This post was written on Monday, August 22.
My portrait on the 76th anniversary of my birth is a new one, never before seen or described. Today is the day after my my birthday and I feel no older than I did the day before my birthday. Birthdays are signposts on a journey. They are not the journey.
We have other signposts we plant along our life’s road-trip—days we were graduated from various educational institutions, moments of spiritual epiphanies, and significant moments along relationship roads to name a few. Some of these mark a past moment engendering present reflection. Others mark annual progress which we call anniversaries. Reflective in nature, these annual mile-markers also look toward the future. They are markers—not prescriptions but descriptions. They do not define us as much as provide bits and pieces to aid in describing who we are.
We are much more than descriptions of a moment in time. My graduation from a school—elementary school, high school, college, university, graduate school—describes an accomplishment I’ve made but does not define me; I am much more than a high school or university graduate, or holder of a graduate degree. I have had moments of spiritual ecstasies and encounters with the Spirit of God, but I am more than a spiritual being. I was a principle partner in a wedding that began a marriage lasting 45 years, but I am more than a wedding day or the acknowledgement of it in annual celebrations that lasted until Barbara’s death in 2012. Earlier this month, August 13, 2016, to be exact, I recognized the third year anniversary of the day I began the process of bringing the world into my truth as a gay man; I am more than that descriptor. Yesterday, I marked the 76th year of my life on earth, but that day was a description and not a definition; I am more than a seventy-six-year-old man.
Markers in life help us take account of where we’ve been and map a road for the future, but we are much more than any one of our markers. I venture to say that we are more than the combination of all of the markers—the anniversaries we celebrate and the events the celebrations commemorate—along life’s road. I am more than a university graduate with multiple degrees who is a gay man, has experienced the life-giving grace of God through Jesus the Christ, was married for 45 years to Barbara, and has celebrated 76 years as a human being. There are many more markers along the road I’ve walked that I could add, but no matter how many I add I will still be describing who I am, not defining. The definition of David Wigger is far more than the descriptors.
I am still exploring the depth within and finding things about myself I never knew existed. I don’t want this “fleshing out” of who I am to stop. Some of these discoveries are filled with joy and excitement about new strengths and the flexing of dormant mental, spiritual, and emotional muscles.
Sometimes the discovery of something about myself I had not known before is tinged with fear and takes me to the edge where I feel vulnerable. There are discoveries about myself that are unpleasant. That unpleasantness is opportunity for growth. Growth doesn’t take place in comfort but in discomfort. So whether new discoveries about myself are pleasant and welcoming or fearful and disarming, they are all good.
I look forward to new experiences when I can plant another marker on my pilgrimage. Perhaps this new marker will be of such import that it becomes an annual celebration, an anniversary like a irthday. Whatever it becomes, it will add another descriptor to further fill in my portrait, which is yet unfinished, but always emerging.
Should I present a definition of David Wigger it would begin with “A creature of God that God made in his image…”