Some days I wake up in my 3-5 a.m. thinking... it’s crazy to write and even crazier to share. But somehow in the middle of the night I feel braver. I feel like things running through my head are looking for a place to be... So in all its imperfections... I’m tossing this out in that place to just be... thanks for being a place to experiment with for pieces just to be.
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October 6, 2019
kks
Celebrate Me Home
PLEASE celebrate me home. Come on, won’t you... Please CELEBRATE ME home. Won’t you come on now...? PLEASE celebrate ME home. I’ll say it once again...
Please CELEBRATE me HOME Can you hear me now...? Please celebrate ME home
Please do those things I’ll always remember... please celebrate me HOME as I replay all those memories that fill my mind and heart...
☕️ pls celebrate me home 🔥
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What would your “Welcome Home” scene look like if you were celebrated home in a way that you felt deeply cared for?
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Back in my early twenties, after a relationship break up, I moved from the warm south to a small city in northern MIchigan. There I was, 24 years old; essentially I was starting my life over.
I lived alone in a small cottage on a big beautiful lake. I had a job working with at-risk youth in a year round program. The five-year, block-grant-funded program, was based on the hope that if you could keep one kid out of prison, the program paid for itself. Working with a difficult population in an emotionally challenging job, actively trying to work through a five year relationship break-up, and living alone up in a small northern town, oftentimes left me feeling very heart hungry and alone. Generally speaking, I am not a lonely person so I wasn’t lonely but I definitely spent a lot of time alone.
One of the duplicitous-paradoxes (something really good happening right alongside something very challenging) of living that far north was living where it snowed a lot. I love snow. I loved living where there was real winter! But with a lot of snow brought the need to shovel A LOT of snow. The volume of regularly falling snow gave me ample opportunities to shovel. When I say shovel, I mean shovel!
My driveway was about 200 feet long. For my job, I often worked late into the evening; I also played hockey every Friday night. So my usual time to shovel was from 11:00 pm until 1:00 am. Thankfully, I liked winter and really didn’t mind putting on my snow gear, popping on my Walkman and headphones, and seeing if I could get through shoveling the driveway in record time. The “light snow” nights took about an hour to shovel and the deep, heavy, and often wet snows would take at least two or more hours to get through. My shoveling album-of-choice (imagine a Walkman that played a single CD), was Kenny Logins - Live from the Redwoods.
My favorite song from the album was the song Celebrate Me Home (go to YouTube and take a listen, preferably wearing headphones, sitting someplace a little cold, wrapped in a blanket, in a dark or dimly candle lit room, sipping a warm mug full of your favorite “brew” ).
Since there was no one else to “welcome me home” during this season of life, I needed to learn how to “Celebrate Me Home.” I needed to learn to give myself what I wished I was giving to somebody else or what someone else was giving to me.
Two years of this kind of living trained me in learning how to build the mindset of knowing how to “Celebrate Me Home!” Imagine me singing loudly (no neighbors for miles because most of the houses up there were summer cabins), and dancing with the shovel as my partner; the stars were my guests gushing light through the dark night sky; the wind through the trees brought “clapping” branches and swirls of snow falling. Some nights it really did feel like a party and I was thankful to know how to “celebrate me home.”
Now flash forward. A decade and a half later. Old love gone. New love come. New love brought new lives. One new love. Then two... two boys, sons, now a happy heart, bigger than before. Next a daughter... a girl that opened up a new love channel in my heart. A daughter feels different than a son. Three kids “planned” to here. A family easily celebrated home. In sync. A balance of union. Easy to lean in.
Surprises. Sometimes life takes you places you could never have imagined but it is a thankful place. Three more little people... Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. “We had three MORE kids; we adopted two, and then “surprised by one.”
Surprised but grateful. Amazed! Words of prayerful hope from the pastor’s wife at our wedding. “May you have children. Maaaaaany children.” In my estimation, six kids qualifies as maaaaaaany!
Shift.
Momentum altered. New Course. Move. Balance shift.
Load presses. Resources taxed.
Finding the load larger than the ability to manage this moment at hand...
The load produces stress...
The stress produces fractures...
Fractures...leave gaps...
Gaps fill with pain...
Pain...
Pain cannot be ignored...
Pain must be managed...
If pain is not managed...
Those fractures turn to breaks... Breaks...
Can breaks be healed...?
Breaks can heal.
But for breaks to heal the damage must stop being done... Heal...
How to heal...
Taking time to heal...
Healing...
Mending...
Healing takes a thread and darns the hole... Hole...
How to darn the hole so now things move in the direction of whole... Whole...
to begin again...
Whole...
To restore what this world breaks... Restore...
To tend to the damage so the damage becomes undone...
so as to renew... Renew...
To re-do...
To re-begin again.
To put on right use...
To restore to friendly relations...to be reconciled. To be reconciled. To be brought back into right relationship...
to be back on friendly terms.
How many holes get a chance to be worked through to wholes?
To begin again.
In this moment.
To be seen...
To see...self
To see...others
To matter...
To be be celebrated...
To be celebrated home.
PLEASE - celebrate me home...
Please CELEBRATE ME home...
Please celebrate me HOME... Please. Celebrate.
Me.
Home.  As we begin to see ourselves and each other’s hungers through more compassionate eyes, let’s all get more effective...
...at celebrating each other home.
Let’s learn to see what it would look like through the eyes of the people we love what it would look like to them, to be celebrated home.
Maybe... just maybe... A Shift Occurs. Momentum altered. New Course flows. Balance shifts. Load lifts... Resources renew... Real relationships restore. Moving from hole toward whole...
one little celebration at a time.
Please, celebrate me home.
Sent from my iPhone
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