Another Year Older, But Am I Any Wiser?
A birthday reflection on numbering our days, living through change and paying attention to who we are becoming
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It was my birthday yesterday, and I had a lovely day celebrating with my family. I am one of those people who genuinely forgets how old they are. For the record, I am now 54, although whenever someone asks my age, I often have to pause for a moment and work it out, which probably looks rather strange.
It is not that I dislike birthdays or that I am trying to avoid growing older. They simply have a habit of arriving unexpectedly, even though they appear on exactly the same date every year. One moment, Christmas has just finished; the next, another birthday has appeared, and I am adding a year to a number I had only recently managed to remember.
I have often thought that birthdays are strange things. On one level, they are simply dates on a calendar, accompanied by cards, messages, food and, if we are fortunate, people with whom we can celebrate. But they are also markers. They invite us to stop for a moment and look in both directions: back at the year we have lived, and ahead towards the year we are entering.
What has happened during the past year? What has changed? What have I gained or lost? Where might I be heading next? And what might God be doing in my life that I can already recognise, or that I cannot yet see?
This year, one question has kept returning to me:
Who am I becoming?
Perhaps that question feels especially important because I have been through considerable change. Some of it was chosen, some of it unexpected, and not all of it has been easy. Change has a way of revealing things about us. It exposes what we depend upon, what we fear losing and where we still want to remain in control. But it can also create space for something new to emerge.
