Happy Birthday

Today is my 30th birthday. At 12:45 pm, 30 years ago in Jackson, Mississippi my mother finally got tired of carting me around. George Herbert once said, "I cried when I was born and every day shows why."

I suppose that many people feel that way, but I'm not one of them. Sure, like most people, I have been impaled with more than enough of life's daggers. We've all experienced pain and disappointment that sometimes make us question what is the point of living. But all in all I have more to be pleased about in life than displeased.

I have a wonderful, thoughtful, beautiful wife. I have been blessed with a visitor from heaven in the form of a little girl, my daughter, Malia Rose. I have good parents, a sacrificial grandmother and a kind mother-in-law. God gave me a fun-loving, tender-hearted brother, who I don't talk to enough. I minister to a church that loves me, though I cannot for the life of me understand why. I am friends with some of the most astute, spiritual men and women in the world. Rochelle and I aren't rich, but we have blessings and gifts so innumerable that I can't begin to understand why God has given us so much.

A birthday is a nice event if for no other reason than to awaken us to the gifts we've already been given. Gifts that don't come in a box with ribbons and wrapping paper, but the ones that last, the ones that count, the ones all of us want anyway.

God has never given me prosperity, but he has given me people. And when you think about it, aren't they what you want to live another year for anyway?