Birthday Celebration
“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12
I turn 40 years old today. Several things have changed in the last decade.
- I got my doctorate.
- I got hired to be a professor at two universities, first at Charleston Southern University and then at Southern Wesleyan University.
- My wife and I bought — and had built — two new homes, first in Summerville and then on the same piece of land that’s been in my wife’s family for over 200 years.
- I became a father.
- My relationship to God got significantly better.
These five things are not unrelated.
My providential hiring at two Christian schools put me in a place to better cultivate my faith and learn how best to connect my private and professional lives.
The birth of our daughter occasioned a lot of reflection and some searching that might not have happened otherwise. When my wife got a new job in the upstate near family, it was a blessing. Our daughter hadn’t yet turned two, and the possibility of being somewhere minutes instead of hours from family was a way to live intentionally as part of a family and church community rather than a nameless couple in the suburbs in a gigantic church.
Finally, the birth of my daughter occasioned a lot of soul searching and praying. God had taught me lessons about prayer and fellowship in my early 30s. As I became a father and had to balance my commitment to my wife and the students, I discovered that my priorities needed calibrating. When I made God the focal point of my life, my relationships with people — my family, my friends, my students — fell into place. I have enjoyed the richest season of community in my life during the past five years at a time where I was told my
Even this past year — complete with the pandemic which struck America just after my birthday — has given me clarity about the work God still needs to do in my life. I need humility, and I need to listen. Those are not unrelated qualities, and boy, does being a father give you ample opportunities to improve in them.
The summer before our daughter was born, I asked the ministers I was under to tell me how their own fatherhood had affected their relationship with God. They said it had done so profoundly, but in different ways. One spoke about understanding how love worked: that you thought you couldn’t love anyone as much as you love your wife but just look how you now loved your child as much. Another talked of discovering the dimensions of God as a Father through his own experience of fatherhood.
As I enter my forties, I want to be a better conduit through which my daughter and wife can experience God’s love. I am thankful for the opportunity to have a daughter and wife to love, and I am thankful for another year in which to see God’s hand at work not just in my life but in the lives of everyone around me.
