He's all grown up.
In years past, he would have been tucked into bed the night before by his mama, who with tears (forever the sentimentalist), reminded him that it was his last night to be....four or eight or eleven. Always the routine was the same. She would bribe. She would offer presents, a cake, and a celebration imploring the celebrant to still stay three or seven or ten years old. It never worked. So the next day would dawn on being a year older with all the rights and privileges of being king-for-a-day. Birthdays meant being excused from one's chores, getting to choose the dinner menu and being surprised with a gift-wrapped present on your chair at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Pretty much, it was YOUR DAY!
How is it, then, that on his 18th birthday, this young man would have received a cookie cake at the pool where he was life guarding for the summer with a flourish of icing and M&M's spelling out greetings to DJ and Isabelle? Although not gift-wrapped at his place at the table, this precious niece was, nonetheless, a present to the family on an already commemorative day.
Meet the birthday girl.
She's nine today.
We have three such birthday-buddy groupings in our clan, (plus our three sets of twins). Our youngest daughter was born on our first daughter's fourteenth birthday. Our first grandson, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his great-grandfather's birth.
Coincidence?
A fluke?
What are the odds?
Someone more mathematically-minded than I am could figure out the probability of family members birthdays landing on the same day and it is altogether fun. Without making too much of the fact--realizing that because of numbers alone, our tribe has a good chance of bumping into one another's special occasions--I still wonder how, in God's mind, because He is intentional in all things, the storyline is being written.
In Edith Schaeffer's book, The Tapestry, she writes about the family. She likens each of our lives to a thread and points out that "as we affect each other's ideas, physical beings, spiritual understanding, or material possessions, or as we influence each other's attitudes--creativity, courage, determination to keep on, moods, priorities, understanding spiritually, intellectually, emotionally--we are at the same time affecting history." What an awesome thought that a family is producing fabric that is woven for eternity into the very essence of history. Certainly each family member has influence, contribution, and genetic correlation with the entire clan, but could it be that individuals with birthdays bunched together somehow connect the yarns through decades or generations in ways that uniquely strengthen and reinforce?
In Edith's words again, "So the threads need to ask The Designer, The Weaver, The Artist, time after time to be used in the pattern where He would have them be. It is not automatic. Mystery." Because we are made in His image, we have true, valid choices as we thread our way through life. We need one another. We need the Weaver's touch. The two parallel lines that meet in the sky, man's choice and God's plan, are indeed a mystery. Over, under, around and through one another's lives, our days twine and intertwine. Not accidentally nor incidentally, God has placed us in families on purpose. Is each family marked like an exquisite shawl or garmet with a tag that explains that the unusual nubs and slubs are to be expected and are in fact evidence of the authenticy of being handmade? Indeed, what better time to declare that we are fearfully and wonderfully Hand-made by the Master Weaver.
Birth-day. Birthdays. Double birthdays. A time to stand back and examine the color, texture, warp and woof of the tapestry...and to be thankful He has set us in family.
And these things will be written for a generation to come, that a people yet to be created, would praise The Lord.
Psalm 102:18
LORD told Abram “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” Genesis 12:3b
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