Honor the People in Your Life by Celebrating (Everything)!
Be cheerful with joyous celebration in every season of life. Let your joy overflow!
Philippians 4:4-7 TPT
This blog covers
Celebrate People in Their Milestones and Everyday Interests
Celebrate Just for the Fun of It!
Celebrate Daily Life with a Note of Caution
Celebrate and Honor People through Words
Ways to Celebrate Honor and Acknowledge People
Disclaimer
Conclusion
Congratulations to the Brooks Family!
They celebrated the adoption of five siblings last week! What a FUN party!
Celebrate People in Their Milestones and Everyday Interests
Let's celebrate! In the business of life, we don't celebrate the people we care about like we could. The hours and days on the calendar will continue to pass, but what do we remember?
It's the baby covered in frosting on their first birthday that brings a spontaneous smile to our faces. It's the people you love most from different places and times in your life that come together to celebrate a wedding. It's the feeling of accomplishment and relief at college graduation with those who fought through the experience with you at school or from home.
Besides milestones, celebrate people by honoring their passions, interests, and gifts. For example, we go as a family to music concerts, basketball games, and ROTC competitions because that is what our kids are into right now. We invite friends to go too. On our way back from an event, we all talk about our favorite parts and share how we were impressed by their part in the performance or competition. I feel proud as their mom, and they feel loved that we all went for them.
Celebrate just for the fun of it!
I have discovered that once you get past the regular milestones, life can become overwhelming or just mundane at times. Sometimes we need some fun in our lives to brighten up the world for everyone. To continue celebrating life, we can come up with and look forward to adventures.
When I was a young mom at home with my little ones, dinner, dishes, laundry, and just being home was exhausting. I needed to look forward to something fun. So one summer, I created some events with my favorite people, my family, who lived nearby. I planned one event every couple of weeks.
We had a progressive dinner where each couple had a different part of the meal at their house, and we piled in our cars to go for appetizers at my aunt's, salads and soup at my cousins, the main dish at my house, and dessert at my parents. Some people even decorated their homes for the event.
Another time the whole extended family met up at the lake for swimming and a BBQ. I have adorable pictures of our kids having a water fight and playing in the water and sand as the sunset behind them.
Another weekend I sent out invitations to a murder mystery dinner that my cousin volunteered to host. I was surprised when everyone showed up in costume. Seeing my uncle, who was to be the football jock, show up with his abs painted on his shirt and an old football helmet makes me laugh even now! My mom, a fun but conservative farmer's wife, showed up in leather and chains with black makeup, chomping her gum and talking like a disrespectful teen! Her character was known for always being in trouble in school. My cousin couldn't stop laughing at my mom's character, which was so different from her normal personality.
I don't remember all the characters now. It was so long ago, but I remember everyone playing up their parts, making us laugh so hard that one of us peed their pants! Of course, none of us were actors, but the game gave us all the clues and prompts to blame each other for the pretend murder as the game unfolded.
Whenever my kids and foster kids anticipate seeing my parents, they always ask my mom if they can have a tea party. Everyone has to wear hats, usually silly ones, and dress up in their best little dress or whatever they have. They always have to lift their pinky and make up pretend names. There are always LOTS of tiny treats from the store that ensure the boys want to get in on the tea party. "But only if they raise their pinky and noses in the air while they talk." Nana's rules. You have to make up a name such as Sir Someone, Dutchess, Princess Such and Such, etc. It is always picture worthy. I have videos of many foster kids, cousins, and some friends giggling or exploding in laughter over their teacups of juice.
I'm not really into Halloween as a mom, and I have never liked blood or gore. However, the best party I ever attended was a Halloween Party in our barn as a kid.
My mom decided to have a Halloween Party for all the neighbors, who were all retired farmers or close to it at the time. These hard-working people showed up so well disguised that we couldn't figure out who some of them were because they chose not to talk all night. Later we were all shocked when we discovered that the mute alien was the most proper grandma of all the neighbors. No one guessed it was her!
Now that we live far from family, we go on adventures with friends.
Celebrate Daily Life with a Note of Caution
Just make sure in all the fun that everyone feels honored or included in the fun. Sacrificing one person's feelings in the name of fun tends to ruin the whole party.
Try to be sensitive to individual personalities and topics. For example, in the course of practical jokes, as a teen, one of the boys wired a real bra on the front of a friend's car, thinking it would be funny when everyone came out to leave so they could see it. The girl was devastated, and he was clueless. In his mind, it was funny because the cover on the front of a car is called a bra.
Another friend didn't get the unspoken rules of a practical joke to be funny, NOT destructive. He hid a raw fish under the front seat of a car. It never hurts to state guidelines for fun, even if it seems obvious, especially with kids and teenagers.
Celebrate and Honor People through Words
Some of my favorite ways to honor and bless people are through words. On someone's birthday, we sometimes have everyone share something about the person having a birthday. What is your first memory of the person? Share one happy memory you have about the birthday girl. What is one thing that you think the birthday person is good at doing? Who has a story you could tell about the birthday girl?
Sometimes we have passed around a paper for everyone to write what they like most about our birthday boy. Written notes like this often find their way into special spots to be reread. The person is honored through words and celebrated again every time they read it.
