Happy Birthday To Me

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” James 1:17.

When I was six years old I had to be hospitalized for a suspicious blockage leading to my kidneys.  Things turned out fine but I had to have surgery requiring my stay at the hospital to be one week.  At the beginning of that week my Sunday School teacher visited bringing a basket of wrapped gifts.  Her instructions were that I open one gift per day during my time in the hospital.  Oddly enough I had a gift to open every day that I remained there.  How did she know how many days I would be in that place when the doctors didn’t even know?

Today is my birthday and I seem to be overwhelmed with the knowledge that God placed me in this place, in my particular family on this particular day many years ago.  My birthday is no random day but a day that God ordained before He even formed me.  It was a day 52 years ago that God had tucked deep in His heart when thinking about me.  It was a day that He had planned for, dreamed of and used to fulfill a dream for my parents.  Before I was born into this place He saw the children that I would be blessed with and the grandchildren who would call me Emmy.  He had already determined the husband who would walk through life with me hand in hand.  On the day I entered this world, He presented me with a basket of gifts to open every day of my stay on earth.  I am still unwrapping His blessings each day and am confident that they will not run out while on this earth. 

Some of the gifts I opened were wrapped with sadness and heartbreak but they also came with purpose and spiritual growth.  Some of the gifts seem incomplete but I know He is always bringing things our way that are building us into His character and completion.  He saw the trials for which I would walk and the deep deserts for which I would thirst.  He knew how many days it would take to surrender this…to accept that…to embrace what seemed to be impossible.  No, today is no random day but a special day…one that is unique to me and my Father.  There is another day that will be a day like none other.  It will be the day I depart this earth…when I have unwrapped my final gift…the day He determined long ago when He will gather me from this place and bring me back home to Him.  I will exchange an empty basket of blessings for my eternal home with God and my heavenly family.

“You saw me before I was born.  Every day of my life was recorded in your book.  Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” Psalm 139:16.