My birthday is Sunday. Thus ends the golden year, I turn twenty-eight years old tomorrow. I can hardly believe that I'll be so old. Especially while so much of me still feels like this child:
But, alas, it's true. I am no longer the face of silliness, innocence and hope. Instead I live somewhere between ignorance and indifference; I am an adult. I'm so old, in fact, that as of this year I've had a driver's license for a dozen years. I've been praying for Scott for OVER half of my life. I will be graduating with my final degree. I have the beginnings of impressive crows feet. I have insurance on everything that matters. I am a real ADULT.

And yet, instead of feeling anticipation for my birthday, I've struggled with anxiety this week. Instead of celebrating my years, I am overcome with doubt. I have a gnawing fear that I'm getting older but not better.

As my birthday approaches, I grow anxious. I wonder whether I've merely lived but not learned. I worry that I have added little to others' lives. I fear that what I offer the world is of no consequence. Simply put, I worry that I have not lived well.

So my birthday plan is depressing... but necessary. I intend to succumb to my intensifying need for abusive introspection. Tomorrow I'll drive out of this city with one goal: to go and be still.

I need to sit alone and ask myself some hard questions... about who I am and what lies ahead. For my 28th birthday I intend to follow the simple example of Thoreau, who wrote, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately... and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life... nor did I wish to practise [sic] resignation... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life" (Excerpt from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854).

So here's to introspection and difficult questions. Here's to the paths I've already walked and to the long journey ahead. May it allow me to live deeply. Here's to a Father who meets me in my innermost places and challenges me to live deliberately, "sturdily and Spartan-like." As I grow in age, may I also learn to grow in wisdom and joy. My birthday wish, for myself, is that I become older... and better.