Birthdays are Between You and God By Kat Carroll

                The celebration of our birth is different from my viewpoint than how it’s currently celebrated. This viewpoint wasn't inculcated into me by any religion. It is my own conception. God is our Creator. Every year I ask Him what He’s going to give me for my birthday. He’s my Father. Dads like to spoil their little girls. Every year He faithfully answers me- boom, right into my heart/mind/ear. This year, at age 54, he tells me, “Humility.” It’s always something like this. It’s never material. Since I’m His daughter, who needs material? We own the Universe. He’s interested in working eternal qualities that will create a treasure of a person more than He’s interested in possessions.

                God gives word-gifts that turn into the treasure of the expansion of a person, leading to their greater evolution. Maybe that’s why word gifts like cards, especially when written in, have always been so powerful for me. Words are things. We view them as some vapor emerging from our breath but really at their heart, words are tools. Words create, like my Creator Father and the Word- Jesus created "by the word of His mouth." So He gives me words that encapsulate qualities and characteristics that will be created in my heart and reflected in my life year after year. This is actually more important than a little girl's pony or a party or presents…

                One of my favorite quotes is from Rumi, “World power means nothing. Only the unsayable jeweled inner life matters.” This is it. The inner treasure created by the investments year after year of qualities and characteristics into the “self” or the essence of a person.

                A birthday at its best needs to honor the existence of the person celebrating. It needs to honor their existence and the way their being on Earth changes things. I never understood the celebration of life for dead people. It is called a funeral. They are dead. Birthdays are a celebration of a life. It is active acknowledgement and gratitude for a life while the person is alive. Birthdays aren't really just about wishing all their dreams come true. In the final analysis, birthdays as they are celebrated today were most likely created for marketing just like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and all the other holidays we feel compelled to get out there and spend some money on. I want to celebrate a life with a more thoughtful approach.

                At the heart of birth day- it is gratitude that a person called by the name of the birthday boy/girl, man or woman, etc. exists. Just as we deflect all things to the Father not claiming the credit for ourselves- the good that moves through us, a channel,  in particular- so a birthday needs to be deflected back to the One whom allowed it to come to pass.

                 My own birth was a miracle from conception on. It is an incredible story and I'm amazed I survived it. Clearly there was much opposition to my coming into this World/experience. So the celebration of my life needs to return to the One who made sure it succeeded.

                It would be nice, even wonderful to know that people valued my existence here. But since I already own the Universe I have no need of anything really. I am the daughter of a very great King…What is important to the Creator/King is to know that His work, His creation is an open channel to bring his Kingdom to a greater expression in this World.

                Maybe that’s why He’s given me such an interest in warfare both spiritual and physical. Surely, there is enough evil here to convince anyone that we are in a battle; we are not in peacetime. My life and the celebration of my life continuing and surviving, is for one reason: to advance the Kingdom of my Father who shapes me with His word gifts. He’s allowed me to live another year. Sometimes against all odds. 

                This year a Mac Truck crossed the center line into my lane. I had a mountain to swerve into. There was no time for fear. My death looked me literally right into my eyes before he swerved away and fortunately not tipping over in the radical movement. I get to live another year. Why?

                I do my part. Each of us should. We occupy sacred ground; the sacred space of our humanity inside of a body. The magnificence of a European Cathedral in its glory of arches and flying buttresses is nothing compared to the majesty of the human spirit. The Kingdom- the Adytum- the sanctuary without doors is within. This is the focus of my Father this birthday: making this interior terroir lovely and filled with treasures of joy, peace, servant hood (all gifts of the past birthday questing…), and this year it is “humility" that I was told would be mine.

                Sugar, alcohol, rich foods, feeding narcissism, and gifts….this is not a birthday. Yes, there is love and well wishes. But that’s really not a birthday either. A birthday is a work in progress. It is a cathedral in the making and one that might just take 100 years, just like the Earthly ones do, with several investing in the progress and process. In the end though, if all goes well, the structure stands up under severe weather and the storms of life. It’s filled with exquisite beauty and the treasures of art and peace and worship and praise.  And its structure feeds so many, houses so many, nurtures so many, fills so many. It is everlasting too; so well-built that nothing can take it down.

                The celebration of a life/birthday leads back to the Maker, to the Sculptor. For without that desire to create, without the inspiration of that first breath and filling- well, we’d just be a gleam in our Father’s eye. We owe our lives to Him and thus our birth day to Him too. He does a good job. And it’s a lifetime commitment ending up, hopefully, in a monument to His daily investments and annual reminder where we sprang from. A birthday at best is a joint celebration, don’t you think?