Celebrate Absolutely Everything

Someone once told me “You guys celebrate everything!”

At first I took it offensively, thinking we were being too frivolous or something.  I mean, we probably were.

Then I realized it was most likely a harmless comment that I instead chose to interpret as “Man, those people know how to always look on the bright side of things!”

Ahh, that second thought was much nicer and has helped encourage me to keep focusing on the good in life, rather than being afraid of celebrating.

On the outside my life looks like a dream.  A woman whose husband lets her stay home, a woman with a desire to teach her children, a woman with some good common sense (okay I made that last one up).

What you may not see is that my husband ‘letting me stay home’, began when I didn’t return to college even though I was just shy of graduation.  I abandoned my future nursing career (and the potential traveling nurse’s salary- dang it) because I had to stay home to keep our daughter safe through an extremely difficult time in our lives.  My husband worked his tail off in college, and does the same in his career.  That once forced decision to forsake where I was at in life, has turned into the biggest blessing.  The blessing where I get to be available for my family and witness all of the ‘first’ with my children.  THAT is something to celebrate!

My desire to teach and educate my children at home was something I begged for for years, something I wanted and my husband refused.  Yes, really. You’d never know it now because he’s so supportive, and he is the one who encourages and carries us through on the tough days.  But did you know I didn’t, and still sometimes don’t, feel equipped at all to do what I’m doing?  I do not take it for granted at all, it is an honor to teach my kiddos.

it’s just that I thought I’d have a bigger network of support, and I’ve found I’m often just doing all of this on my own.  Homeschooling is rewarding and fun, but folks, it is tiring.  All of the good things are though, aren’t they?  Educating our children at home costs our family hundreds of dollars per year, and I am so grateful that God provides.  But you don’t see those things on the outside.  You don’t see the dollar signs adding up, you see the cute manipulatives and well laid out curricula.  You see the fun planner pictures I post before I’ve filled in every single square and wondered when we will have time to do things like pee.

You see the “good mom” reading to her kids in the sandbox, but what you didn’t see was when this good mom said “Kids, I need a break from the house, can we do school outside?”

I try not to dwell on the bad, but rather focus on the good.

If we didn’t do that, that thing where we look on the bright side, it’d be too easy to quickly fall into the trap of being negative.  Being negative is when you begin dwelling on the crappy parts of life.  When you’re spending all of your energy on pointing out what’s “wrong”, you rarely have time to soak up the abundant goodness of what is “right” and come alive from it.

So yes, in this house (and everywhere we go), we DO celebrate absolutely everything.

Mr. Awesome and I high-fived in the deli isle at the grocery store the other day, because together we had figured out meals for the whole week.

It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Here’s a little snapshot of what I posted on Instagram the other day when I shared the picture above:

Hooray!  The Lord knows we didn’t need another stuffed animal, but our family did need something to celebrate.  For just a quarter a certain sweet teen reeled this little guy in with the crane machine and just like that, all 5 of us were jumping and clapping right there in Shopko.  There are so many tiny moments like this to celebrate in life. Don’t lose sight of God’s love and the glimpses of goodness He shows.

#celebrateabsolutelyEVERYTHING

So friends, would you pretty please lighten up and just start celebrating?

I know life is hard, believe me, I do.  Growing up without full use of one of my arms, that was hard.  Gosh, especially in school, kids can be such a-holes.  Going through a custody battle alongside of someone I had just fallen in love with, that was nearly impossible and so many times I wanted to just run away from it all.  Watching the tears fall from my husband’s eyes as he stared at his mother’s casket?  That’s a memory I still can’t glance at for even a second without getting tears on my cheeks.  Paying bills?  It hardly seems like something to celebrate on the surface, but I celebrate that God is providing for us and that we’re able to pay the bills.  In each trial we’ve endured there has been a silver lining to be found.  It isn’t always apparent, but if you search it is there.

 

I want you to think of 3 things right now that you can celebrate.  Big or small, God sees it all. 

Celebrate Today!