One of my sweethearts marked her birthday today, and her father marked it with her in his heart. When her mother was alive I did not think fully about the birthdays of family members as I now try to do. My wife took care of the details. She reminded me of the birthdays, keeping careful track of them. She had a file of cards chosen meticulously for each individual, sometimes holding a choice card a year or so in advance of addressing it. She would put the card before me to write a personal note this year to . . . . . – the named person. If to a grandchild, under the age of 18, there had to be added a check with the dollar amount signifying the age of the person. She wanted me to write the check and the note. I took time to think of some warm truth. She would read each carefully to be sure of the special words, and then add whatever sentiment she felt. She saw to it that the card was mailed. The greater interest to me was the warmth I felt in seeing her make such detailed gestures to let family members know they were in our bank of memories, finding or creating interest in their lives. Members of our family continue the tradition in their own ways.
She taught me something in this common practice of sending cards. That sending them may be more gratifying to the sender than is the reception by the person marking a special day. Something was happening in our experience. We were oiling the springs of our love. We were reminding ourselves that here were the treasures of our lives, and we wanted some visible means of expressing that love. It was prayerful. It was animating. It served ministry and meaning.
When we were born we left a life in the bodies of our mothers for lives in the body of nature. From Mother Nature we go to the bosom of Abraham, for the place prepared of the Lord for the complete circle of transitions for his children. The transitions are remarkable. They are vital moments in our lives. Persons of faith must feel more deeply about the whole story than do others, for the birth of each life means the death of the previous life. I died to the life of the womb of my mother, when I, on my death day/birthday was born, and awoke to the broader life of nature. I shall on my next death day/birthday die to the womb of nature, to be born to the broader life immortal. I presume the cycles will be complete. The journey will have ended, perpetuity begins another context. There may be new transitions, but I shall be present in my final home. My comfort to my children includes all that belief, and the animation all this offers in the telling is not easy to describe. Another year in my life with my Christian/biological children is cause for celebration – as we prepare for the expanded life of the forever tomorrow, as God wills.
Little wonder that I pray, virtually every day, that my family circle will be unbroken in that idyllic place. There is my mother, there is my wife, there will be my children, and, if my prayers are effective to the ultimate, their families and issue. There is a spiritual sense in which my younger daughter’s birthday today is also mine. It is a new year to the last year that we marked together, moving us nearer to the Christ of heaven. Remembrance of the births of each of my children is for me as the birth of Christ must have been, in a special way to Mary, who hid remembrances about him in her heart from birth to the end of earthly life and beyond. Even from the cross, Jesus acknowledged her in the largeness of her grief. I too have a private status for my children in my heart. King David said on the death of his infant child, I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. One of my major concerns, at this advanced age of my life, is that some Christians may have diluted a family’s corporate meaning to eternal relationships. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020