SEASON 5, EPISODE 2, “AS LONG AS WE’RE TOGETHER”

16

BIRTHDAY WISHES

“I don’t have anything to wish for. I have everything in the world, right here in this room.”

—MARY INGALLS

As we grow older, our birthday lists tend to grow shorter. The things—possessions—we once wanted so badly are no longer as important as they used to be. We value experiences and quality time with people more than beautifully wrapped packages. On her sixteenth birthday, Mary Ingalls could have wished for any number of things, but she didn’t. The table surrounded by loved ones left her eyes full of tears, and she was speechless and soul-content.

I remember that same feeling during my eighteenth birthday party. Instead of traditional gifts, the guests were secretly instructed to bring eighteen things of their choosing for my twin sister and me. Overwhelmed by the huge pile of presents, we envisioned making a pretty good haul.

We did, but not in the way we thought. I’ll never forget opening eighteen Q-tips and eighteen quarters for the laundry machines at college. We opened gifts of eighteen hair ties and pencils and stamped envelopes so we could write home. Of all the crazy things we opened, my favorite came from a friend from our junior high days. She’d found eighteen notes we had written to her on ruled binder paper. They were folded in crazy shapes that only junior high girls would make.

Poring over the notes, I laughed and cried. Some my sister and I read out loud, and others we tucked away for later. They brought unforgettable experiences back to life for a few hours that day. As I looked around at all the faces at the party—people who cared about my sister and me and had built relationships with us—I knew I had received the single best gift.

Love.

The simplest gifts are usually the most valuable to us. Like Mary, we cherish people and places and time spent together. Tears of joy on monumental birthdays mean more to us than any gift ever could.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with joyful shouting; then they said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.

PSALM 126:2–3 NASB

What is the best birthday gift you ever received? When you think back on a birthday, do you remember the gifts or the people you saw that day?