Learning to Celebrate

I have this friend who celebrates everything. Last Family Day he insisted we have a Family Day party complete with a delicious meal and many rounds of Family Feud. He’s the kind of person that makes everything into an event. I appreciate this about him. There is this desire in me to be the same. I want to buy people ridiculous cards for random ‘holidays’ and make sure little events in people’s lives are noted and celebrated. Two of my roommates just got new jobs. We’ve been saying we’re going to celebrate for two weeks now but trying to get the four of us in one spot for longer than 30 minutes is proving to be difficult. I think that’s my problem. I have this desire to celebrate things but life always seems to get in the way. Something amazing happens that I want to hold up to God and be thankful for, to show Him my joy, but then I remember that I have to go to work, or I have plans with a friend, or I got lost in the details somehow.

I realized all of this during the week because something really good happened this week. On Monday night my roommates went to check out a house two blocks from the church. They loved it. It has two bedrooms that we can share and an extra room that can house guests and serve as a space for prayer. It also, apparently, has a gigantic bathroom (like, bigger than the bedrooms). I have not seen this house but I trust the girls that it is great. We filled out the rental application and called the landlord Tuesday morning. Unlike other times we’ve applied for houses, there was no waiting. By the end of Tuesday evening we knew that we had a house for Ocotber 1^st. We quickly began making ridiculous plans for what to do with the gigantic bathroom (we’re thinking one bright pink wall with my ‘girls just want to have fun’ poster up, a disco ball on the ceiling and a sweet dance floor in the corner). I was excited for the first day… then I realized that October 1^st is Wednesday and we need to move. I hate that this amazing blessing has suddenly become a stressor and I’ve been fighting all week to change my attitude. I know that part of the issue is that I want everything to be perfect. There’s going to be a fair bit of cleaning for us to do when we move in and we are going to paint the entire house. I, of course, want all of this to be done within a week. I know that is ridiculous and unnecessary so I’m trying to remind myself to slow down.

That’s the big news. As of next Wednesday I will have a new address. We’ll likely move slowly. We don’t have to be out of our current house by a certain date so we’ll clean, paint and move over the next couple of weeks. We don’t actually start paying rent until the 15^th because the landlords have some stuff they want to do and they knew we’d have to clean and paint. It may be an interesting couple of weeks. I’m excited to paint, to set up house and make something beautiful out of this place. I’ll take some pictures once we get the keys and put them up so people can see. I’ll even do before and after shots if I remember. For now, I’m going to go start my Saturday.