Why I hated and now love my birthday!

Learning to accept the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is

Photo by Angèle Kamp on Unsplash

This is a letter to anyone who has ever struggled with their birthday.

Dear Fellow Birthday Struggler:

For many years, I struggled with my birthday. I remember in the days before many birthdays of my life, I would find myself sad, depressed and bewildered. Some how, I never connected the dots—I never knew why.  No matter how many candles; no matter how many birthday cakes, presents or parties, nothing could seem to ever touch the shadow of my heart where so much darkness existed.

It’s not that I didn’t have parties as a child. It’s that I, somehow, could never actually believe that my own life was worth celebrating.  No party was big enough. No song fanfare was ever loud enough; no card was ever meaningful enough to touch the deep abyss in my soul.

Now, I know it was hard for those who did actually try to love me. I made it difficult for them in not receiving their blessing and in not accepting their blessings of me.  I’m sorry for that and for the rejection that this has caused. I own it now. I understand it better.

I brought that abyss to my marriage and over the years and decades, Gwen and I would talk, in the days leading up to my birthdays, how I wanted “it” to be.  She could never convince me of my worth. My own wife, whom I loved, could never reach this deep place inside where I struggled so much—and this struggled continued for decades, I’m sad to say.

The roots to my own inability to accept my life—to accept my worth—to believe that I was worthy of celebration gnawed at me and in me like a cancerous tumor that needed to be removed, if I were to survive. My disease of soul seemed systemic and seemed terminal.

When I was 32, I started counseling and my counselor handed me a book by Henri Nouwen. This book, Life of the Beloved” offered me the surgery I needed to find my health, well being and understanding of why not only my own birthday was so important but why EVERY birthday of every human being is important. My counselor, was a skilled surgeon who exposed the tumor and removed as much of it as he could. Nouwen’s book should be required reading of every human being on the planet.

I began to live—really live when I understood more of my birthday and my belovedness.

Nouwen writes:

Birthdays need to be celebrated. I think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam, a promotion, or a victory. Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: “Thank you for being you.” Celebrating a birthday is exalting life and being glad for it. On a birthday we do not say: “Thanks for what you did, or said, or accomplished.” No, we say: “Thank you for being born and being among us.”

On birthdays we celebrate the present. We do not complain about what happened or speculate about what will happen, but we lift someone up and let everyone say: “We love you.”

I had never read such words in my entire life despite the fact I had been to university, grad school and worked on my doctorate. No amount of education  helped me learn what I, and every human person, needed to know.  What we need to know is this:

I am the Beloved of God. I was thought up in the heart of God—unique, complex and as complicated as I feel I am, I am the very beloved of God.  My journey was one of learning to accept this fact and realization and allow this truth to steep into every cell of my being. 

How this ties into a birthday is because on this day, we say along with the Pslamist, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” no matter how much I do not yet undertand this fact or myself. My lack of understanding does not negate the truth of this great truth and today, I celebrate the truth and my own life.

Nouwen writes, “We are the Beloved but we spend the rest of our lives BECOMING the beloved.”  We both are the beloved, but it is also true that we become—over a time, the beloved. IT is this “becoming” that is our invitation to become who we truly are.

Over the years and decades until this very moment, I am still on this journey of becoming the beloved.  Why? You might ask.  Well, it is because the world tells me:

I am not enough.

I do not have what it takes.

I do not matter.

I’m not good enough; smart enough, rich enough, beautiful enough to be worthy of this kind of love.

For me and for many people, perhaps even you, these lies must be debunked and eradicated from our soul. The tentacles of these lies wrap around so much of our souls that it seems, each tentacle must be removed and like the octopus, some tentacles grow back.

These lies are the core of why birthday blessings cannot be received or believed.

It takes many voices to help us recognize that in these voices who wish us well and offer us blessings on our birthdays are actually true. In each voice who gives us a birthday greeting, we can hear a Greater Voice behind each voice—an Eternal Voice speaking into us that says, “I see you. You matter. I love you.”

This birthday, I am going to celebrate 70 years upon the planet; 70 rotations around the Sun; 70 years of replacing lies I believed to trust the truth that sets me free from this blight in my soul.  It’s not been easy to debunk these lies for they change and alter depending on the seasons and stages of our lives.

Now, I’m entering a season where I am leaving my work and living my life in a different way. I am not applauded when I speak. I do not receive the affirmation of a staff. I am not trying to reach new benchmarks or expand platforms to be recognized. All those ways of the world, are ways, we so often recognize, how to both give praise and recognition and sometimes, how to receive such praise.

This is a season where I’m not hearing as much praise but I am hearing love.

