Happy Birthday, Cindy

By Katie Williams


“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” Jeremiah 1:5

My young boys and I were coming home one day from a town about an hour and a half from us. About ten miles outside of one small town on our journey, we started seeing homemade signs dotting the sides of the country road. They read: “Happy 50th birthday Cindy”, “Cindy is 50”, “Honk! Cindy is 50”, “We love you Cindy!”. There had to be at least eight or so of them scattered along the road on our drive. The boys and I had fun reading them and pointing them out. They kept asking me who Cindy was- thinking that everyone probably knew this celebrity and they needed to know who this famous person was, too.

Feeling like a mother should say more than, “I don’t know.” I responded, “Cindy is someone very special. God created her nine months before this day and He really loves her. He picked her out before He created the world and God said, ‘I want Cindy to be born.’ God loves Cindy so much just as he loves you and everyone else. We should always remember to celebrate life because God is life—the source of all life.”

So on our way home we stopped at the grocery store and I bought a birthday cake—that is a birthday cake for the infamous Cindy. I was already feeling like I kind of knew her just from passing all those signs. We got home, sang our best rendition of happy birthday to Cindy and thanked God for creating Cindy. We ate Cindy’s birthday cake. I hope Cindy would have preferred white cake with white frosting.

One might think it is strange to celebrate a birthday of someone whom we don’t know. We don’t know Cindy, what value does she have to us? That is not the proper question. The question is what value does she have to God? And the answer to that is infinite value! We, in our self-centered worlds, gage the worth of people by their value to us, but instead we should come into reality and gage the worth of people by their value to God. If we were to do this, we would realize that everyone is infinitely valuable. I wanted my kids to know this and that is why we celebrated a birthday of someone we don’t know. I am sure heaven was sporting similar road signs that day for Cindy. Cindy we love you because God loved you first.

I hope that some day you meet “Cindy”!