Thoughts on Celebration and Suffering
I busied myself today with menial house tasks that always seem to pile up, and by Thursday explode out all over my countertops and well-worn hardwood floors. I glided leisurely up and down the aisles at Trader Joes, hand selecting each piece of produce that will become dinner later on by own hand or my husbands- whoever gets home first. I gathered things in my arms to make bacon-wrapped dates and made plans to run out later to grab a bottle of champagne. We are celebrating.
Nothing significant by way of big news or bench marks has occurred. We have nothing on the horizon professionally or personally to notify you of. Still, we are celebrating because I've learned that without celebrations life is much harder to weather. Without the stopping and the giving of thanks, the toasts of bubbly drinks, the warmth of fires and cozy meals, it is much too easy to be maligned by the hopelessness of suffering to where that is all we begin to see. All we begin to believe, there is. And there is less truth in that than in most things.
My daughter still has nights where she cries to me, deep heartbreaking sobs, as to why she never became a big sister. I rock her in the silence and the dark and whisper as many soothing words as I know but I never ask her to stop asking me. Though my heart is pitted and leaking every time she wonders aloud if we will ever add another life to our family, I will CELEBRATE the asking. Because she loves me deeply enough and truly enough to know that I love her the same, and that there is nothing we cannot weather together. Her voice, her thoughts and her words are cause for celebration because communication with one's children is the deepest thread you can weave into the fabric of your family. And we may never have communicated this truly, this honestly had it not been for suffering.
It seems a shame that they are contingent on each other, these two. If not for suffering I would never have slowed down and thrown my hands in the air- not in defeat, but in complete and total acceptance of REST. I am not the one who holds all things together. This, this life and it's failures and faults, it's despair and brokenness, has no real claim on me. Jesus says he will provide. Because of suffering, I have begun to believe Him.
So, I celebrate. I celebrate in the suffering, because I don't have to choose one over the other. Knowing that without knowledge of one, the other doesn't exist. And I will head out in a few minutes and buy that champagne- the one just my husband and I will share tonight at dinner when we've all returned home from our various places of employment because it's Thursday and Thursdays are worth celebrating in their own right because they are good.
Hope you find something to celebrate today- and if you do, let me know what it is. Sharing celebrations is better than cupcakes.