"A Shameless Appeal for Celebration"

words for when the light surprises you.

Photo by Nadya Spetnitskaya on Unsplash

I sat with this a long time over the summer, adding words slowly and taking away more. I’m warning you, it’s an eight-minute read. Sorry.

There’s nothing unusual about this summer. But after years of feeling frozen in grief and depression, I want to mark the ways I see the light seeping in and surprising me. I hope you can do the same in your life, too. No matter what you are walking through, leaving behind, or beginning.

This summer, there have been endings and beginnings, fears and heartbreaks, emergencies and surgeries. I’ve walked with friends through excruciating days. I’ve watched other friends welcome new life and soldiers home.

The light has been there, too. And peaches. And music. And joy.

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I remember times curled up on my bathroom floor last year, chest clenched like a heart attack, every joint and muscle aching, muffling sobs so my sons wouldn’t hear. I hid the worst of it from them, tried to be strong. No one warned me about the sheer physicality of heartbreak, the aching that radiates like the early stages of birthing a child. Except there is no hope of a new life. Only the saw-edged flipside of love, pain.

I stored up panic because I couldn’t save someone I loved. I held it in my body for more months than I realized, and it started to steal my health. My husband was afraid—my kind, Herculean husband who fears very little. I was broken, out of reach, walled up. Loss, even loss less final than death, is a many-cornered, spiny thing. Once the scar begins to appear, it’s a scar that pulls and pokes, and unexpected stabs still threaten to reopen it.

But (skipping to the good part) in many ways, my grip on my grief is stronger, making it easier to carry. It has taught me much and will continue to do so because I am still learning. For the first time in years, this summer, I’m brave enough to say that I’m healing and learning to trust in healthy ways. I see God’s hand in all of it. I wrote about my faith a year ago here and I’ll write more about it soon.

And the sunshine? I see it, too. I noticed it first at my brother’s wedding in May.

There was a storm on the forecast, and the ground was soggy. Nevertheless, the sun burst through the clouds and stayed out all day, unbothered. My brother and precious sister-in-law said “I do” in an intimate ceremony in her grandparents’ backyard. Our two families have been friends since we were children, so we CELEBRATED. And I mean we danced, sweaty hair up and high heels kicked off, to We Are Family and Paper Rings and everything in between. We danced until the sunset glowed over the treetops and illuminated the pool where my brothers ended up pushing each other in, belly laughs echoing.

Summer used to be my least favorite time of year. Step outside where I live, and it’s like breathing through a wet cloth inside an oven. So imagine my surprise when, somewhere between fresh peach recipes, raspberry lemonade, slower schedules, and padding around after the pool with wet hair and relaxed muscles. . . I realized something was softening in me. It had something to do with the long days and all that sunlight.

Joy and sunlight and celebration have been inextricably related, and it surprised me. The sensation of being at home in my skin was so odd and sacred I wanted to weep.

Emily P. Freeman writes of the practice of pointing and calling in the Japanese railway system—a way of adding verbal and physical cues to otherwise automatic actions to limit error. The reasoning? Point and call, and you won’t miss the important stuff.

“Is there something good, true, and beautiful about God that you’ve forgotten, but now you’re starting to remember even just a little bit? Point at it now and call it out loud. Is there something good, true, and beautiful about you that’s been lost, buried, hidden, silenced, or overlooked?”

- Emily P. Freeman, Next Right Thing podcast episode 92

Josiah and Carolyn’s wedding reception, Carolyn Marie Photography

It may seem frivolous or foolhardy. I’ve written about it many times. But I believe marking the ordinary goodnesses in our lives holds more power and agency than we realize. There is research that supports how these moments, coined “glimmers”, help the nervous systems God made.

I wonder if sometimes, daring to point at a moment and call it good without worry or cynicism is celebration. And I believe that is holy.

In the introduction to her book Cold Tangerines, Shauna Niequist writes,

“This book is a shameless appeal for celebration. I know that the world is several versions of mad right now. I know that pessimism and grimness sometimes feel like the only responsible choices. … I had a hard year this year, the hardest I’ve yet known. I worry about the world we’re creating for my baby boy. I get the pessimism and grimness.

“And that’s why I’m making a shameless appeal for celebration. Because I need to. I need optimism and celebration and hope in the face of violence and despair and anxiety. And because the other road is a dead end. … The only option, as I see it, is this delicate weaving of action and celebration, of intention and expectation.”

-Shauna Niequist

I love Shauna’s emphasis that having a hard year was exactly the reason WHY she makes a shameless appeal for celebration.

Thanks to this summer, I realize that celebration can show up in the booming bass of a wedding dance floor. It can also show up in a quiet hum in your bones when you’re eating a peach and you realize that you are fully at home in your body for the first time in years.

If you think about it, when boiled down to its simplest form, celebration is simply saying, “This is good. We rejoice.” At its core, celebration is noting and then responding with joy and presence. It can be tremulous, silent, imperfect, halting. . . or ridiculously unbridled.

If my words here make you uncomfortable or humph in skepticism, trust me, I’ve been there. I’m not the only person who has silently feared that if we let life be good (or write about life being good) the other shoe will drop. Please let this be your gentle push to find safe places and people, explore options, and talk to a good therapist. (Here, too, God’s grace is found.)

Please dare to hope that there is a God and He is good. Please dare to see that beauty, truth, and goodness are intrinsically related, and glimmers of them here on earth point to our home. It will feel stupid and awkward at first. (I can’t tell you how many times I grumped about stupid walks outside and drinking my stupid water.)

I hope you practice finding safe ways to let your walls down. I hope you try to let it be good. I’ve said it before but I say it with even more conviction now. Look for the light.

my farmer’s market flowers

It isn’t gimmicky or woo-woo or “modern” to celebrate life. I think it’s a way of life that has been lost in many ways. And yes, it’s a disruptive way to think in our enflamed society of fear-mongering and offended yelling on social media. We need it now more than ever.

We can—wait for it—still trust that this is our Father’s world.

He does shine in all that’s fair.

And when you spot a glimmer of that shining, even if it’s obscure, will you point and call with me?

Even here, we can see that the Lord is good. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s worth celebrating.

So here’s your shameless appeal to look for the light and celebrate it.

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Postscript, Summer Edition

We’re back with a postscript! Here are some things giving me life lately:

1. The playlist for August: A Nancy Meyers Morning.

2. Peach recipes like this collection from Southern Living or this one pulled up on my browser right now. There’s still time before we welcome fall flavors!

3. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I was late to the game on this one. Adored it. Devoured it.

4. My gardener son’s cherry tomatoes and my herbs that defied the heat.

5. My Lady Jane on Prime Video. Made me laugh until I cried.

6. The folklore album of course. “Salt air and the rust on your door” always and forever but especially in August. Duh.

7. Stephanie Duncan Smith’s new book, Even After Everything, coming out in October. I’m highlighting almost every sentence in my review copy.

8. Pool pizza parties with friends. So unexpectedly life-giving.

9. If you read one more thing today, please let it be Sarah Clarkson’s stunning essay. This slipped into my inbox as I was scheduling this letter and the timing is impeccable. She can paint with words in ways I only dream of. I beg you (shamelessly) to read it.