Is Today Your Birthday?

Image by Jacob Johan via Flickr
It's my birthday today. My beautiful, can't-sing-a-note wife sang the birthday song to me. We are celebrating because I was born 42 years ago, a great day to be sure, but frankly an event I had nothing to do with except having the ability to breathe on my own when it was all over. Don't get me wrong, the contributions and gifts we bring to the world are worth celebrating, I'm just not sure there aren't at least several other dates to remember that we could call Birthdays.

If a birthday celebration marks the day we entered into the world and became human, what about other days when we entered more fully into the world and became more fully human?
Do you even remember what those events are or what date they fell on originally?
Could you make a list of all of those watershed events in your life and begin celebrating them?
Here's some possible RE-BIRTHDAYS for you to consider:

• Your first love
• Your graduation day
• The day you realized what you wanted to do with your life and started taking steps to get there
• The day you looked around and realized you WERE there
• The day you completed a long and difficult series of steps to reach an important goal
• Your wedding day
• The day you quit using drugs, alcohol, sex, eating, shopping, working, etc. as a crutch to get through life
• The day you knew, irrevocably, that there was a God and that God was good
• The day you became a parent
• The day you ended a harmful and difficult relationship
• The day you were announced to be cancer free
• The day you read the book that changed your life
• The day you suffered a loss so profound that you were never the same again

Now, not all of us have all of these re-birthdays. Compile your own list and start to celebrate them this year. Life is not set in stone the day you are born. It is a constant walk toward fulfillment and growth. Remember and celebrate the milestones.

Happy birthday to me, happy re-birthday to you.

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