Forty-Four.
(I have to make this quick because there are four kids who need to get to bed.)
Today I am forty-four years old. This is the tenth year I’ve written reflections on my birthday, and the seventh I’ve done it with my wife beside me. We talked about that last night at dinner, and it is she who encouraged me to do this again.
That’s the thing about marrying the right woman. She helps me remember who I am, and she doesn’t let me forget the things that make me that person. On my better days, I hope I do the same for her. And she is beautiful, from her skin to her soul. Her faith, her heart, her mind, her smile. Every day there are new reasons to love her. And every day I wake up and say a prayer to God to thank him for bringing her into my life and bringing me into hers.
We have four kids now. Our house is filled with laughter, chaos, and little blinking lights from a dozen different toys. Legos everywhere. Books everywhere else. And charging footsteps and crashing leaps and shouts of joyful dinosaurs or tigers or whatever other fearsome creature is the subject of the make-believe playing out in their minds. It’s like having an air-raid siren, a hurricane, an earthquake, and an infant all living under one roof with us. It’s exuberant and exhausting, and I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything that anyone else could ever offer.
But what have I learned in another year?
I’ve learned that time moves faster than you can imagine, even when you know that is the case. It’s a cliche, but it’s hard to believe it’s the end of September, let alone my forty-fourth birthday, let alone how big each of our kids are. Every passing year is a smaller fraction of your life, so each one seems to pass faster and faster as it comes. You think you know this when you’re young. You don’t really get your head around it until there are lives in the world that you brought into it and they start growing and becoming their own little personalities. They don’t stay small long enough, which brings me to the next thing.
When you become a parent, you are committing to having your heart break every single day. And you can’t imagine your life any other way. Whether it’s because you have to leave and go to work while your kids are begging you to stay home so you can play Sorry! with them, or because one of them trips and skins his knee and just wants to be held, or because you realize that they are all of a sudden bigger than you think they should be, when you bring life into the world, you are accepting the vulnerability that comes from loving someone as unconditionally as is possible on this side of eternity. But it is worth it for every smile and every laugh and every little hand grabbing onto yours, every hug, every goodnight kiss, every little thing that you know will not last forever, which makes your heart break all over again, but it’s also what makes every single day a blessing, because you’re experiencing love in a whole different dimension.
And at some point you learn that love cannot be diminished by dividing it. When I met my wife, I knew that I would love her. When she introduced me to the little girl who became my Bonus Daughter, my heart sent love in two directions, and both are greater than the sum of their parts. When our first son was born, my love was split between three people, and even so it never diminished. With our second son, still the love grew deeper the more it was spread. And with the arrival of our youngest, it is even greater. Love—true, deep, sturdy love, paradoxically grows the more you give it away.
I understand so many things my parents told me growing up. About how you don’t ever really know how much your parents love you until you have kids of your own. About how fast time goes. About how you worry for your loved ones when you’re away from each other. About how amazing it is to build a life with someone and raise a family together. Speaking of life lessons . . .
My own kids have revealed to me what I feel is important to pass down to them, and how well I know those things myself. Every day I am asked questions, some of which I have answers for, some of which I don’t. But it causes me to look inside my own values and my own intellect to realize how much—or how little—I actually know, and how much I believe in something. It’s humbling, but it’s also exciting. Having knowledge and having passions and having faith are all things that bring meaning to life. Having four little souls to share those things with and pass them down to brings them to a different and deeper level of meaning. Because of this, I have learned where my true passions lie, and where they don’t; what I truly believe, and what I don’t.
I am therefore all the more convinced of my faith in Christ.
I’m looking forward to another year with my beautiful and lovely wife by my side and our four pinwheel kids under our wings. Another year of learning first-hand more things my parents taught me long ago. Another year of making memories with my family, both immediate and extended. Another year of creating things and writing things and preaching things. Another year of opportunities to serve the Lord, however those opportunities come.
Do me a favor on my birthday. Go out and make some memories. Tell people you love them. Spend time with your kids or your parents or your brothers or your sisters. Take pictures of a cloud or an interesting building or the sunset. Say a prayer for the first time in a long time. Be helpful to a stranger. Make today something you’re proud of, if not something you’ll remember.
And of course, y’all take care and be good to one another.
Joel Elliott Mooneyhan
September 25, 2026
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