celebrate

Celebrating is a discipline.

 I’ve never thought about this before today.

 I was on a long walk listening to a podcast on the importance celebrating and I ultimately found myself very disturbed.

 What has happened to me? Since when did I lose the desire to celebrate? Did I really need to listen to a podcast about this?

 Yes, I did.

 In the summer of 2015, our family was in the throes of recovering from alcohol addiction. I say all of us because if you’ve ever experienced the trauma of addiction, the recovery process is not just for the addict. It involves the whole family.

 I decided early in the process to celebrate recovery with a cookie cake every month for the first year of Nick’s sobriety. Now this sounds silly - at least it does to me. I don’t know that Nick needed a cake to celebrate. He certainly didn’t ask for one. But maybe I knew that the celebration was as much for me as for him.

 One day, as I stood at the counter of Harris Teeter getting the cake, the lady behind the counter said, “What are you celebrating?”

 Oh no.

 Here came a thought. You know the kind of thought that doesn’t ask your permission before it comes? The kind you wish you never had.

 It just came busting through the door like an un-welcomed visitor.

 “Well, we’re celebrating my husband not being a loser.”

 Wait, what?

 I didn’t mean to think that. I didn’t actually think that at all. I certainly never said this out loud, but to this day I remember how I felt when that thought came rushing in. I truly felt awful about it.

 Nevertheless, we celebrated.

 I took that cake home to Nick and the kids. We had a few moments together. A short time of gratitude and recognition for how far we had come. I didn’t eat the cake (hello, gluten free), but it was an important moment for me. This moment brought me back to the goal and the choice to celebrate every right next step.

 The passing thought didn’t have to define the experience because the celebration did.  

 Celebrating - it is important. It shifts our perspective. It teaches us how to be grateful. To slow down and recognize how far we’ve come.

 So, this afternoon, I decided to put this into practice.

 On the last day of my kids’ school, we celebrated.

 We celebrated bravely stepping into a new environment. New structure. New goals reached.

 Instead of focusing on the mess it would make or the fits it would cause, I planned a water fight. I set up water balloons and water guns. There may have initially been a few tears, but after ambushing them with all the water things and getting fully soaked myself, I remembered why we celebrate.

 We marked a moment. We made a memory and we slowed down to enjoy each other.

 And there are still water balloons in the grass, but that’s ok.

 We’ll celebrate picking them up tomorrow.