It was my birthday yesterday.  I've reached that landmark age of 38.  Having reached the top of life's most important year, I have begun the long, arduous descent into the obscurity of age.

Or something like that.

Frankly, I don't care.  I'm not a big birthday person.  Never really have been, though I've been known to feign excitement for the sake of others who *do* think that birthdays are a big deal.  It's not that I'm in denial.  It's just that it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me. 

It makes a lot of difference to some people though.

Our culture is age-obsessed, almost to the same level that it is obsessed with sex.  From early age we're neatly categorized by age.  We are placed into a lockstep system of education and classification that ensures we interact almost exclusively with people our own age.  Those outside of our age group quickly become too young or too old.  Our age group is the norm, the ideal, the only place we learn how to interact with others.  As the family has disintegrated in the past 50 years under an onslaught of secular attacks, children now don't even have to routinely interact with their parents.  Due to the mobility that our culture encourages, families seem less and less to have extended members nearby.  As divorce adds further insult to injury, children are estranged even from their own biological parents - assuming that they're both around to begin with. 

So it's a big deal to some people how old I am.  Churches are no exception.  I've been to and worked with several churches who were quite intentional in continuing this trend of chronological segregation.  Children are whisked out of the worship service so that parents can focus, and so that children can receive age appropriate instruction.  What the heck is age-appropriate instruction?  Isn't learning how to sit still and actually listen to something someone is saying appropriate at any age?  As a parent, is there anything more important that I can do than to model the expectation that the family remains together for worship? 

I'm too young to be part of a senior's church group.  I think I'm old enough to no longer be considered a 'young adult (although a recent church I read about considered their youth & young adult programs to cover those from ages 12 to 35.  I'm sorry, but if you're still a young adult at 35, and you become a senior at 50+, that doesn't leave very many years as an adult, does it?!?!?!). 

Advertisers and marketers care how old I am.  They carefully predict my spending inclinations and patterns based on others my age.  In a culture obsessed with youth so much that they will extend it as long as possible, I'm sure that I'm viewed as entering a less desirable phase of life - from a marketing/advertising standpoint.  I'm hopefully less easily swayed by current trends or fads.  My impulse spending impulses have started to ebb (continued to, actually).  I'm targeted now for the big-ticket purchases that happen less often - cars, homes, life-insurance.  But at some point, I'll quit being targeted for those, as I move out of my optimal earning years and into the senior years.

So you can wish me a happy birthday if you like - and thanks for the thought.  But leave it at that.  No need to fuss or muss.  And no need to figure out what I must be like now that I'm 38.  Ask me.  I'll let you know.  We can talk about it over coffee.  Just don't play any rap music too loudly on your iPod.