cel.e.brate

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes

Saying ay-oh, gotta let go.

I wanna celebrate and live my life

Saying ay-oh, baby let's go.

cel·e·brate (verb): to oberver (a day) or commemorate (an event) with ceremonies or festivities; to make known publicly; proclaim. 
 
Today was my birthday; a day dedicated to celebrating me (and all the other wonderful people I share October 6th with). This idea of celebrating has been a very interesting and at times very uncomfortable and challenging part of my jouorney. This blog is about grieving...don't worry I didn't forget :) However, I have come to learn that as I avoided grief,  I also unintentionally gave up my ability to celebrate. As a result of blocking of pain and hurtful pieces of my life, I ended up blocking myself to positive feelings, emotions, and experiences. As I was able to work through some of those blocks, what I have come to call the "vault," I began to free myself up to experience many of the positive emotions & experiences I had unknowingly longed for. This idea of celebrating became an unanticipated part of my process. Yet I wasn't quite sure what it meant to celebrate.
 
I don't know if grieving released me from shame or if God was simply allowing me to work through both grief & shame issues at the same time....? idk. But what I do know is that as I worked through different levels of my therapy process I began to expereince less and less shame. Once I felt true freedom from shame, I wish I could tell you that I automatically felt all of the glory that God created me for...unfortunately I can't. However, (1) it doesn't mean that you can't; and (2) it doesn't mean that my process was wasted. What it does mean is that without shame I still felt as though something was missing. I had come to belive that glory is the opposite of shame. Thus I deductivly decided that the next step was to figure out what I need to do, or how I needed to get out of the way in order to feel the glory that God created me for...
 
In order to work towards glory I went back to what I knew worked...aka self-talk. I truly hate this phrase; I hate how self-focused it sounds, and dislike how it sounds rolling off my tongue. However, the general concept behind it I very much agree with. Part of my process with shame was renouncing the lies that Satan was speaking to me regarding my worth and daughtership. So instead of renounding lies, I started to simply claim and speak the truth of who I know I am in Christ. This was helpful in that I spoke & claimed truth over myself, but it wasn't until I was able to worship, thank, praise, & celebrate God for what he had done in my life that I really started to be able to think and feel more of that glory that God created for me to have. I am definitley still in a process of learning how to celebrate, but God is definitley showing up and teaching me more about it!
 
So today as I had a day to celebrate, I was trying to think about what I was specifically thankful for today. This is a difficult decision because as of late I have so many wonderful new payoffs that I get to experience daily that I just wasn't sure what I was going to specifically celebrate today. I am so grateful and thankful for the work that God has done in my life over the last year and a half, but I wanted to spend today being specifically thankful for something very specific that God has done....
 
....it wasn't long after I started thinking/praying about what to celebrate today that God showed up with an answer; today I celebrated the fact that it doesn't hurt to be loved on anymore. Ten months ago I was unofficially adopted by the Hopwood family. I had been praying that God would give me a family; a family that would love on me in only the ways that I had dreamed families would love on someone. About a week after I argued it out with God about how the young man in the Blind Side didn't have to do anything and he got a family, God sent me a family. Not only was I completely overwhelmed by the idea of a new family, (1) I didn't actually know what to do with this answer to my prayers, and (2) I actually physically felt pain when they loved on me. Super long story later, last Sunday (October 3, 2010) was the first time I felt the complete absence of the hurt.  I was able to simply sit and be with them in a way that fostered great feelings of nurturing, love, and acceptance. For the first time I was able to be with them, feel incredibly loved, and not feel pain; for the first time in a very long time, if not ever I was able to just sit and be loved on; a moment I must admit that I have longed for.....For months now I had simply been holding onto the promise that it would get better, that one day I would be able to sit and be loved on and not feel pain. I had to trust God and my therapist that as I continued to grieve the loss of healthy love, I would one day be able to actually receive love without feeling pain.
 
So today I celebrate and thank God for giving me a family that was willing to stick it out with me, willing to walk beside me and continue to love on me until I could finally feel their love and sit in it without feeling pain.
 
Today I celebrate life, my life, the life of glory & daughtership that God has created me for.
 
I celebrate my process of grief, for if it wasn't for learning to grieve, I wouldn't be here celebraing because I'd still be in bondage to the vault & to shame.
 

Thus my process of learning to grieve, once again demonstrated great experiential payoffs!