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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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We Are Worth Celebrating

Apr 20 64 Comments

I’m going to come right out and say it: You are worth celebrating.

I get so caught up in alarm clocks and checklists, coffee and rushing out the door, working and writing, cooking and exercising, and small grouping and talking. We do important work. We talk about important things. Matters of faith, growth, vulnerability. We do life and we admit our failures and we try to be better. We keep on reaching and doing and growing.

And it’s good. We should be growing. We were not made to be stagnant.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t do a little celebrating along the way.

A celebratory word could mean the difference between tears of defeat and tears of joy. Of being pushed to the edge or being pushed to new heights. Let's celebrate one another. | TheNestedNomad.com

Before this blog was born, I confessed the idea to my friend Nicole. I actually didn’t know her very well yet, and it kind of came out off-handedly. I could feel my face flush as soon as I said it, wanting to stuff the words back into my mouth and never say them again. I’d only told Dan about this blog idea, but by definition, he has to support my crazy ideas; he’s used to them by now.

She said, “Hey, that’s a great idea! I’ll be your first follower. I love it when people pursue their passions—you should totally go for it.”

I think I mumbled an awkward “thank you” and ran all the way back to my cubicle.

Fast forward to a few months later and another lunch with Nicole. I told her it was real and I was going to do it; my blog was launching next week. I’d put it off for this and for that, but no more. It was time to pull the trigger.

She whipped out her phone and clicked a few keys. “I’m setting an alarm for next Monday. I’m going to ask you about it if I don’t see your first post!”

And then the next Monday rolled around, and I clicked “publish,” thanks in part to Nicole’s accountability and confidence.

It had been a whirlwind weekend of stress, exhaustion, and injuries. Dan had torn his ACL a few weeks back, and as a strange complication from sitting around too much resting it, he developed pneumonia. We wound up in the emergency room one Sunday around 3:00 a.m., and on Monday afternoon he was still there and we were beat. I was tempted to wait another week.

But I clicked “publish” anyway.

And then on Tuesday when I returned to work, I was greeted by this.

And I just wanted to weep.

The exhaustion of the week coupled with the vulnerability I felt when I put that first blog post out there had created more tension than I’d realized. I was ready to snap, and I don’t doubt that an unkind word or an unintentionally snide remark would have caused a meltdown.

But instead, when I was at my most vulnerable, a friend celebrated me and caused a different kind of meltdown—the kind that melts a weary heart and begins to bind up the tattered pieces.

This is friendship. This is relationship. This is grace.

It’s when we notice someone step out on a limb and we say, “Well done!”

It’s when we see someone’s strengths at play and we say, “You’re exceptional.”

It’s when we notice someone’s glazed-over eyes and hunched shoulders and we say, “When I see you, I see lovely.”

A celebratory word could mean the difference between tears of defeat and tears of joy. Of being pushed to the edge or being pushed to new heights. Of succumbing to fear or facing it. Of depths of despair or top-of-the-world joy.

So let’s look around at our people and seek ways to build up and call out and celebrate one another. We are worth celebrating.

Who can you celebrate today? What can you celebrate in yourself?

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Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: bloggers, blogging, celebrating, community, conversation, creativity, doubt, dreams, freedom, friendship, gratitude, intention, joy, love, relationships

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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