Celebrating Good Times When Life is Hard

My family likes to joke about how much I seem to enjoy celebrating my birthday. It started in my teen years. March would arrive and, with it, spring in the mid-Atlantic. Nature would awaken, and beautiful things would emerge from hibernation. The warmer days and blooming trees and flowers would make me feel happy all month long. Seeing life come from the seeming deadness of winter felt like a cause for celebration. My birthday just happened to fall in the middle of it.

Truthfully, I don't enjoy the attention. Having people sing "Happy Birthday" to me feels embarrassing, and opening gifts with everyone watching is awkward. It's not the gifts and attention that excite me about celebrating birthdays. Instead, I love how marking any special occasion with others can become an intentional act of turning away from the pervasive frustrations and sorrows of life and remembering that we were made for joy.

But (let's face it), life isn't always a party, and we don't always feel like celebrating. Most days are full of routine, even drudgery, with conflicts, irritations, and frustrations sprinkled throughout like ugly confetti. Even worse are the unbearable days or seasons when we wish life were just routine and drudgery. Whether from a significant life change, relational conflict, health diagnosis, or death of a loved one, life can swing from smooth sailing to a level-five hurricane, often without warning.

For example, this year, my "month-long birthday celebration" became a month-long medical ordeal for a close family member after he suffered a significant complication following minor surgery. With routines upended and worries abounding, I considered skipping my birthday. But we gathered with our kids anyway, sharing a meal, cupcakes, and laughter. I was thankful afterward that I paused to celebrate with them.

The fact that the highs and lows of life are so interwoven can definitely put a damper on my celebratory spirit. But, when I was thirteen, I learned there are good reasons to celebrate, even in the worst times (maybe especially in the worst times). The lesson was a hard one. It started on a high note: my family and I, including my out-of-state grandparents, attended a family wedding the weekend before Christmas. We had a wonderful time and looked forward to being together again only a week later, on Christmas Eve.

Unfortunately, a few days after the wedding, we received a call that my grandmother had been hospitalized. By the time we arrived, she was in a coma. Although I did see her one last time, she was hooked up to machines in an ICU bed, unlikely to survive. I cried so hard my nose bled for an hour.

Over the next five days, the grown-ups took shifts at the hospital so she wouldn't be alone. It was a sad and stressful week. On Christmas Eve, my aunt decided to make a nice dinner for us all (probably feeling sorry for us kids). However, as soon as we said the blessing over the bountiful meal she had prepared, my parents returned home from the hospital and broke the news that Grandma had died.

In the space of a week, we went from celebrating a wedding to dealing with a health crisis to mourning our loved one's death right when we were supposed to be celebrating Jesus's birth. Waking up on Christmas morning to such a brutal loss, I thought it was the absolute worst time for a loved one to die. How could such sorrow come between a wedding and Christmas, two of the most joyful celebrations of all?

That brutal experience was my first realization that times to mourn and times to laugh often come knocking simultaneously. From a temporal standpoint, my takeaway was that it's good to pause and celebrate with people we love because we don't know how long we'll have them. But, over time, I also recognized the spiritual importance of celebrating. It’s almost an act of rebellion against the harsh world – a declaration that we know God made us for joy. Maybe our ability to pause and express jubilation despite our struggles signals the world that our joy is real, living inside of us.

In modern times, our celebratory functions are often viewed as opportunities to forget reality. Becoming intoxicated to the point of not feeling our pain can be a hallmark feature of modern fetes. But rather than partying until we numb grief, God meant for celebrations to help us remember His promises, including a future where there will be no pain. We aren’t celebrating tragedy or diminishing sorrow – we are demonstrating our belief in the truth that joy will trump it all. Though there is a time for mourning in this life, there will be no need for it in the next.

Celebrating is not a denial that life is hard. It felt a little uncomfortable and sad to gather around the tree the morning after my grandmother died, opening gifts and sharing stories. But pausing to celebrate Jesus’s birth so soon after our significant loss kindled the hope that sustained us in the darkest times. The joy of the Lord was our strength. We gathered that strength together as we remembered God’s promises and the hope of Christ.

Celebrating a birthday during a health crisis, or Christmas following the death of a loved one, or even a wedding in the middle of a pandemic is an announcement to the world that we believe God is good and our story doesn't end with a time to mourn. Instead, as believers, our story ends with an eternal time to dance. And when we get to heaven, the party won't be a month-long celebration – it will last forever – a feast on a scale beyond imagining. In the meantime, every celebration on earth is just a rehearsal.