Birthdays are strange, which is a strange way to begin a birthday tribute to someone special.
Every year we celebrate the certainty that someone exists, but we don't often stop to think about how close they came to not existing at all.
I do not mean dying, I mean not existing, which are two very different things.
Think about it.
If your father had missed that bus, if your mother had gone to a different school, if they had sat on opposite sides of the room, if one of them had decided, "I'm not going to that wedding," if a friend had forgotten to make an introduction, if rain had fallen that afternoon, if someone had arrived at the function five minutes later...
...you, with your particular laugh, your smile, your strange taste in music, your fear of cats, your bad jokes, your love for mountains and budding love of birds, your ability to forget where you left your glasses, your curious mind, would simply never have happened.
The world would have carried on quite comfortably, but it would have done so without you, which is strange because you feel so permanent.
Your existence balances on millions of tiny decisions made by people who never imagined they were helping to create you. Most certainly, behind all those ordinary moments, God was writing a story long before anyone involved knew there was a story to write.
Someone chose a particular village, someone migrated from the East westward, someone survived an illness, someone said yes instead of no, someone stayed, someone left, someone forgave, someone took a chance.
All those decisions converged into one baby who was born screaming and has spent the years since trying to solve all the world's problems. Through choices, chance meetings, and grace, God brought together a family tree that eventually produced you.
And this isn't only true for you. Your friends, spouse, daughter almost didn't exist. That annoying colleague who replies-all to emails almost didn't exist. The boda rider or cab guy who takes you home every evening almost didn't exist. Even MK and your enemies almost didn't exist.
This changes how we see people because every person is the unlikely conclusion of a story that could have gone a thousand different ways. Every person we encounter is someone God intended and generations helped bring into being.
An African proverb says, "A person is people." Birthdays are really celebrations of that mystery. Yes, you have survived another trip around the sun as we like to say these days, but against impossible odds and through countless accidents, through generations of stories, prayers, choices, coincidences, and grace, God saw fit to bring you into the world at all.
And now here you are, laughing, working, debating with strangers online, falling in love, worrying, writing, establishing your business, arguing about politics, building rustic pieces of furniture, raising your daughter, sending voice notes that should have been text messages, saying you will arrive on time when you know you will be late, living a wonderfully ordinary life that almost never happened.
This is exactly why birthdays matter.
Birthdays matter not only because we are counting years but also because we are pausing to appreciate the unbelievable fact that before we knew ourselves, before anyone called us by name, before our parents knew whether we would have our mother's nose or our father's stubbornness, God already knew we were coming.
From the sandy place where my feet are, birthdays in as much as they are about getting older, they are more about giving thanks for the astonishing fact that we got invited to existence in the first place.
Happy Birthday to you!
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