It was, honestly, one of the best birthdays I can recall.

Like so many aging people, I’ve become less and less enthusiastic about birthdays as the novelty of the first one has faded. It gets worse as you approach the big decade mileposts, and I’m within a year of another one of those now.

It’s become my custom to spend my birthdays in a self-pitying funk, contemplating the wasteland that is my personal life, and meditating on the fact that my birthday isn’t (at best) very important to many people who are still alive.

But Friday I had nice greetings in the Comments here. And even more on Facebook. There were cards. And in the morning I had a call from my brother, who arranged to meet me “halfway,” in the town of Owatonna, for dinner.

I was also contacted, entirely out of the blue, by two people who only know me through comments threads on other people’s blogs, but who are interested in my books.

It was all so nice that I realized God was trying to tell me something.

I’m trying to listen. I really am trying.

(Picture credit, Corbis.)