At a Bible study I go to, we pray for and share Bible verses to encourage the person to celebrate their birthday as a way to bless them. In addition, the birthday person is sometimes asked what they are looking forward to in the upcoming year or asked to share something they learned or what God showed them in the previous year.
At women's parties, everyone brought their favorite something to exchange. This was fun and made you think of the person you got it from whenever I used it. Examples include bringing your favorite nail polish color, book, or recipe to trade. Then when you took home that person's item, you remembered to pray for them when you used their favorite.
Another time someone brought little painted cards with verses from a Christian bookstore. We got to pick one at random, and then after reading it to ourselves, we went around and shared how and why it was a verse meant for us, or we read the card aloud, and if we felt like it was for someone else, we would take it and share it with them.
I couldn't help but smile when I found a note of encouragement left on my desk as a teacher. Or the day one of my students snuck in after school and left me a cupcake in an overturned sugar cone with lots of frosting and candy spilling out! I LOVE frosting! (Thank you, Millie!)
In turn, I have slipped notes or cards in my kids' bags at times when they go on overnight trips for school events. I have left little notes sticking out from under their pillows to find so that they know they are special to me.
Even sharing an accomplishment or something that someone does or did well in front of the person is a simple but effective way to honor someone through words.
Ways to Celebrate, Honor, and Acknowledge People
"Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up." 1 Thessalonians 5:11
This birthday girl got to run for her life to keep her candy while her friends and siblings chased her to try to get some. No one could “catch and hold her.” They all just made a run for it!
Some fun ways we celebrated birthdays was by using cookies to decorate. If you unscrew Oreo-type sandwiches, the frosting in the middle will stick to the glass (they stick longer if you lick them before you put them on)! They make great polka dots on the windows of a bedroom or car. Marshmallows and gummy bears stick on glass too. The secret is you have to lick them first. 🤪
Breakfast in bed on a birthday or special day always made me feel special growing up. It was even more fun to make a short menu and have someone check off what they wanted to order from bed so I could bring them breakfast in bed on their special day.
Last Mother's Day, my girls brought me my favorite iced coffee and flowers in bed. My heart overflowed and still does at the memory! 💓
As a teen, I was called to the office one day, which made me nervous. However, when I got there, the secretary said I got flowers. My parents sent me flowers for my birthday! I went from anxious to glowing! No wonder I love flowers so much to this day. I felt thoroughly loved that birthday.
To make an event feel extra special, you can honor kids and adults by leaving an invitation in their room or mailing it to them. For example, my daughter, who is in college now, has an invitation to a tea party she got in the mail from Nana five years ago. That invitation is treasured because of the way it makes her feel. She knows she is loved and belongs.
Dry-erase markers are a great way to celebrate with words such as,
Happy first day of high school! You are going to be AMAZING!
Happy Birthday!
Congratulations on your first job!
You make it to the last week of school!
You are LOVED!
Creating treasure hunts for each other that lead to a treasure of candy or a present is fun too. An adult can do it for kids, or kids can do it in teams for each other. It is good to have parameters for any off-limits areas.
Treasure Hunt! Follow the yarn!
Turning a room or level of the house into a spider web always brings smiles and laughter as kids and adults crawl over and under each other's strings to get to the end, which is tied to a hidden treat or present. I always start all the yarn in the same spot where everyone enters, and it helps if everyone has a different color string. Then, I go back and forth, wrapping the yarn around furniture and things high and low to make a web so that it is impossible to walk through the room. It often gets an amazed reaction like, "WOAH!!!" when people first see it.
The person who rolls up their yarn the neatest, or everyone who rolls it up neatly, can get a little prize, so you don't end up with masses of yarn.
There have been times when I heard a song that seemed like it was just perfect for a friend struggling and celebrating something in their life, and I texted it to them. I often add songs to the end of my blog because they seem like a perfect blessing at the end, like frosting on a cupcake (and now you know, I love frosting). It just makes the cake or blog so much better. There have been times songs have blessed me. After adopting our oldest daughter, she sent me a song that touched my heart and let me know I touched hers.
Disclaimer:
Don't start thinking I am a super mom! These are some of the things I have done over 20 years of parenting. I'm sure you have done many fun things to celebrate the people you love if you spend a little time thinking about it as I have tonight. I got most of the ideas from other people. Feel free to steal any ideas I've shared to celebrate with the people in your life.
Conclusion:
The littlest moments can unite us!
Celebrating and honoring people makes memories that help us feel like we belong and lets us know that we are loved. I want to make more of those memories with the people in my life. For children (and adults), this builds their sense of self and identity in who they are in relation to others.
Take a moment and think about ways you celebrate the people you love
In Their Milestones and Everyday Interests
Celebrate just for the fun of it!
Celebrate Daily Life with a Note of Caution
Celebrate and Honor People through Words
Ways to Celebrate Honor and Acknowledge People
What is a happy memory you remember being celebrated? How were you celebrated? How did it make you feel? You may have some fun ways of celebrating. I hope to hear some of your ideas and adventures from across the screen. I need some inspiration too!
Click Below to Listen to an Excerpt of Breathing through Foster Care
From the Chapter, “Survival Tips to Prevent Burnout.”