Recovering Birthday Joy

The cause of, and remedy for, Birthday Blues

The excitement of birthdays is taking a new shape for me.

Growing up, my mum always made birthdays extra special. She filled each celebration with love in the form of friends coming over to watch films on our bedsheet-over-the-window makeshift cinema screen, chocolate rice crispy cupcakes (because I have an egg allergy), and a few gifts that always left me feeling cherished. But, more than all the love, as I grew in my faith, my birthday always felt like my own personal New Year’s celebration. I would reflect with gratitude upon all God had done in the previous year, the deliverances, the gifts, and the minor joys of life, tallying up with ease to bring me into unmitigated thanksgiving and joy. I loathed the term “birthday blues,” completely unable to fathom how anyone could feel anything besides contentment, at the very least, about their birthday.

Then, unexpectedly, everything changed.

The Turn

Two days before my 30th birthday, I left the hospital after an intense three-night hospital stay, during which I was diagnosed with a fairly uncommon autoimmune disease. After ignoring symptoms for 6-weeks, doctors told me it was a miracle that I was alive. They had never seen lab results like mine, where the person was anything other than incapacitated, unable to believe that I had been at work the previous day. During my treatment, one thing became abundantly clear: I was meeting a new version of my body. One that demanded my care and attention, and one I needed to learn how to steward. One I needed to learn how to love.

Or perhaps I was simply meeting my body for the first time. That same one who had tried to talk to me for years. The one I’d tried to silence by starving it of any attention other than to chastise it. The one that saved me from myself by setting off alarm systems to get me to safety.

I’m still cleaning the lenses of hindsight to see it that way, though I know it’s true.

Then, two days later, I had to abandon my birthday celebrations to return to the hospital after labs revealed a problem. My doctor’s concerned voicemail led to a dramatic medical marathon, running from facility to facility for medication, CT scans, ultrasounds, and MRIs.

A new kind of fear seeped into my life that week. Not a fear that falls from a grey cloud outside of yourself, but one that pours out of you like sweat. A fear from within yourself. A fear of within yourself.

The truth is, this story isn’t one about how my 30th birthday was ruined, and now I’m worried that birthdays will no longer contain the joy they used to. It is a story about unexpected turning points. It’s a story about how the very meaning of being alive changed for me, and how life began to make new demands of my faith and emotional landscape. And I tell it because I think birthday blues are common, even for those who haven’t had major health or life crises. I believe it is common in your thirties onward because it feels like all the major milestones of adulthood have passed (or, disappointingly, have not), and life doesn’t feel quite so linear. The feeling of inevitable forward movement gives way to the unpredictable twists and turns of life that feel more like going backwards than the switchbacks they actually are. Then we take all of that complexity and flatten it into turning our birthday into the day and season to audit our lives. We replace celebration with the looming dread of a performance review that puts a magnifying glass on all that didn’t go to plan. Slowly but surely, birthdays became a time of evaluation more than celebration- and I believe that is an error.

Birthday’s Are About Celebration

I’m finding that the most effective remedy for me is in the liberation of choice. I choose not to allow my birthday to be a time for evaluation, but simply a time to celebrate what is.

It may seem paradoxical, but awakening to the simple gift of continuation has helped me make this choice. I’m learning to see my birthday as the simple gift of another day, another mercy, another chance to keep building the life I want and the life to which I feel called. Intentionally inhaling these simple truths soothes both the fear of unknown future troubles and helps heal the bruises of past disappointments and pains. Remembering that I have been gifted with the continuation of my life frees me up to put down the evaluation form and celebrate. No one is looking over my shoulder, measuring my progress, or checking that I’m moving fast enough. God isn’t looking at me, shaking his head in disappointment that I haven’t accomplished more, wondering how He’s going to make something out of my “nothing.” A birthday doesn’t have to be the end of the game; no one is saying “the scores are in,” and trying to determine if you won or lost (what, I don’t know).

So, whenever your birthday rolls around and your brain starts to seek out affirmation that you’re not behind, remember:

Your birthday is the gift of another day.

Another breath.

Another chance to become.

So now, three years later, on this my 33rd birthday, birthday blues have given way to a quiet gratitude. Indeed, I am still standing in the ruins of the life I anticipated, but I’m also still here to build a fuller, freer, and more honest life than that one. And, it’s a mercy that I get to.

For the rest of the month, I’ll be sharing three other lessons I’m bringing with me into 33, not for my own self-indulgence, but because I believe they can be an encouragement to you, too.