My sister has this tradition.
Maybe she doesn't even realize.
But every year on my birthday, she asks me, "How does it feel, this new age?"
And every year on my birthday I tell her,
"It feels strange."
"It feels the same," or,
"I feel old."
This year, when she asks, I text her in the darkness of my room.
I tell her, "There was so much I wanted to accomplish by 25. I wanted to confidently put on my make-up and know I did it right. I wanted to have finished writing a book. I wanted to be married."
Singleness is harder on my birthday.
Each new age brings feelings of inadequacy and failure as a woman unwanted by men. Still.
Each new age makes me older, pushing me closer and closer to an age where I won't be able to have children.
I used to laugh at the phrase "my biological clock is ticking." Laugh like the fourteen year old I was who felt young and innocent and slender but full of possibilities that I was confident would not pass me by.
But I'm 25 now.
25 and pulsing with an energy that can only live inside of me- dormant and hopeful, but also with a ticking I can now hear.
The ticking is fear.
And the ticking is real, despite the fact that 25 is still young.
It is slow. It is quiet. But it is steady. And it is there.
I don't want children at 25. But I want to know that I will have them someday.
Childbirth scares me. The pain, the needles, the loss of my body.
But I want children. To hold a newborn and know that child came from me and the man I love and that this little one is mine. To hear the sweetness of being called, "Mama". To do what my body was made to do.
And I want people to understand that telling me "You're still young" isn't helpful.
They may be technically right. They may see my feelings dripping into an ocean of pity and narcissism.
But it's still not what I need to hear.
Because I am a new 25 year old coming to grips with the fact that I may never have children.
Because when people say, "You're still young", it is like they are saying that they know God will give me children someday when they really can't know that.
It is like they are telling me to just get over it when it is something I will potentially have to mourn again and again.
This is no excuse for a pity party to wallow in my misery.
But would you tell the woman whose mother just died that time will heal all wounds? It won't heal that one. Not completely. Not on this earth.
Would you tell the woman struggling with infertility that she should just adopt? Maybe God will use adoption in this woman's life to make her a mother. Maybe that is a discussion for later. But not when that woman is still in mourning, when she discovers she can't have biological children.
So what do you say? What do I need to hear?
That you love me. That you are grieving and praying with me. That you will let me grieve this at times. That you will help me fight for joy and focus on all of the amazing things God has given me and all of the spiritual children I can have. And all of the babies at church I can hold.
But also this, these words of wisdom found unexpectedly in a spoken work poem.
"I will no longer get weighted
down from so called friends and family
talks about the concern of my biological clock when I serve the Author of Time."
That is what I need to hear.
It is not an empty promise from a human being who is not God promising that what I so desire will come to pass.
It is not dismissing my very real feelings.
It is not letting me drown in my melancholy.
Instead it is validating and acknowledging how I feel while also putting my fears in their place before a Holy God.
So young women in our mid twenties. Say this with me. Listen to this poet who so eloquently says what I cannot.
Let us not freak out about the passing of time. Let us not worry about whether we will ever have our own children. For the very God who made us to bare children and the very God who made time is in control of our lives and silences us. And He does not silence us with a rod, cruel laughter, or by mocking our feelings. Instead he silences us with a kiss and a gentle voice that simply says, "Look at me."
