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Birthdays are special. No one seems to understand the significance of a birthday anymore. To most humans it’s merely a get together with cake and ice cream, presents and a group of loved ones. Usually thirteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty one, fifty, and one hundred are praised a little bit more than the others but still birthdays have more unshown meaning than this. Celebrating birthdays of mine are special but I find it more special to celebrate others birthdays. The heart of birthdays is getting the opportunity to express to someone that your happy that they were born which is also to say you are happy that they are alive. Those are strong statements. Imagine if all, showed things like that, more then just once a year. We barely do it on birthdays. We as people should be thankful for the lives around us and for peoples stories and we should make an attempt to express these things more often. Acting as walking gifts, a favorite song, or concert you remember, a piece of hope of life or strength to hold against the walls when they feel broken or crashing down. We should act as a reminder that life is worth fighting for, our friends and family are worth fighting for, love and beauty still occur, and change is still in existence. We can only be part of others process, on the opposite end of the telephone, at home waiting for each other to show broken waiting for fixing words, or on each others hearts reminding one another that their loved and we want the best for them. I hope that we find everyone like friends and feel less alone when looking in the mirror. Let us remind everyone of community and remind others that we are all part of a bigger thing. Hopefully we can spark conversation that brings change like a blanket on a winter night. We need more then ourselves. We will need more and better. We will need other people. People to help our process, to help us let go of broken things, people to help us remember what is true and forget what are lies. We will need the stories and advice of the people with gray or white hair, maybe even no hair at all. Don’t settle for the lie that suggests these people have no advice, and offer nothing to say. They were young once too. These people are stories that still remain and still have life. They have seen the places we will go. They have been stuck sometimes as well, just like us. We are going to need real music, comfortable clothes, and long nights. Airplanes, big cities, and new saying an old sayings, but people more than anything else. We are going to need other people and we are going to need to be that person to someone else, an alive, breathing, screaming invite to believe better things. The story doesn’t end here; the blood that flows through your veins is there for a reason. You have purpose. Perhaps we are all in the business of happy endings, one just as much as the other, the business of redemption. Yours and mine are all the personality and character around us, and maybe the bigger thing in life. We are far from alone in this and god has been doing this for quite a long time, this business of taking things from us and making things new. God cares, about our lives, about our stories, and about our pain. If the possibility of that feels too far or just sounds off, then rest now and you people we will get back to. People care. The darkness and fear win battles too often. Broken things build themselves in silence and loneliness. People feel alone. People give up. People talk about this thing like it is math or they just don’t speak about it at all. So what are we doing? Why our chosen words? Why the way we live? Why do people put their lives on hold and chose to help the people around them? Why do we choose to act with care being conscious of hurting the ones surrounding us? Why would we trade everything we know, our normalcy and comfort and peace, for broken, change, and an endless helping heart? Why do we join conversation and possibly even start it in which people normally run from? We should be fighting for people that are kind, have words that move, with honesty and creativity. We should be pushing back at things like suicide with compassion and with hope. We should be pointing to wisdom, pointing to healing, expressing that hope is real, and help is real. We should also be fighting for our own stories, our own families and friends, our own broken hearts. We should be saying that there is not anything we cannot talk about and nothing off-limits. We are kicking large objects out of our lives, making room for life. Everyone. This is about you and I. It is nothing unless it moves you, nothing unless it connects to your story, meets you in your pain, reminds you of your dreams, reminds you of the possibilities. We are all still alive, you and I, on a night that has never happened before. Spread out across a huge sphere, winter on one side and summer on the other, day and night spread the same. It moves and turns and changes. Things are consistently changing. We are all glad that we were all born. We are all glad that we are all alive. Don’t give up. Don’t give up on your story. Don’t give up on the people you love. Hope is real. Love is real. It is all worth fighting for.