twenty-six

My 26^th birthday wasn’t much of a thing.  I went to church.  I came home to a traditional Sunday roast lunch with my traditionally-gathered Sunday roast lunch family members.  I ate a delicious not-so-traditional peanut butter pie.  I opened presents.  And then I went to work, where I hung out with self- or others-harming adolescents who, for the most part, kept destructive behavior to a minimum that evening.  Thankfully.  Because it was my birthday, and I was freaking entitled to be mildly worshiped…  at least.

Really, it was mostly just a day.  Sort of a harsh anticlimax to what I thought would surely be the beginning of the ohmygoshican’tbelievei’mactuallythisoldandistilldon’thavemycraptogether season.  But February 23^rd came and went without much to say for itself, as if shrugging and commenting something apathetically on its way out like, “Well, looks like everything is going to be pretty much the same."

I sat in a booth across from my cousin Morgan at Panera Bread about a week later.  We both clasped hands around our coffee cups, catching up on lives and woes and new things over the last couple of months since we had seen each other.  I had done a bit of introspection over those few days since the anniversary of my birth.  I reflected on how, in the past, each birth year had gone by with a sense of failure because I hadn’t accomplished this or that by now.  Remember that blog on being 23?  I recall being dumbfounded and ashamed that I hadn’t found “the one”, gotten a “real” job, figured out what I wanted to do with my life – all that being a white, middle-class, Christian American woman entails.  Each early-twenty-something birthday passed with the hope of Well, maybe next year…

“But year twenty-six is going to be different,” I told myself one day, and Morgan a few later.  “I declare that year twenty-six is going to be the year of not looking forward to the things that haven’t been promised; but instead, the things that have been promised."

Think about it.

Did God ever promise me a husband and family of my own?  Well, no.  But He promised an adoption as His daughter into the beautiful and eternal family of Christ.  Did He ever promise me a fancy, secure job?  Nope.  But He promised to provide everything I need.  What about the knowledge of definite plans for the rest of my life?  Of course not.  But He promised that if I trusted Him, He would direct my path.

Or the harder realization…  Does God promise to give the desires of my heart if I delight myself in Him?  He sure does, but…  He doesn’t promise those in this lifetime.

Ever read Hebrews 11?  The “Hall of Faith,” as the Christians say.  A chronicle of the ways in which sixteen people showed exemplary faith for the glory of God…  "yet none of them received what had been promised."  Jesus.  The promise of the Messiah.  Not received in their earthly lifetime, but certainly known in the eternal.

I guess it's about time I approach the brink of a mature and peaceful acceptance that getting older and wiser – and more like Jesus – doesn’t entitle me to the pleasures of this world I often believe I deserve.

But His blessings are far sweeter than my expectations anyway.

So, cheers to 26 years.  Here's to every following birthday not including the anticipation of a sort of arrival.  Here's to not pining away for burdens I was never meant to take on (for now).  Here's to actually being, I don't know… content.  But not content, exactly.  Thriving.  Where I am.  Right now.  Here's to learning how to cook before I meet a guy I'll have to cook for and working part-time jobs to fund the things I actually care about doing.  Here's to saying yes to God's promises and living without expectation in regard to all the rest.

Because now is enough.