Celebrations

I heard somewhere that one of the best ways to cut back on eating sweets is to enjoy them more.  If I stop everything when I eat chocolate, nibbling very slowly,  and turning my full attention to the silky flavor as it slips over my tongue, I find myself more satisfied when it is gone.

The general idea is to make eating a piece of chocolate into a celebration of its delightful taste.  I think that the same principle applies to many things in life.

Almost everyone celebrates holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and weddings, but those are not my favorite celebrations. The best celebrations are the ones that rejoice over the small stuff.

One of my favorite celebrations is my traditional celebration of the first snowfall. I invite whatever family members happen to be nearby and willing, to join me reading Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening". We read slowly, savoring the words, while we sit too close to the front of the fireplace and sip hot chocolate.

We also celebrate spotting the first flower that pokes its head out of the ground in the spring. In a couple of weeks my warm-sunny-days loving husband and I will be celebrating the winter solstice, because starting then, the days will begin steadily getting longer.

We celebrate God's magnificent artistry by stopping to watch sunrises, sunsets, and the full moon.

Celebrating the small stuff helps me remember to be fully alive to life, savoring it like chocolate instead of chewing and swallowing it automatically without giving it my full attention.

I celebrate bittersweet things too. I held a private celebration for one after receiving my first kindly worded, if generic sounding, email from a publisher explaining that they could not use my submission. I celebrated because the email confirmed that I had faced down the paralyzing fear of rejection that for years prevented me from sharing anything I wrote.

Quirky celebrations like that one may actually be the most important celebrations of all.  They are the pivotal little moments when I pause in my automatic rush through life, to celebrate God-with-me on this journey. I celebrate the fact that He uses everything, even disappointment, pain, and heartbreak to lead me to a place where I am "more than a conquerer".