From the Archives: Don't Wait to Celebrate

I wrote this piece over nine years ago, but I have been reminded of it as of late. Yet again, God uses what 'past me' wrote to remind 'current me' of the truth. This one is for others who also maybe need the reminder to look at what they already hold in their hands, instead of lamenting what they don't. 

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Years ago, I dated a boy. We’ll call him Ben to protect the innocent, though that wasn’t his real name. Ben and I met through church, and since I barely had any social media accounts at the time, he had to resort to messaging me on LinkedIn—the only account I had left—because there was no other real way to reach me. We eventually started dating, but around the six-month mark, we found ourselves in a deep late-night conversation about the future of our relationship. He already had us on the train to marriage, while I was still trying to figure out whether I was even at the right station. I had been deeply affected by a previous relationship—if you can call it that—from college, one I thought I had already gotten over. The realization that I hadn’t hit me fast and hard when Ben asked that night, “Are you wishing he was here with you tonight instead of me?”

It felt like a bomb exploded in my chest when he asked that question.

In that moment, I realized that, unintentionally, I had been holding on to a life I thought I would have—a life with another boy who had made it clear years earlier that there would be no future for us. But my heart never quite got that message. All that time, I had been waiting to celebrate a life I thought I would have instead of the life I had been given. It was costing me, not just with Ben, but in so many other areas of my life.

Jay and Katherine Wolf know what it looks like to live the life they never thought they’d have. In 2008, Katherine suffered a massive brainstem stroke at age twenty-six. Jay was in law school, their son was six months old, and Katherine was pursuing a modeling career. Their lives changed forever that day. She was not expected to survive the stroke, let alone recover, but she did both. In 2016, they released Hope Heals, which sheds light on everything that happened between Katherine’s stroke and their present life. They shared the struggles and challenges of coping with such a drastic shift in their lives—rehab, surgeries, doctors, hospitals, medications, setbacks, and uncertainty. Who plans for such things? The Wolfs certainly didn’t.

In the midst of it all, they tied a knot at the end of their rope that led to Jesus and chose to cling to him. Jay wrote, “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 that it looked different from the life they thought they’d have.

We have the same choice before us. Even if sheer grit and determination are what get us through, we have to learn to celebrate the life right in front of us.

Maybe your boss drives you crazy, maybe you got overlooked for that promotion, maybe you’re sick of the daily grind, the rat race, and the hour-long commute for a job that feels like a dead end.

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

Maybe your family is dysfunctional and broken, maybe you aren’t on speaking terms with your siblings or your parents, maybe they’ve said things that hurt you, and maybe you’re not sure you’ll ever 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 husband drives you crazy, maybe he forgets to do things you’ve asked him to do a million times, maybe he doesn’t love you the way you think he should, and maybe he’s let you down more times than you can count, and maybe you’re not sure how you 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 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 to do, and maybe disease has shown up on your doorstep, and maybe you’re not as fit as you want to be, and maybe your joints creak a little more and your 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’ve been given, even if it looks different from the one you thought you’d have, because that’s the point—it’s the life you’ve been given. For whatever reason, God, in his sovereignty and wisdom, chose to give you the life you have. It’s the life he has entrusted to you.

We have to do the hard work of narrowing the gap between the life we imagined and the life we already have. The space in between is where disappointment dwells, and if we let that chasm grow too wide, disappointment will grow there too and sink roots. Once disappointment sinks roots, it’s hard to rip them out without doing irreparable harm to the soil of our 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 that if you are deeply disappointed, it is because you have been holding on to a misplaced and misguided hope, a hope rooted in something other than Jesus Christ. Misguided hope always disappoints—always, always, always without fail. If we put our hopes in our jobs, our spouses (or the idea of a someday-one), our families, our bodies, our governments, our culture, our laws, or our children, we are bound to be disappointed eventually. Those things weren’t designed to carry the weight of our expectations. We will crush both them and ourselves if we don’t relieve that pressure.

I’m not saying we should become eternal pessimists or resign ourselves to being the human version of Eeyore, wandering around wondering where our tails went. And I’m not saying we should settle for mediocrity and become apathetic doormats. What I am saying is that we have to hold loosely to our ideas of what we thought our lives would look like. If we’re not careful, we’ll reach the end of our lives and realize we failed to celebrate a single thing we were given because we were too hung up on what we were not given.

I’m also not saying “celebrating” means pasting on a smile and keeping a stiff upper lip, pretending everything is fine. And I’m not saying it means we don’t hold boundaries with our families, friends, and coworkers who have harmed or hurt us. When I say we “celebrate” the life we have been given, I’m speaking to the position and attitude of our hearts as we handle disappointment and the mismatch between expectation and reality.

Celebrate the life you’ve been given—in all its broken, messy glory. Celebrate the family that can’t quite figure out how to be normal, whatever normal means anymore. Celebrate the job that feels like a grind. Celebrate the spouse who 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, and the suffering. Find the good in these things. Find the joy in these things. Fight for joy. Believe the best about the people around you.

But don’t make those people or things 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.