Birthday Wishes

Since I’m still feeling some birthday vibes, and it’ll likely be another year before I feel like celebrating myself, I’m going to share this thought I had the other day.

Pause and Stop the Birthday Wishing

It’s so cliché; and we say it enthusiastically, “Make a wish!”

I propose that for our big-girl birthdays, from now on, we stop the wishing and we start practicing the birthday pause.

I am in that moment where it feels like time is standing still. Everyone I love is standing around me, their attention fully and solely focused on one central thing – me.

Normally, this much attention would make me so nervous, my awkwardness would seep from my pores or just jump right out of my mouth.

All eyes are on me, but I’ve got my eyes on them, from this side of the candle.

In the fifteen or so seconds I have, my eyes pan the room, left to right. So many faces. So many stories. So much history.

I think of everything they had to do to get here, and everything I went through to arrive at this moment.

So many battles we’ve fought. Some, won. Some, lost. Some with each other. Some with ourselves.

And now, here we are, all my favorite people together, in unison and agreement.

I have this magical moment in my hands.

There is nothing better, really. So what do I do with all of this energy? I have nothing to ask.

I wish I could just keep this moment. I’d fold up like a note so I could place it in my jewelry box where I keep my precious things.

So I take all that love that’s in their faces, all those wishes and good will, all that energy, I harness it and I turn it upon this thought, I am so grateful.

For this long-term, generation-bridging, life-saving, wall-toppling, grown-up kind of love. A love you can’t possibly earn or ever fully return. Because it is so much.

As the thought wants to well up in my eyes, I blink away any notion that I could ever need anything more than this… This day. This season. This moment.

I honor it and it honors me.

I savor a second.

I thank Him from whom all good things flow, and for making 38 wishes come true (even the crazy ones).

And I blow out the candle.