JOHN DEMPSTER: Birthdays used to feel like 'a sad stepping-stone to an old age full of uncertainties' – so what changed?
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Today is my 71st birthday. I’ve been looking forward to it, remembering my 70th a year ago when my family made me feel so special and cherished.
Mental Health Awareness Week (May 15-21) focuses this year on anxiety – a frequent companion throughout my 71 years. My anxiety is free-floating, producing a debilitating cloud of inner tension, seeking out things to worry about, leaving me often fearful of venturing beyond my comfort zone.
The causes of severe anxiety (and its twin, depression) are complex: a mixture of genetic tendencies, and social factors such as the degree of unconditional acceptance we felt in the first months of life.
READ ALSO: 6 ways you could make a vital difference to someone suffering a mental breakdown
'She walked away from church, faith, marriage...everything'
In earlier years, I was ambivalent about birthdays – each seemed a further sad stepping-stone to an old age full of uncertainties. So why do I now celebrate each May 19? It’s due, I think, to my realisation and acceptance of my own mortality. I will one day die: therefore I seek to love life, to celebrate the preciousness of each moment and each person, savouring the privilege of being in this world and living in gratitude to God.
What difference does God make when I’m anxious? ‘Fear not,’ Jesus said. ‘Be anxious for nothing,’ wrote St Paul. At times, in praying for help to see things positively and imagining myself succeeding in a situation I’m afraid of, I sense peace and an accompanying love. At other times, only divine absence. The fear remains.
And I acknowledge, sadly, that for some people religious beliefs (and how they are taught) can trigger deep anxieties (in contrast to a healthy respect for the wonder and otherness of God).
Does faith help me? It – or rather Christ – is the bedrock of my life. Sometimes. I sense joy and love and the whisper of God within me. In times of absence I hold on to what seemed certain on the better days.
Sometimes I imagine rising above, and looking down on myself, and praying: ‘May he again experience your love and joy. May he never give up!’
As we Christians grow older, while embracing the moment and dreaming of the future we worry (of course we do) about how exactly our end will come. But we try to see older age as not a melancholy, inexorable decline, but a prelude to the greatest adventure of all.
Do I sometimes wonder if death is, after all, the end? Of course I do! But I am rooted in the Christian story which in the name of the living Jesus promises a life beyond death where there will be no sorrow, no tears – and no anxiety. And so, looking down fondly on myself this morning, I can say: ‘Happy birthday! Have a good ’un, mate!’
