This is a more exposing spread of paragraphs than my norm, so bear with me if I’ve moved into a realm too vulnerable for your tastes.  

So it was my birthday a couple weeks ago.  I’ve never been a big birthday person, but this year really wasn’t.  Birthdays weren’t grand celebrations for me growing-up (conversation/issue for another day), which takes my view of these (birth) days to a benchmark of sorts, but not much more.  (Although my mom does sing a pretty awful, and thus decently hysterical, yearly rendition of “Happy Birthday” to my answering machine.)  All mediocrage aside though, twenty-seven marked the first “bad birthday” I’ve ever had.

Suffice it to say I’ve never been “the typical girl.”  And certainly never the typical “Christian girl.”  I knew I held dreams of marriage and mothering (mothering and marriage is probably the more suitable order).  And I knew I had expectations and assumptions of “right passages.”  But I didn’t know to what extent.

In summary, my 27th birthday woke to a single soliloquy spanning Vogue’s entire archive.  Again, rare to my typical form, or at least conscious and shared form (meaning I think this has all been subconsciously around for as long as my birthday has), I hit the girly’est, lonliest, love-craving place I can remember.  No matter how shallow and ungodly it seemed, all I wanted was a man to tell me I was beautiful, and if he had a ring in hand, or was named Ben and/or Jerry, we could’ve just gone straight to the vows.   

These feelings were shocking and depressing enough, but they weren’t even the most pervasive.  I told you this was vulnerable.  The feelings I felt most strongly that sunny 27th morning were sadness and guilt.  Sigmund Freud says depression is repressed anger.   I would agree.  My sadness felt very, very sad, but more honestly, it felt very, very angry. Angry at myself.  Angry at my circumstances—or lack there of.  And angry at my anger.  Furthermore, I felt guilty, apologizing to God for being where I was/am that day/today.  “I’m sorry I’m not married.  I’m sorry I don’t have children. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.  I’m sorry God…so sorry…”  As phrases hit the page, and further inwardness came out, it felt like I was listening to someone else, and yet something of the lands felt recognizably real, too.

One of the things I appreciate about blogging is that you can click “post” without necessarily finishing a thought process.  And that’s what I’m about to do.  Life is hard.  Believing God has you where you are, on purpose, is hard.  And feels really bad at times.  If the Bible is true though, and the Cross really happened, Something is unfolding that wants you and me to be exactly where we are today.  Even if that means having a bad birthday.