Don't Wait to Celebrate

Years ago, I dated this one particular boy. We’ll call him John for the sake of protecting the innocent even though that’s not his real name. John and I met through church, and since I had practically no social media accounts by then, the poor boy had to resort to sending me a message on LinkedIn, the lone account I had left, since there was basically no other means of getting in touch with me. We eventually started dating, and around the 6-month mark, we found ourselves in a fairly deep discussion late one night about the future of our relationship. He already had us on the train to marriage, while I was still trying to decide if I was even at the right depot. I had been pretty deeply marked by a previous relationship from college, one I thought I had gotten over. The realization that I hadn’t came fast and furious when John asked that night, “Are you wishing he was here with you tonight instead of me?”

It was like a bomb exploded in my chest when he uttered that question.

I realized in that moment – while unintentional – I had been holding on to a life I thought I would have, a life with this other boy who had made it clear years ago it wasn’t mean to be. But my heart clearly never got quite that message. So all that time I had been waiting to celebrate, waiting to celebrate this life I thought I would have instead of the life I had been given. It was costing me, and not just with John, but in so many other ways in my life.

Jay and Katherine Wolf know what it looks like to live a life they never thought they’d have. In 2008, Katherine suffered a massive brain stem stroke at twenty-six years old. Jay was in law school, their son was six months old, and Katherine was pursuing a career in modeling. Life forever changed that one day in 2008. She was not expected to live through the stroke, let alone recover. She did both. In 2016, they released their book Hope Heals, which shined a light on all that had happened between Katherine’s stroke and their present life. They shared the struggles and challenges of having to cope with this drastic and dramatic shift in their lives – rehab, surgeries, doctors, hospitals, medications, setbacks, and uncertainties. Who ever plans for such things? The Wolfs sure didn’t.

In the midst of it all, they tied a knot on the end of their rope that led to Jesus and chose to cling to him.  Jay wrote at one point, “Don’t wait to celebrate the life you’ve been given even if it looks different from the one you thought you’d have.” Jay and Katherine learned to celebrate the life they’d been given – even one filled with tremendous suffering and pain – despite the fact it looked different from the one they thought they’d have.

We have the same choice standing before us. Even if it’s sheer grit and determination that gets us through, we have to learn to celebrate the life we have right before us.

Maybe your boss drives you crazy, and maybe you got overlooked for that promotion, and maybe you’re sick of the daily grind, and the rat race, and the hour-long commute for a job that is nothing but a dead-end.

Don’t wait to celebrate the job you’ve been given even if looks different from the one you thought you’d have.

Maybe your family is dysfunctional and broken, and maybe you aren’t on speaking terms with your siblings or your parents, and maybe they’ve said things that hurt you and you’re not sure you’re ever going to recover from the pain, and maybe your childhood was a complete train wreck.

Don’t wait to celebrate the family you’ve been given even if they look different from the one you thought you’d have.

Maybe your spouse drives you crazy, and maybe he forgets to do things you’ve asked him to do a million times over, and maybe he doesn’t love you the way you think he should, and maybe he’s let you down more times than you care to count, and maybe you’re not sure how you ever got so far left-of-center from your vows.

Don’t wait to celebrate the spouse you’ve been given even if he looks different from the one you thought you’d have.

Maybe you’re single and have been for years or decades, and you’re not sure there’s anyone on the horizon (or ever will be), and maybe you’re tired of Friday nights (and Saturdays, and Sundays, and Mondays, and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and Thursdays) alone, and maybe you’re worn out from rolling over in bed every day only to realize there’s no one else staring back.

Don’t wait to celebrate the singleness you’ve been given even if it looks different from the marriage you thought you’d have.

Maybe your body is aging and it’s not doing what you want it do, and maybe disease has showed up on your doorstep, and maybe you’re not as fit as you want to be, and maybe the joints creak a little more and the eyesight is failing, and maybe that injury from all those years ago is haunting you on an all-too-regular basis.

Don’t wait to celebrate the body you’ve been given even if it looks different from the one you thought you’d have.

Don’t wait to celebrate the life you have been given even if it looks different from the one you thought you’d have because that’s just it – it’s the life you’ve been given. For whatever reason, God in his sovereignty and wisdom, elected to give you the life you have. It’s the life he entrusted to you.

We’ve got to do the hard work of narrowing the gap between the life we imagined and the life we already have. Because the space in between is where disappointment dwells, and if we willingly let the chasm grow too wide between the two, then we also allow the disappointment to grow and sink roots. And once disappointment sinks roots, it’s tough to rip it out without doing irreparable harm to the soil of hearts and minds.

Paul says in Romans 5:3-5, “We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."  I can promise you if you are ever disappointed then it was because you were holding on to a misplaced and misguided hope, a hope rooted in something other than Jesus Christ. Misguided and misplaced hope always disappoints. Always, always, always, without fail.   If we are putting our hopes in our jobs, our spouses (or the idea of a someday-one), our families, our bodies, our governments, our culture, our laws, our children – then we are bound to be disappointed eventually. Those things weren’t designed to hold up underneath the weight of our expectations. We’ll crush both them and ourselves in the process if we don’t relieve the pressure of those expectations.