Love is far, far better than praise. Why? Because praise is rooted in doing. Love is rooted in essence.

These days, I am liking, more and more, the word and term, “essence”. When I speak of my own essence or the essence of another person, I am speaking of their true identity—their true being—their true belovedess. My essence is all of who I am; all of who I have ever been and all of whom I shall become in my remaining days upon this planet Earth. It is my essence which will one day move out and beyond into eternity—into that place prepared for me and for all who are the beloved. I like this. I like this a lot.

I am hearing more acceptance than I’ve ever heard. I am hearing the music of celebration. How? It’s mostly coming to me through learning to listen to the Voice through the choirs of birds, the beauty of trees, the friends who both know and recognize my own journey and theirs and are able to listen so deeply to me and I to them that I can find the assurance in which I’m writing to you—the assurance that the Voice telling us who we are and whose we are is still speaking if we will only listen. 

It is in solitude that I am learning to hear the Voice who tells me and reminds me who I am and that who I am matters. It is in the act and practice of solitude, that all other voices diminish and this Great Voice can at last be heard. I welcome solitude more and more into my life and see a growing appreciation of solitude in the aging process as I watch my older friends grapple with the exact issues I am describing here. I am not alone in this and in anyone who practices solitude, we find a solidarity—a tie that binds us and gives us understanding and respect.

Self love is either acquired or it is rejected throughout our lives. No one is born fully loving themselves.  The Swiss psychologist, Walter Trobisch has been my go-to “doc” for years to learn and relearn this truth. He says, in the end, we must “learn to accept acceptance.”  And this truth is the truth that sets us free.

Every birthday is my invitation to accept acceptance.

Every birthday is my opportunity to trust the Voice and the voices who want to speak to me and into me.

Every birthday is another occasion to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is!

And here’s a deeper truth—every person you live with; every person in your family; every person you meet at the grocery store; every person who sits in the cubicle across from you; every person who sits in the pew behind you is in some way on this same journey. There are no exceptions. None. Nada!

I’ve met people who had what is called healthy self-esteem and as I’ve listened to their stories—hundreds of them, there is always someone in their lives who they somehow know saw them, loved them and cherished them.  As I look back on my own life, I have traced this line to my sister and several elementary grade teachers. Their voice because part of that Greater Voice who saw me and celebrated me.

Was it a third grade teacher like I had in Mrs. Harris? She “saw” me. She noticed me. She loved me in a way I had never been loved as a boy. Could this Voice come through  a coach? A grandparent, aunt or uncle? A school mate?  Take a moment and trace the soundwave of this Voice of Love and see if you can identify that Voice and give Thanks. Seriously, do it. And if you could, just type their name in the comments so we can all be a witness to this growing chorus of love. Just a first name would do or even initials. Go ahead. It’s your way of celebrating both them and the Greater Voice.

There is so much self rejection available to us these days. Our isolation, busyness, and social media have created such walls that prevent us from finding one another and speaking this kind of love to each other.  Nouwen writes, “self rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life.”  I believe Nouwen and I know for a fact that Nouwen’s words are the truth.  Because there is so much self-rejection, we must learn, relearn and relearn how important acceptance truly is in our lives.

Accepting our worth, value and dignity is vitally important as we age.  Aging and the voices that accompany our aging assaults our sense of dignity and belovedness. It seems we never get a diploma announcing “You got it! You’ve finally graduated from the school of belovedness.”

Not even Jesus himself nailed this down. We read in the final years, hours and days of his life, he struggled seeking assurance from the Voice reminding him; telling him and assuring him of his own identity. We can take comfort in his own journey and realize that we are not crazy for doubting our belovedness.

So, friend, if your birthday is near or recently passed; if you know of someone besides yourself who also my seem to struggle with their birthday, take note. It’s not just about their birthday. It’s about something much deeper; much more foundational; more more primal and core to our own existence.

Learning to go easy on ourselves may be our greatest gift on our birthdays. To learn to go easy; to be good and kind to our souls and care for our bodies who have carried us so far in this life and on this planet.

Every time I practice love to myself, I practice becoming the beloved.

Every time, I learn to be kind to myself, I honor my worth.

Every time, I accept acceptance, I bow in agreement with the Voice of Love who both calls me the Beloved and celebrates the very, particular and exact day, I was born.

---

So, in Substack fashion, I’ve written a new poem about birthdays and the journey we take to accept them and to receive a blessing on our birthdays. My poems on Substack are for the folks who stand with me in this new season of my own life in experimenting with poetry. This is the way I’m writing and mining up any gold that I have in my own heart. Thanks for the folks who have subscribed.