today has been my birthday

I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)

Today has been my birthday. I really do not enjoy getting older, but there is little I can do about it.

I was thinking about birthdays in the past including the one in the picture accompanying this post. Forty years ago today, I had my 22nd birthday. I was high on the world at the time, just having come out of the army, living with my new pretty little wife in Houston in our own apartment. I had a good job with the Telephone Company, we went to a church that had accepted us.

I had not yet had my major car wreck, and some other things were waiting over the horizon. But in general, it was a good time.

Other birthdays are remembered over the years. I remember my 35th in Washington State, just before my life blew apart. There was my fortieth in Goliad, TX, my 51st where I threw a party and hired a band to play. Those seem to stand out for some reason.

You figure though, when you have had 61 birthdays dinners in your 62 years of life, they do tend to run together.

Today was an odd one. I shared a cake with my son-in-law, Mike, who turned 57 yesterday. I cooked his dinner and mine and we had zero money. The van is broken and is in the shop for a new starter and I am unemployed. We live in a bedroom at my daughter’s house. It is not a good birthday.

My family tried, but the cards were against them this year. I just didn’t feel like a party. The past year has been rough and I am depressed by it and the prospect of getting one year older with so little to show for it.

In fact, the past five years have been the hardest of our lives. I truly regret wasting my time in the Pentecostal churches I have pastored. We were not welcomed and had nothing but trouble and financial ruin for having done so.

I keep thinking things will get better, but I do not know if they will. Having left ministry, I do not have the slightest idea what I will do. Add that to the fact that I came into the work force in a depression where men my age are the most unemployed or underemployed in the nation and it is hard.

I suppose the class I teach on Sunday nights is the high point of my week. It is a good class and I enjoy it. It is the one time I am alive.

If it were not for my wife and her love, I am not sure what I would do.

But I am, as Tennessee Ernie Ford sang, another year older and deeper in debt. I am going to do my level best to make this next year better. I am not sure how, but I am going to go down fighting.

I know the Lord has something for me. the alternative is too much to bear. So I wait for him.

As my Facebook scripture of the day says: I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him (Psalm 62:1). All I can do is wait on him. He is my God.