Look, I’m not saying we become eternal pessimists and resign ourselves to becoming the human version of Eeyore, and we wander around wondering where our tails went. And I’m not saying we settle for mediocrity and become apathetic doormats. What I am saying, however, is that we’ve got to hold loosely to these ideas of what we thought our lives would look like. Because if we’re not careful we will reach the end of our lives and realize we failed to celebrate a single thing we had been given because we were too hung up on what we had not been given. That’s a life wasted right there.

Celebrate the life you’ve been given – in all its broken and messy glory. Celebrate the family that just can’t quite figure out how to be normal, whatever normal means anymore. Celebrate the job that feels like a grind. Celebrate the spouse that is still standing next to you even though you want to clock him for leaving his socks on the floor yet again. Celebrate the marriage, the singleness, the children, the house, the apartment, the good, the bad, the hard, the suffering, the sadness.  Find the good in these things. Find the joy in these things. Fight for the joy. (Make no mistake, it is a fight to find joy and celebrate.) Believe the best in the people around you.

But don’t make those people your hope. That’s what Jesus is for.

When you make Jesus your only hope, you can celebrate the life you’ve been given.

Even if it looks different from the one you thought you’d have.

No More Major Life Decisions

Update: I found my credit card! Three guesses as to where it was, and the first two don't count. In my wallet, you ask? Why, yes, yes it was. Just in a different pocket than normal.  *Palm to forehead.*

Y'all.

I should not be allowed to make anymore major life decisions.  It does crazy things to my brain. 

I texted my brother the other night explaining all that had been going on and he informed me I should just stay in my apartment for the rest of the weekend and not move.  My other friend suggested I find myself a bunker and just hunker down for awhile until my sanity was restored. 

And by major life decision I mean purchasing a new vehicle. 

I have been saving for years for a new vehicle.  While my little Mercury Mariner has been a faithful little car for the last 10 years, I was getting to the point where I was spending more money on repairs than the car was worth.  And when I found myself quite literally sweating through my t-shirt, fearful it wouldn't even survive the drive to the mechanic (thank you, failed fuel injector), I knew I was going to have to move up my timeline.  I was hoping to make it to the end of the year, but that just wasn't going to happen.

A Ford F-150 had long been the dream, but I eventually came to the conclusion I was going to pay a lot of money for a vehicle I only planned on using one part of.  I had no plans to tow or haul anything, so I basically would be spending money on the bed of a truck I never intended to use.  And gas mileage?  Yeah, we all know what gas mileage looks like on trucks.  Lousy.  So I talked myself out of that one. 

After more homework, and test driving, and reading Consumer Reports, and talking to a variety of friends, I made the big decision to buy a Subaru Forester.  I found one I wanted online, promptly headed to the dealer, and 4 hours later, I walked out with the keys to a new vehicle.

My capacity to think straight went downhill after that. 

The day after I bought it, I made plans with my brother and sister-in-law to go with them to a local Irish festival. While on my way there, I discovered I had left my wallet behind at my aunt and uncle's house, for whom I had been house/dog-sitting. 

Never in all my life have I ever left my wallet behind.  Never.  Not once.  It's not like me to forget things or be disorganized.

Being displaced by staying at someone else's house for 10 days probably wasn't helping the cause, shuffling between their house, my apartment and work, but still.  I got to the Irish festival (and even that was questionable because I was so frazzled at this point that I wasn't even entirely sure what road I was on or where I was going) and found a parking space.  But since I was in an unfamiliar vehicle, I had a moment when I couldn't figure out how to unlock the car and get out.  Help me, Jesus, help me.

I managed to make it a few more days with my head barely attached, but that was a minor miracle.  Then yesterday rolled around.

I discovered I had a thumbtack stuck in one of my brand new tires. I haven't even had this car one week! Just my luck.  I called around to both a local tire store and the dealer, to see who had the tire on hand and for what price.  I ended up back at the Subaru dealer and they replaced the tire.

But while I was standing there at the counter to pay for the new tire, rummaging through my wallet (which I had left behind at my aunt and uncle's and now had in my possession again), I discovered my credit card is gone.  Not in its usual spot, not anywhere else in my purse, gone.  Vanished.  I rarely use it, so it would be easy for me to go some time without realizing it's gone.  I called the card company immediately and cancelled, and I still have no idea where it is.

What has happened to my brain?  I leave my wallet behind, I can't find my credit card, I nearly couldn't figure out how to get out of my own vehicle.  I might as well be a cat trying to fight its way out of a paper bag. 

Can you imagine what it will be like if I ever buy a house? Get married? Have children?  All I did was buy a new vehicle and suddenly I can't function.

Say a prayer now for my future husband.  He's going to need all the help he can get.  Because I sure won't be much help at this rate.