world by means of the SARS2 anarchy awoke in me, and in so many, a rage, a fiery zeal for life, that they could not have imagined. And so as my birthday drifts near, I am but left with a hope.
Good Shepherd, may—
The hope that the works of my hands and the words of my mouth have helped others amidst these latter years of detritus, destruction, and dissolution. The hope that the loves of others, variably tho’ they have manifested, have not been wasted upon being poured into the broken vessel that is me (and each of us). And above all, one singular hope reigns supreme. My greatest, extremest hope, can find no obviation, no severing, no sundering, no excoriation at anyone’s hands. For the hope is no Hope but a Certainty. It is a subjunctive question, yes, but one whose answer was indelibly written and signed upon the Earth by the blood and water of Golgotha.
Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise within Thy House forever?