"I Was There. And I smiled."

Musings on my birthday

Thursday, February 9, my 58th birthday.

I’m at church waiting for morning Mass. I managed to roll out of bed early enough to make it to the 7:10 AM Liturgy of the Hours.

Our small group this morning was even smaller, just D. and I, both relative noobs at the chanting from the Mundelein Psalter. We fumbled our way through the LOTH, and I feel pretty proud of myself.

With 20 minutes to spare before Mass, I figure I can get at least part of my daily Rosary in. I start on the Luminous Mysteries.

“No,” Jesus speaks up in my mind. “Pray the Joyful Mysteries.”

I wonder for a second, but then shrug. I’ve long since stopped questioning why he wants me to do things.

I meditate on the first Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation. As I’m visualizing how joyful and excited Mary must have been when she knew she was pregnant with the Savior, it occurs to me that my biological mother was a lot less joyful and excited being pregnant with me.

I was an unwanted child born out of wedlock—a sneaky, forbidden affair with a fellow postal worker—and given up for adoption right after birth. Thankfully, abortion wasn’t a thing back then, or I might not be here.

The thought of how different Mary’s and my own mother’s feelings about their babies were makes me choke up.

Many years ago, in meditation, I had a spontaneous flashback to a non-verbal time in the womb. Everything was warm and sloshy and quiet and dimly lit, and Mommy was there, and things were good. Then it got confusing and tumultuous. I was pushed out into a world of noise and glaring brightness, and it was cold, and Mommy was gone and didn’t come back. The starkest sensation from that brief flashback: the feeling of complete and utter loneliness.

Suddenly, I feel Jesus’s gentle touch, as I sometimes do in church. “I want you to know,” he says softly, “that I was there when you were born. And I smiled.”

Oh, Jesus…

I know there are so many people like me, having had this earliest experience of being unwanted and abandoned. And yet, we’re the lucky ones, the ones who survived.

And God loves each and every one of us as if we were His own children. In a way, we are his own children. He loves us from the moment we are conceived, and Baptism makes us fully His, sealing the Holy Spirit into our tiny souls.

That’s why He is so distraught when we drift away from Him, into the claws of the Evil One… and why He’s ready to take us back at the drop of a hat when we return, wounded and shamed by our own sinfulness.

Thank you, VatiGod and Jesus and Holy Spirit, for this amazing life you’ve given me. For my birthday wish, I pray that my life may give you glory. I’ll try to make every day count.