Today is my 65th birthday. But wait—don’t post Happy Birthday yet. I’ve been tootling around the earth almost 75 years. So whattzup?

Today I am celebrating my spiritual birthday, the day when my spirit was born again as I invited Jesus to come live inside me. I was 9 years old.  Did I understand what it all meant? Heavens no, but I knew enough to begin eternal life.

Things are not as they seem. There is a spiritual realm around us, invisible, yet more real and lasting than the world we experience with our physical senses. It is a marvelous Kingdom filled with treasures to discover and mysteries to solve.  I’ve spent 65 years exploring this Kingdom, getting to know my King who has given me a rich, satisfying life, even in a boatload of troubles. I’ve journaled our encounters. The stack is getting tall.

I’ve known His healing power since He delivered me from epilepsy after 15 years of seizures. I’ve felt His peace sweep away my grief in a cemetery while burying our son Cory years ago. I’ve recognized His miracles in our youngest grandkids, Mateo and Raquel, impossibilities to have be conceived. I see His kindness daily through Don, my love and biggest fan.

God’s Kingdom breaks through in extraordinary ways. He is also King of the ordinary, bringing pleasure in the simple things like the powdery flakes of snow falling from the skies.

These cold winter mornings I feel God’s closeness sitting in front of the fireplace with a cup of coffee, reading, talking with Him, journaling. It is the best part of my day. Then I go to work on the book I am finishing that details this lifetime of GodStories, and He keeps adding more stories in our lives.

Today I celebrate these amazing 65 years and how He is keeping me fresh and fully alive, thankful that He has promised to always be there. He is faithful.

I’m having a very Happy Birthday.

    * Can you explain the wind? God’s Spirit is invisible and real as the wind, as Jesus comments in John 3:3-8:

‘Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

 “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”