thoughts on a 28th year of life

It has been a sweet birthday week - not a dramatic one - but one which I find particularly endearing. It has been a birthday week of small gatherings and gentle words, old friends and new ones, old hopes and new dreams, excited promises and godly encouragement. And so my birthday week comes to an end. It's near midnight, and I am wondering how I can capture what I am feeling and thinking in words. What have I learnt by 28? Have I aged with grace? Am I happy? Do I like where I am going?

I love growing old. I like watching myself change internally and externally with the passage of time. I love the taste of being another year wiser and I love knowing how it is God who has made all the difference.

When I was younger, I thought great birthdays had to be ones involving melodramatic presents, frantic partying plans or some secret surprise from a guy crazy for you. Of course, I still love a well-orchestrated surprise - increasingly harder these days because I am such a wily, nosy sniffer out-er of surprises that I spoil my own fun.

But at 28, I realise I have acquired a taste for the romance of the seemingly everyday and ordinary. I have learnt to seek the beauty of 'the simple life' - being as kind and gracious to as many as possible, being glad in heart for all of God's blessings, being ever watchful for opportunities to serve. I realise I don't want anything more. I don't want a life anything less than that. I don't need that car, that appartment, that lifestyle, that dream man. If I get them, I will be glad and thankful for the luxury. Meanwhile, I find an alternative list of things I need and want.

I realise I do need to know I have been courageous in the way I loved.
I want to know I have been kind.
I want to die with peace in my heart that I fought a good fight.
I want to die knowing with all my heart, that I tried.

Today, at church I prayed for God to break my heart for Him. I prayed that too as I blew out the candle of my cake a few nights ago.

I think that's all I really want. I have seen how much more pours out of my heart when He breaks it compared to how little comes out when He leaves it alone, whole but complacent, un-Touched, un-Moved. I don't want anything more than to have this life spent and spilled as an offering for His cause - Love Him and in turn, Love My Neighbour. Left to my own devices, I would not live my life so vulnerably.

Where I used to aspire to impossible and dramatic dreams of making the world a better place, I have learnt to focus on making my small corner a better place. God has portioned for me a home, a school, a disciple ship group, a circle of friends, a local church. What is the best way to steward these gifts? How can I truly love the person next to me in a way that is deeply meaningful? These small, simple questions are the foundation to large, complex, purposeful living.

On my 28th, I am grateful for miracles...

...for how faithfully God takes this lump of selfish complacent clay, sees the best in it and shapes a useful life out of it.

...for how God broke my heart the first time to show me how that was in His plans to bring three struggling souls - including mine - to a far, far better place. I am awed and humbled by how much more imaginative He is that I am. In all my imagined scenarios, I would never have seen things come to the point it has. I have rediscovered an old friend and uncovered a new one.

...for how through that, God shed my facade of contentment and grew the urgency to learn how to give more of myself, to care for others in more sacrificial ways.

...for how God is slowly but surely cracking my cynicism and hardheartedness about caring for my parents.

...for how in my discouragement, He taught me the need to encourage

... for how faithfully He has provided over the whole span of my disparate self-run career. If you know my lack of money-mindedness, you will know it is a miracle of Five Fishes, Two Loaves. I still cannot believe it sometimes.

... for how many friends and strangers He has brought my way, each a mirror of a greater Picture of Heaven. How beautiful it is to see stony hearts transmute into flesh. Every changing life in front of me is a blessed assurance of a Perfect future to come.

...for the opportunities I have been blessed with to serve and minister. I am honoured and thankful to those who have welcomed me to share in their burdens. The sharing of your burdens, sorrows and joys has been a privilege I will try not to abuse or forget.


So what did I get this birthday week?

...bags blue as the summer sky and red as sun-warmed brick,
...a new wallet to replace a stolen one,
...flowers chosen for being both hardy and enduring as they were beautiful
...a nice morning of peaceful grocery shopping with my mother
...an empty museum to draw in
...an SMS promise of one long, good conversation and many more to come
...the sweet shared joy of friends coming back find the Promised Land after years of wandering in the Desert
...a truly surprising gift with a hefty price tag and a gently offered compliment "You are always worth it"

In my 28th year of life, my 8th year of Christian life, I am happy.
Happier still to say - I owe it all to Christ.

He made all the difference.
Nothing can I boast in.
May I never admit to anything else.

I can't wait to be 29.