38 Years

How do I celebrate 38 years? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, I am taking a break from book plunges not only because I still have to finish reading some books, but also because today is a special day for me. Today, I celebrate having gone around the sun 38 times. It’s something to think about. Years can seem so long and yet so short at the same time. My wife and I have been married for eight years and yet I still find myself wondering if it really has been that time. It seems so short, and yet I have had this woman be so much a part of my life that it is like we are practically joined at the hip or rather have one heart beating in two bodies.

When you’re a kid, it seems like you think about all that you want to get for your birthday. I can think about to getting my first Nintendo when I was eight years old. Some things haven’t changed seeing as we will be busy tomorrow and my wife gave me a gift earlier, which was three Kingdom Hearts games in one for the PS4. Yes. That gamer has never died in me.

Despite this, it has been hard for me to think of things that I really want to have. Books I get from publishers now so that’s not a problem. I finally thought of asking my parents for Ready Player One on DVD which could be the best movie I have seen.

I still enjoy the material things, but they don’t mean as much as they used to. Enjoying a good book is one of the great privileges. Enjoying the love of my wife is certainly a great joy to have. We have a Wii system now that is a modified one with several old games on there and I find myself going on there and playing old classic ones from the past.

This is also a reminder of how far I have come. If I watch an old TV show now, I think back and consider the questions I can ask from a theological and philosophical perspective and wonder why is it that I never thought of such things before? How did I not see these in that light? It doesn’t decrease my enjoyment. It rather increases it.

I do wish I was doing more with my life now. It seems I have a better online presence than I would have thought and people come to me with questions, yet I wonder what more is there? This is one area I don’t think I can ever be satisfied in personally. I always want more and more. I don’t settle. That little boy who wants to go on adventures every day has never died. He just wants more adventure on the path.

I look at the friends that I have made on the journey as well. These are my teammates and partners. These are my allies in the good fight. So many people I know so well today that I had no idea existed years ago. The rise of the internet has helped with that as I know people from all over the world. As is stands, on the 18th, I had birthday wishes coming in from places like Australia and New Zealand and it’s something to think that people all over the world like that want to do something to celebrate that you are in the world.

And isn’t that something special to think about? Each one of us is a great might-not-have-been. My wife and I recently saw Unbroken together. It was the second one and I came to a realization of what I should have always known in it. As long as we are still breathing here, God has some purpose for us, as He does not waste us. Nothing we do in this life will be wasted ultimately. If God puts us through any suffering, He will use it for our good.

How many more years will God grant me? I don’t know, but I honestly hope they’re a lot, and I hope all of them are spent with my wife as well. If anything, my prayer would be that either we die together one day or that she goes one day before I do. Until then, I pray that we adventure together and do as much good as we can.

The boy has never lost sight of the fact that good and evil are still realities. There is still the dreamer who sees them in the games and in the TV shows and in the movies, but there is the adult who sees it in the real world and realizes that while I cannot perhaps affect things at this point on a national or global scale, I can at least do something where I am at. I can fight evil on a local scale and dare I say it, but the best place to fight evil is under my own roof and specifically, within my own soul. How can I defeat the evil in me to be a better ambassador for the Kingdom of God and a better husband to my beautiful wife?

I am grateful to my parents for raising me the way they did and making sure that I was a faithful church attendee. If they had known about apologetics, I am sure they would have introduced me to that. I am thankful to my in-laws as well for giving me their daughter in marriage. I am especially thankful to my wife since she gives me the gift of herself, the greatest honor that someone like that has ever given me and something that I continually celebrate and I am so proud of how her diet plan is going and how she’s being an inspiration.

And lastly, I am most thankful to God in Heaven. It is by His grace that I have made these trips around the sun. I cannot help but be amazed at the impact that I have having in this life and I hope it continues more and more. When I enter into the full Kingdom, I anticipate I will be amazed to see how God was working through it all and I look forward to spending eternity in the presence of God and going on those adventures that I could never have dreamed of in the past. The boy who was thrilled with them at a young age and still enjoys them today will find his true home at that point where he is most at home, with God and His people.

In Christ,
Nick Peters