Once upon a time turning a new age brought on a lot of anxiety. When you have a long list of achievements still to be realized, a birthday feels like a burden; the added year feels like time is condemning you, highlighting your loss, your lack, your failure. It’s like you are being propelled to the end of everything whilst you still have much to achieve. It’s like you’re holding the sands of time and with each birthday, the sand is slipping out of your hands, in chunks.
But would you believe that it feels different for me now. Typically, months before my birthday month, I consider what I am thinking and feeling about becoming older. There were years where I loathed my birthday, years where I was anxious; years where I had excitement as I anticipated certain things. There were years where I regretted life itself, because everything was wrong. I felt like a tree consistently producing rotten fruit, and no matter my efforts, my fruit-tree wasn’t healing. Nothing inspired pride.
But you know…. What things look like, and what God says are, not just a matter of perspective, but a matter of war. Warfare on your mind to believe the good, when there’s no evidence of good. Warfare on your tongue because you have to say fruitful things amid chaotic or even dead bones; warfare on your heart because you have to believe and see what no one else believes or sees.
Why do I feel different about getting older now? It’s a mixture of my faith in God, and my eyes opening to how much of life is a battle. And in battle, you must decide the end from the beginning. You must decide the conclusion of the matter, and what it is you will collect from your victory. You must decide the spoils of war. You must decide what an enemy means to you, and you must decide their end. Some folks just want the fighting to end and make peace. Is that what you want? What do you want the days, weeks, months, years of your victory to look like?
Moreover, you must consider the weapons of your warfare…that the weapons in your arsenal are mighty through God. The weapons of your enemy are pointing out your age, your bank account, your past, your education, human and animal sacrifices, influence and power. But your weapons are mighty through God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the head of all principality and power. It means that in battle my enemies are not my equals; they are beneath me in every way. In my weakness, they are still not my equal. We perish in the hands of conniving people for lack of knowledge.
As for me, whoever has raised a sword against me to steal from me, I’m taking everything back; and even those things which were not on the table to take, I’m collecting. I’ve entered my era of taking no prisoners.
What does this have to do with getting older? Whatever it is that you want, and do not have, you have to fight for it. You must come out of fear of how people will look at you, out of fear of failing, despise the shame of humble circumstances, take captive every lie and deception through prayer. When it appears that you are always losing it’s hard to celebrate. But I wish back then that I’d fully appreciated the value of being alive; alive to see another year, another day. Another day to persevere and fight and believe for the future that God has prepared. Even if the future seems uncertain, and the uncertainty of it makes you want to give up, please don’t. Life isn’t a race. Even as it is a battle, you may not think yourself strong, or mighty, or able. But it’s not by our own strength that we prevail against those who are stronger. It’s by the power and the strength of God that we take possession of our inheritance.
All this to say, continue to believe for what you want. Bring what is outstanding before God and pray that he helps you understand what it is that he wants you to do. Be willing to do what it takes for it. And no matter where you are at in age, and in life, be determined that no human being is going to stand in your way to attain what belongs to you, and nothing in life is going to steal your peace, or gratitude of seeing another year of life.
