Birthday Blessings & Reflections
Today, as I turn 36, I am reflecting on the importance of the church and expressing gratitude for what this last year has brought me and taught me.
Each week at church, the liturgy calls for those who are celebrating birthdays and anniversaries to come forward, kneel at the altar rail, and receive a blessing as the whole church prays the following prayer - found in the Book of Common Prayer - aloud:
O God, our times are in your hand: Look with favor, we pray, on your servants as they begin another year. Grant that they may grow in wisdom and grace, and strengthen their trust in your goodness all the days of their lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
After a year or so away, I’ve come home to my first and dearly beloved Episcopal parish church, the one that held me and was a soft place to land after my exit from evangelicalism.
My birthday is this week (on Thursday the 3rd), so this past Sunday morning in services, I received anointing and blessing over my coming 36th year of life.
This is part of why the church matters so to me. There’s nowhere else I’ll receive that. Sure, I will celebrate my birthday with family & friends. People will sing to me and gather around me and write sweet things in their cards or social media posts to me. But there is no other place where I will receive anointing, blessing from a priest, and the prayers of 100+ saints all rising to heaven, asking that I may grow in wisdom and grace, and strengthen my trust in God all the days of my life. That is something only a faith community, a praying community, a church family does.
My reflections on where I find myself in my life, what the last year has brought me, what this decade of life has taught me, and what I hope for on this next trip around the sun are as follows:
It’s been a really great year - for no reason and every reason.
I am thrilled to discover that I am not bothered at all by aging or this birthday putting me closer to 40 than I am to 30.
In fact, my 30s have been so significantly better, more stable, more comfortable, and healthier than my 20s were that I'm convinced things just keep getting better as we get older. (This is quite a marked difference from the version of me who was crying herself to sleep for multiple I nights leading up to her 30th birthday because she thought it was all downhill, she should be further along towards marriage/kids/career success than she was, and she was about to become older than her older sister ever got to be …which was freaking weird.)
I'm thankful for this growth, for the remarkably different metrics of success and happiness which I now subscribe to, and for the peace and stability in my life.
I’m thankful for my home, my dog, my family, my people, my church, the podcast & the community being built around it, my career, my health, and my freedom.
I’m thankful to be single, to not be a mom (but to get to be an aunt!), to live in the same apartment for four years now (the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I was 17), and to have the ability to pursue creative passions and spiritual studies that intrigue me.
I’m thankful for peace — because boy have I known years (decades even) without it. For joy — because even on the hardest days, it sustains. For faith — even though it looks different for me than it used to. For love — because there is so much of it in my life.
Happy birthday!
I love this. Happy Birthday, Kelly!