People celebrate and make a fuss about their birthdays for myriad reasons. I do not. I find the expectations of others for my excitement and joy, to be both inflated and a burden. “What are you gonna DO for it?!”. “Are you having FUN!!!?”… Not only must I transmit the colorful type of person I am through what I have planned in honor of myself, but I’d better also blow my own mind (until others tell me I can stop). “You don’t look like you’re having fun, you need another drink?!” *implication – sad face. That’s right, let’s alcohol poison my neutral state so that you can feel like a better friend; I knew that there was a reason I’d been born!

From a religious perspective, nothing good seemed to occur at the birthday celebrations on record. Further, the most well known and commonly accepted birthday celebration is actually a pagan holiday, as many of its celebrants readily admit. When Jesus was alive, there is no evidence to suggest that he celebrated it. To be honest though, thinking about Jesus today is really depressing and makes me feel old because he saved the WHOLE world (and every world since) by the time he was 33! He was turning water to wine in his twenties, which is a talent I’d kill for even now.

I will admit to liking my birthday though for one main reason: I always get a thoughtful, meaningful, well-written and very moving email from my mother. We speak just about every day, often twice, but those emails are personal and touching. A couple years ago, she recounted our family history for me from slavery to the establishment of a settlement in Acklins by Maximus Darling, the great-grandfather of my grandmother. This year she shared new and newly recognized reasons that she appreciates me. I feel grateful for my family and friends. As my father put it this morning in further support of my reasons to be glad, “you have seen others come after you and go before you.” I do not take this life, or the people in it, for granted.