THE BLESSING OF A BIRTHDAY

October is my birthday month.  This year it is a very big birthday, and I planned a week of events.  A kind of self-care thing while my husband hits the last marks of his recovery from surgery.  

So we went out with another couple. Old friends traveled for a visit. A special group met for lunch instead of knitting.  Women friends from church gathered for brunch.  My oldest grandson came for the weekend.  My granddaughter too. We had breakfast with our niece and her boys who were in town from New Jersey.  And we hosted an evening party for the rest of the family and some close couples' friends. Wonderful friends and family gave me flowers, soaps and other fragrant things.  I blew out candles.  It felt marvelous.   

I have never shopped and organized and straightened and planned so much for myself. It is a super fun thing to do; I recommend it.  Plus, with this approach there's no way to be disappointed because someone forgets your birthday.  You've taken care of that.    

I also recommend the pleasure of growing older.  I know the choice isn't ours, but the welcome we give it is.  What could be luckier than being the age we remember our parents being and finding out that it's not so old after all? What could be better than discovering that growing older is not a misnomer--that we actually do keep growing?  That we grow into all the important aspects of life--resilience, bravery, caring, joy, perspective.  We never stop learning.  Not all of our lessons are wanted, but most are helpful.  I have learned from tragedy what mortality is. No lesson is harder.  I have learned why caring for self is prerequisite to almost any other good thing. 

We learn not to squander anything, not time, or love, or friendship.  We learn what needs protecting and what needs jettisoning. We learn how to accept graciously and how to give freely.   

We learn where our safe places are.  We help others find their safe places.  We learn how to be by ourselves and to value that.  We're not so picky.  We learn how easy it is to wound someone and try not to feel wounded ourselves.  We give and accept second chances. 

We were born to age.  Growing older should never bring sadness.  We mourn for those who don't.  Every birthday brings us closer to eternity.  I am curious about that.  But I am far from the only one. 

The Christian rock band MercyMe wrote and first performed this hit in 1999, and it has been the most played song on Christian radio. The lyrics could not be better.  You might want to listen to it.  Here are the words:

I can only imagine 

What it will be like

When I walk by Your side

I can only imagine

What my eyes would see

When Your face is before me

I can only imagine

Surrounded by Your glory

What will my heart feel?

Will I dance for You Jesus

Or in awe of You be still?

Will I stand in your presence  

Or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing hallelujah?

Will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine

I can only imagine

When that day comes

And I find myself

Standing in the Son

I can only imagine

When all I will do

Is forever, forever worship You

I can only imagine

                          With thankfulness for a long life, Nina Naomi

 

ON THE BREATH OF A PRAYER, WE ENTER ETERNITY

Lift High the Cross

"I guess the family was all there, just visiting, and they were discussing nothing in particular when a chaplain came to ask if they wanted to pray.  They said yes, and right as the prayer started, her mother took one big breath...and was gone."

"Just like that?" I asked.

"Just like that."

"Wow," I sat, momentarily struck by the beauty of it all.

To imagine that on the breath of a prayer, you can cross unfathomable distance.  Your spirit and the doors of heaven meeting one another within the fraction of a whisper.  To inhale here, and then exhale in exhalation 10 million light years away. 

I don't remember who wrote this or where I found it, but I copied and framed it.  To me the words are true.  On the breath of a prayer, we do cross from life to eternity.  I've seen it happen.  

I didn't notice whether the breathing stopped after an inhale or an exhale, and I was sitting right there listening, right at the bedside.  We had been there since Wednesday and now it was Sunday morning, July 17, 2005.  We were watching and believing in God's promise of eternal life.  The room, a cold place where he lay sticky without speech or movement, was suffused with heartache and love.  Only we spoke and that not much.  We few, who loved him best, barely existing in the dim uncomfortable room where hope was for no more than another day of the same. 

Then came the silence of no longer breathing.  I heard it first.  The nurses had just come in to lift his head and smooth the covers.  

Witnessing death may be as universal as dying.  We want to be there for the passing of someone we love.  We put all our effort into reaching their bedside.      

No one knows which breath will be the last.  No matter how faithful the waiting, the cessation is startling; on that Sunday morning 18 years ago, it was louder than any other sound in the busy hospital.  Someone hears it every day.  A sound so clean it leaves no doubt.  This body will never breathe again. 

A life doesn't stop alone; it brings everything buckling inward with it, until later the survivors claw their way out, as we in our family have done and as you in yours no doubt have too.  

Then, maybe quickly or maybe more painfully, we understand.  This being is standing before God.  He does not see through a glass darkly, no; he sees face-to-face.  In the seconds it takes our tears to gather, this soul is already consoled by the arms of God, whose love is as great as ours, even though that we can't imagine.  But then, we can't imagine any of it.  We can only believe.  That we cross an unfathomable distance and arrive on our knees at the throne of God, where all is light transcendent.   It is 10 million light years away.  The meeting place for our souls.  A story, an event, that never ends.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN 

                        Nina Naomi