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This is me.
It’s my birthday.
I am 44 years old and deeply loved…
Celebrating my worth as a daughter of the KING!
If only birthdays were that kind of straight up truth! How about you? How do you feel about birthdays? Maybe it’s easier to start with noticing others. Have you ever noticed how many different ways there are to feel about birthdays? Some can’t wait, some want to skip over it; some embrace their age, some won’t tell; some throw their own parties; some would rather disappear. Here’s what I’ve learned: there’s a story behind every single one of those approaches to birthdays. How we feel about our birthday runs deep in our stories…and often reveals something about what we believe about ourselves. This can be both breathtakingly beautiful and heartachingly broken.
For most of my life, I’ve approached my birthday with a mix of joyful anticipation and anxious uncertainty. Why the extremes? Well, on the joyful side of things, I believe birthdays are a BIG deal. It’s the day God chose to bring YOU –– his wonderful, marvelous, glorious creation –– into this world! He’s known you all along, but this is the day He introduced the world to how glorious, extraordinary, unique and spectacular you are. It’s the day He revealed yet another aspect of His very own image…through YOU! He’s so lavishly in love with you, wildly crazy about you, immeasuarbly proud of you. More than anything else, You are HIS! You are intimately known to Him. He has called YOU by name! [Isaiah 43:1]
And then there’s the flip side in my approach to birthdays: anxious uncertainty. Ever since I was young, I’ve feared that I’ll be forgotten and uncelebrated. Sometimes it’s faint; sometimes it roars. But it was always there. Of course, I had no conscious or cognitive idea that I feared these things as a child. But I can look back and see the signs. I was often sick on my birthday. I had parties but often felt detached and on the outside of my own celebration. Knowing what I know now about trauma and how the body keeps the score, I believe the sickness was an outward manifestation of my inner anxiety and fear. My immune system couldn’t fight the stress of winter weather on the outside and fear and anxiety on the inside. And the detachment or dissociation…it was the way I coped with the overwhelming sensations of anxiety in my little body. (This is why Trauma Sensitive Yoga is so healing; it’s a way of returning to your body and safety, gently reconnecting after years, or in my case decades, of leaving.)
So, yes. Sadly, I feared that I wasn’t worth celebrating on my own birthday. But it didn’t stop there. And it wasn’t limited to birthdays. My birthday just became the annual occasion to raise my fears and deepen my agreements with false beliefs. I had this underlying sense that I was unwanted, unlovable and deeply flawed. I wondered if others felt this way about me or if it was just me. When someone forgot my birthday or didn’t celebrate me as fully as I longed to be celebrated, it only reinforced the lies and made them all seem more true. Of course I had no idea these were lies…or that I was believing them. But I carried them inside, dispersing bits and pieces of my fear along the way, and picking up more of it each and every year.
Now where on earth did I pick up these fears? How on earth does a beautiful, radiant, uniquely made child of God believe the lies that she is unwanted, unlovable or unworthy?!?!
When you say it that way, it sounds inconceivable! But we have an enemy of our soul who’s opposed to the image of God in us and to the glory of God we reveal to this world. He’ll do anything to dull our radiant, sparkling, shimmering selves…to the point that we don’t even recognize the glory of God in us and start believing we have nothing to offer in this world. We start trying to become artificially shiny to prove ourselves worthy instead of resting in the authentic glory that already belongs to us just because of who God made us, not because of anything we do to create it.
The enemy of our soul hates our glory and shoots his arrows with messages attached…messages meant to destroy the truth of who we are. Usually there’s a core message delivered very early in life –– in the womb, on the day you were born, or in early childhood. And as your story unfolds, the arrows come again and again through various stories, experiences and people to validate the core messages until you believe they are true so deep down that you are living your life (and birthdays!) out of false beliefs without even realizing it.
It wasn’t until five or six years ago that I learned where my birthday fears were rooted. I discovered that beneath my birthday fears were core lies and agreements about who I am: not wanted, not lovable and not worthy of love as I am. I’d been operating out of these lies for a long time without even knowing it! (Which not only left me anxious and fearful, but also leads to self-sabotage.) I sought healing through counseling and inner healing prayer (with trained prayer warriors). As I invited Jesus to show me where these fears and false beliefs entered in and broke agreements with the lies, I began to experience tremendous healing. And as I grow stronger, God has allowed even more to surface.
Since that original season of healing, God has been redeeming my birthday. And what I believe is true of me. But then there was this year: the first birthday post divorce. And boy did the enemy want to use that story to resurrect and reinforce old lies! Unwanted and unlovable. Yep, if you were lovable, he wouldn’t have left. Unworthy of celebration. Yep, if you were worth celebrating, you wouldn’t be spending the day alone. Forgotten. Yep, you know how that goes…you notice who didn’t reach out instead of receiving all the love from those who did. (Gosh, I hate to admit that one. It sounds so silly when I write it out…which is exactly why we need to write the lies down. So we can see them for what they are and replace them with the truth! Life is so much richer when we’re living out of truth.)
I’ve written lots of little bits about spiritual warfare over the years. Whether you believe in it consciously or not, the arrows still fly and the messages get embedded. We don’t usually know we’re believing them or living our lives based on the lies until something or someone triggers the place where that arrow landed. And when that arrow gets jostled, the message that was attached to it is all of a sudden blaring. Sometimes it becomes all we can hear in our heads and dictates all that we see, interpret and do in our lives. When our core lies start blaring, the truth of who we are gets muted and our vision of our God-given glory grows dim.
Can we get our original shimmer back? Absolutely! Anytime! There’s so much more to say about that. But for now, the answer is YES! You were meant to SHINE!
* * *
STOP THE PRESS!!! I was writing all of that while my girls were lovingly preparing a special birthday dinner and extravagant three-layer chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. They know how to make a mama feel loved! I was enjoying the smells and the kitchen banter, wondering where this birthday post was going, when all of a sudden…SURPRISE!!!
My unbelievable daughters not only prepared dinner for me, but they invited guests! Five people walked in my back door all at once. And all at once, I felt SO LOVED. My girls knew exactly who to invite: the friends who have become like family…and family who are as dear as friends. I was scrappy and braless since I wasn’t expecting a party, but you know what? It was perfect. Because these people have seen me at my messiest. They entered into my darkest, heaviest places…and they STAYED. They didn’t reject me, abandon me, or find me unworthy. They didn’t forget me or decide I was too much and too hard to love. They entered into my story and they keep showing up. And you know what? I finally believe I’m worth it. The enemy has no chance against the truth these people bring into my lives! My daughters included!
So what’s the point of this whole post? Well, after a good meal, the richest chocolate cake and a full heart from a full table of friends and family, it’s just this: YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE AND CELEBRATION. On your birthday and every day. There’s so much more I want to say. Another day!
So much love to you Bravehearted Beauties!
P.S.
I love you, my daughters!
Thank you for celebrating me so beautifully tonight!
You are my best gifts EVER!
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