Are birthdays magic? Well, if you ask a four-year-old, they are. My little son Nathaniel (“Thanner”) talks about his birthday pretty much all the time, despite the fact that it won’t come ’round until next May. He tells
you how old he is. Tells you he’s almost five. Tells you what he wants to do. Tells you it’s next week. Every day.
What is it about birthdays that we love? Sunday is the birthday of the country I love best. We celebrate this birthday with fireworks and barbecues and sixteen straight hours of World War II movies. The biggest holiday of the year is the celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ. We have Washington’s birthday, and Martin Luther King’s birthday, and a dozen others. We all remember the birthday of our marriages (we call them anniversaries, but they’re birthdays sure enough). I remember every year the birthday of my career in lending in Utah (it’s the end of October). We, as humans, love birthdays every bit as much as Thanner does.
Today is my forty-second birthday. It certainly seems magical to me. I have had already birthday greetings from a one-time prom date that I haven’t seen in many years (hi, Yvette!), from a kindred spirit that I met in Rome 25 years ago (Leslie, God bless you), and from an old girlfriend that now lives with her family in Australia (Jillyn, my dear friend). And dozens of others. I slept wonderfully last night for the first time in a good while. I went to the gym this morning and I’ve lost weight again. This morning my son Nicholas starts for the first time at point guard for his high school team. The sun is shining, and the garden looks great. My wife still loves me.
Many of those things were or have been true for a while, so perhaps it’s just that I’m noticing them more today. But I am noticing them, and that’s part of the magic of the day for me.
For Thanner, I think part of the day’s magic – perhaps, in fairness, most of the magic – is the presents. That faded for me a long time ago. I can’t even tell my long-suffering wife what I’d like to eat for my birthday dinner. It’s just not very important to me. But there are birthday things that are important to me. I like to know that I’m a better person than I was a year ago. I like to rededicate myself to improving, to becoming better yet. Birthdays are very good for that. That’s a gift I give, not that I get, but I’ve noticed that I look forward far more to giving than to getting, anyway.
Every day I get the gift of a new life. As a Christian, and a sinner (aren’t we all?), I make mistakes every day, and every day I need the grace of Jesus Christ to reach into the broken places in my soul and put things to rights. I need Him to make things right for others when I hurt them. He always does. This is called, in Christian parlance, being “born again”. So in that sense, every day is my birthday. Every day is a new chance to be what I really want to be, what I am meant to be.
In the spirit of that, I am going to commit the gaucherie of asking for gifts today. What I want is this: do something, no matter how small, to move forward one of those I-always-wanted-to’s that you have stored up. You know the ones I mean. “I’ve always wanted to write a novel” or “I’ve always wanted to go skydiving” or “I’ve always wanted to see a Broadway show.” Whatever it is, do something to make it happen. That’s what I want. If you’d like to come back here and tell me what it was that you did, that would be great, but it isn’t critical. Just do it. Go the whole day without snapping at anyone. Be cheerful in the face of certain disaster. Become just a little bit more of the person you know you were meant to be. Be born again yourself.
Let the magic begin! Happy birthday to all of us!
Tags: birthdays, Independence Day, Jeanette, Jesus Christ, lending Utah, mortgage Utah, Thanner
Posted on Thursday, 1st July 2010 by chrisjones
Posted in Blog & News, General, Jones Family News | Comments (5)
July 1st, 2010 at 9:48 am
Ok, no snapping at the kids (at least trying not to snap at the kids) you’re on.
July 1st, 2010 at 12:02 pm
The words EPIC FAIL do not even begin to describe…
July 1st, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I just called a friend who moved a few months ago. We’ve been meaning to get together and never have, but now we have a plan to do that next week. Thanks for making me pick up the phone! Happy birthday, brother.
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:33 pm
[...] Commentary On Independence Day, Ours and Others’ Yesterday was my birthday. Today is the birthday of my third son, Crispin. The day after tomorrow is the birthday of my [...]
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Alison, I didn’t make it all the way myself. But we keep trying.