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Celebrating Yourself

 I'm 40 years old today 😱!  It seems surreal.  I'm not that old or at least my mind doesn't feel that old.  It's just another day of life.  

Birthdays have always been a day for spotlight for me.  How many people will remember and acknowledge me.  Honestly, it's always been a little bit of a selfish day.  I felt I deserved that.  But today, my thoughts are changing and I hope my actions will too.

Do your birthdays ever make you ponder your life?  Where you've come, what you've accomplished, maybe what you wish you would have done?  That's what it is doing for me today and it's making me want to celebrate!!  I am not celebrating in the bragging sense, but in the grateful sense!

I've alluded in prior posts that I have suffered from depression.  It hasn't been my whole life.  Just the past 10 years.  Depression is not something that I imaged would be my trial in life.  I'm naturally happy.  So much that up to 10 yrs ago my nickname was sunshine.  And even during my depression people still called me sunshine.  Depression for me was not the sadness that I've heard it described as.  My depression was triggered from chronic pain and the trauma my body went through during pregnancies and deliveries.  Depression for me was more of the constant negative talk in my head that I was not good enough and I wasn't needed anymore.  It was a darkness that put a lot of fear into me.  Fear of failing, fear of my children hating me and feeling resentful of me when they grew up, fear of not being enough for my husband and that he would be better off with someone else.  It was a darkness that I would never be able to live up to be the person Heavenly Father needed me to be.  And as I let those negative thoughts take hold, the darkness became so heavy that life truly was a burden.  The joy had been sucked out of me.  There was no sunshine in my soul anymore.

Now, 11 years later, I am celebrating me!!  


I am celebrating that I have finally recognized the depression and I'm doing all I can to fight it on a daily basis!  

I'm celebrating that I am enough!  

I am celebrating that sometimes we do just have to square our shoulders, grit our teeth and just keep moving forward even when life seems to have stopped.  

I'm celebrating all the qualities, good and bad, that make me ME!

I'm celebrating my weaknesses!  Because it's only through those weaknesses that I can become ME.

I'm celebrating that God only created one of ME!

I am celebrating that God is in our lives!  That He will help me through anything I am going through! 

I am celebrating that life is good even when it seems dark all around us!


Life isn't perfect and NEVER will be!  But when I focus on what I am doing and how my part matters, life can be as perfect as I need it to for that moment.


I had the opportunity to hear Hunter play in the Utah Youth Symphony Concert this past weekend.  The talent of all these high schoolers is amazing!!  They are able to create a perfect harmony of music that filled me with hope, love and a desire to be more in life.  As I looked around and saw the different instruments, it would seem that some had more "important" roles than the others.   There were double the number of string instruments and only 1 to 2 percussionist.  The strings were always playing while the percussionist had a few notes here and there.  Initially the percussionist didn't seem as important to me.  Yet, when the percussionist came in, that's when I could feel ALL the feelings of my heart.  It was only then when the song would move me in a way and inspire me to be more.

How can that be?!  How can one person, with such a tiny part, change everything about the song?

Its because for the symphony to be whole, we needed to hear the percussionist!


And so today, I celebrate myself!  I may seem insignificant and that my part doesn't matter, but it does!  

Because only when we are each doing our part can we feel all the feelings of our heart.  

That's when we find the unison with God!  

That's when I become the sunshine I was meant to be!

Comments

April said…
You are sunshine! Thank you for your great example! Thank you for persevering through life’s challenges. You are Wonder Woman!
May 13, 2021 at 6:18 AM
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