A life-giving baby step.
A life-giving baby step
B irthdays need to be celebrated. When most of us think of the anniversaries of our birth, we probably have flashbacks to childhood. When I was three, my parents put together a party with the theme of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. For me, it might as well have been a state banquet at the White House or at Buckingham Palace. The icing on the cake (pun intended) — besides the love — was a Dopey cookie. Mom had figurines of all seven of the little guys around the cake, but he was my favorite. At Walt Disney World, when I was about ten, I was quick to ask for a Dopey doll. I sensed a kinship early on.
A friend recently sent me a copy of Henri J. M. Nouwen’s Here and Now: Living in the Spirit while I’ve been on medical leave from full-time work at National Review. (Coming back soon to a full slate!) Maybe we all need to do what Nouwen recommends and take some time during middle age to reflect on what has been and what is happening now, with a trust in Providence about the future, knowing all God has already provided in abundance. The timing is right for me. As Wikipedia will accurately tell you, my 50th birthday is on March 22, 1976. (I have no idea how it got there; not everything on that page is correct or relevant. You can’t believe everything on the internet.) Since I was born in the bicentennial year, the whole United States of America is celebrating my birthday this year. I look pretty good considering. (Yes, I clearly missed my calling as purveyor of dad jokes.)
Birthdays need to be a big deal because people need to know that they are loved and a blessing to the world. They need to know it’s not their successes that give them their irrevocable human value; it’s simply their existence. If you are a believer in God, you might appreciate on some level that you were loved into being, in His own image. We should be seeing God in one another, because He cared to think of the idea of you and me in the first place. And the fact is that many — perhaps most, I often wonder — don’t understand or accept this about themselves.
“Irreplaceable. That’s what you are.” I’d like to think that Nat King Cole wouldn’t mind the adaptation. Catholics of all ages — and especially young people — flooded Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Stadium and Indiana Convention Center in July 2024 for the National Eucharistic Congress. There was heat and there were crowds and endless security lines. But there was also Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament — there and at every Mass. People made sacrifices to be there, because they know their lives have purpose, even if they might not quite know what that is yet. I hope that more than a few of the 50,000–60,000 who attended walked away with the realization that God is full of surprises and that knowing yourself as His beloved creation is the best way to fly — perpetually learning to trust in His divine plan and will.
“God loved you and willed you into being totally unique, unrepeatable. Irreplaceable he wants to share his life with you.” This is what my friend, Sister Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of Life, said in a keynote address during the conference. Some of the women who come to them are pregnant and in need of friendship, mentorship, and help to become the mothers they already are to the developing children within them. Not only does abortion end a life; it also hurts the mother and has an impact on others in her life — likely those she loves the most. It’s an agonizing wound that never leaves — not even when the woman has done some prayerful postabortion healing. (By the way: I’m running an official K-Lo birthday fundraiser for the Sisters — they deserve our support because they make life happen. See @KathrynLopez on X for details, or email me at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
Some of those same women, some of whom have felt pressured into bringing about the death of their children, have never had anyone with whom to celebrate their birthdays. Certainly never as adults. How do you embrace new life under challenging and even desperate situations if you have never had people who have insisted that your life is a gift to them? On a good day, how are you supposed to realize that a pregnancy, even if inconvenient, is worth something when many, if not most, mainstream cultural signs point toward abortion as just another medical procedure? And if you don’t think that your life is worth living? Most of us are aware of how prevalent suicide is in the U.S. — the federal government has called it a pandemic. It may sound simplistic, but birthday celebrations are part of the solution. A small part, a baby step — the least we can do for someone. Birthday celebrations can help keep people alive and offer them joy and the knowledge that the Creator of the universe cares not only for the oceans and mountains but also for them.
“I think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam, a promotion, or a victory,” Nouwen wrote.
Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: ‘Thank you for being you.’ Celebrating a birthday is exalting life and being glad for it. On a birthday we do not say: ‘Thanks for what you did, or said, or accomplished.’ No, we say: ‘Thank you for being born and being among us.’
I am glad you were born and living life. I pray for you to the fullest.
On birthdays, Nouwen said, we lift someone up and let everyone say: “We love you.” He also told a story about a friend of his who is dumped in a tub of water by his friends annually to celebrate his existence day:
Everyone eagerly awaits his birthday, even he himself. I have no idea where this tradition came from, but to be lifted up and ‘re-baptized’ seems like a very good way to have your life celebrated. We are made aware that although we have to keep our feet on the ground, we are created to reach to the heavens, and that, although we easily get dirty, we can always be washed clean again and our life given a new start.
Let’s face it: Whatever mistakes we’ve made and challenges we have — it is good to be alive. It’s not easy. But we can be grateful and we can have joy. And I promise you it can be contagious.
Don’t forget birthdays. (Put them in your calendar.) But also treat people as if every day is their birthday. Buy them flowers. Surprise them with a book. Remind them that their existence makes life better. It’s more important than we may ever fully realize. For you. For me. For the country.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.