I give it a "Better and Better"

Well... my birthday is happening again this year. I don't have much to say about it, except that 23 is going to be a GREAT age. I think I say that about every age, every year... I think every year it's true. No matter what seems to be going on in my life, I'm firmly convinced of something that my mentor Emily told me once. "Remember Jenna, life just keeps getting better and better," she said. I think that's true.

I think that life does keep getting better and better... through all its shifts, and seasons, and changes... because I believe that I keep getting better and better. Of course, I'm not measuring this on a imperfect<-->perfect scale... if I did that, it would constantly be succeeding and failing, up to about 23 times a day, and I would be moving backwards and forwards all the time. So I could tend to see no point in trying then. I could tend to see life as always, actually, getting worse in that respect. "Let the pieces lay where they fall!" I would shout in that case (hands thrown up into the air with despair plastered across my face).

Rather, I believe that life keeps getting better and better--that I keep getting better and better--because I believe that on a not-much-history-with-God<-->more-history-with-God scale, He is always increasing my portion of life...

I am always getting more life with God. Perfect or not, clearly improving or messy and lying melted to the floor, I have more history with God today than I did yesterday... and my life contains within itself more of Him than it ever has before...
and that, my friends, warrants a "better and better" in my book...

Because more history with God... now THAT is what I cannot lose with age or failures in worldly perfection... I cannot lose that through tragedy or poverty or illness or regression... I cannot lose that when things are taken from me, or when I have lost what used to make me comfortable or what I thought was supposed to get me through life... I cannot lose that by being unsuccessful. I cannot lose that by being ugly. I cannot lose my history with God in time. And I cannot lose it in life...

And that is what my life is all about... it is about getting better and better by getting more and more full of--shaped by, guided by, known by, given by, grown by, forgiven by and encouraged by--this history with God...

...and that is what makes me glad for my birthday.
...I'm glad I was born to have a history with God.


So here's to year 23~

Life just keeps getting better and better!

(...no matter what.)