One More Birthday, One More Year, No Looking Back

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.”     --Frank Lloyd Wright

Forever 21.

That’s the name of a clothing store I walked by at the local mall last week. Forever 21. Really? Funny: I could not find a store named Forever 13 or Forever 40 or Forever 58 or Forever 77. Which makes me wonder if the owners of that retail outlet actually believe that, if you are going to be one age forever, as in all eternity, it might as well be 21. Right?

But then I thought back to my twenty-first year, my twenty first birthday as well, thirty-eight Novembers ago this month. Who was I at 21?

I was a young man who’d yet to figure just what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, as I plowed through my classes at UMass. Politics? Writing? Ministry? I was scared at the prospect of an unknown future and so excited too, at the life that lay before me. At 21, I loved the posse of folks I ran with, such good friends who loved me too. We had so much fun. Good friends, who like me, often partied way too hard, which sometimes led to mindless impulsivity which sometimes led to very risky behavior. On the night before my 21^st birthday back in 1981, I sat in the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey to watch a sold out Rolling Stones and Tina Turner concert. Loved the music: AMAZING! Hated the fact that the completely drunk guy behind me threw up all over my back, just two songs into the evening. YUCK!

Forever 21? I don’t think so. 

You see, I was exactly who I was supposed to be when I was 21. Anxious and cocky.  Growing up and struggling to take responsibility for my one life. That’s what it meant to be so young. That’s what it meant for me to be there and to be then.

And then I wasn’t 21 anymore. I was 22, and so on and so on and so on and so on. I’m discovering that one of the gifts of aging is that we all get to go through a phase in life and enjoy it fully, and embrace it fully, and wrestle with it when it is so hard and celebrate it when it is such a miracle, such a gift from God. The wild and beautiful truth is, that subject to time as mortals, we are always moving forward, moving into whatever the next life chapter is to be. Childhood. Adolescence. Young adulthood. Middle age. Retirement. Final years.

That inexorable passage of time is non-negotiable. We cannot be Forever 21 or Forever any age. Yes, sometimes I am so tempted to romanticize a past part of my life and wish I could be there again, wish I could go back. Get a do over. I think we all do. That’s very human. Go back to 30, when I could work sixty hours a week and not feel it so much in my bones and my spirit. To 40, when I fell in love so hard and so beautifully and so tragically and so wonderfully. To 50, when I hit my stride professionally and remember thinking, “I’m pretty good at doing this and I like it.” And now almost to 60 when I will…well, I’m not really sure.

That’s the adventure of time, my time, our time, the limited time we are given on this earth by our generous Creator. I’ve absolutely no idea what the next decade will bring. God only knows. And I don’t want to know either. If we got to know just how our personal stories will end up, or how the story of this world will unfold, or the story of our loved ones and what is in store for them: now how much fun would that be? 

Probably about as much fun as being forever 21.

So, as I stare down another birthday, as I imagine how hard it will be to blow out the forest fire of 59 candles, as I get all those best wishes and prayers from the folks I love and some corny cards and maybe even a cake, here’s my birthday hope. That I will try my best to thank God that I am 59 and that I got to live another year in this beautiful and broken and amazing thing called human life.  I will pray for the wisdom to accept that I am exactly as old as I am supposed to, and maybe even as young too sometimes, when I live with the right attitude.

Most fervently, I will pray that God will give me gratitude, deep gratitude, for the 21,541 days I’ve been blessed to be given and for the days that lay ahead too.

Forever 21? Not this year. Not ever. Just let me be who I am. Fifty nine. Just let us experience, with grace and thanksgiving, all the days of our lives as we live them, as they arrive, as they depart, as they become a memory. 

Then, maybe every day will be like our birthday. Pass the cake, please!