#250 Celebrate Good Times

Yesterday, March 20, was Hofman Family Day™. See, back in 2020, my younger daughter, Mia, was born seven weeks early. She spent nearly six weeks in the NICU. Tess and I lived at the hospital and slept at the Ronald McDonald house for a month and a half. Due to sickness and the beginnings of COVID-19 restrictions, my older daughter Lanie, ended up spending about half this time in Wisconsin with my parents and my in-laws. I was a wreck for a lot of that time. By my standards, I cried pretty often and pretty easily. Every moment I spent away from Tess or Lanie or Mia hurt like slicing off a piece of my heart. And no matter what I did, I almost never felt like I had made the right decision. (You can read a lot of my ongoing thoughts from that time by using the archive to look up blog posts from February and March 2020.) March 20 was the first day that all four of us were finally at home together. March 20 was the day I began to feel (at least close to) whole.

So Tess and I decided that March 20 would forever be a Hofman family holiday. On March 20 we would be together. We'd eat our favorite foods and get dessert and do whatever our kids wanted to do. (Yesterday we got ice cream and went to the park, and—at Lanie's request—we had McDonald's for supper.) And we would remember. We'd remember the difficult days of separation and loneliness. We'd remember the initial (and thankfully, mercifully short) period of wondering if Mia would even survive. We'd remember the frustration of just wanting to be home. But most of all we'd remember that God brought us through. He walked beside us. He delivered us. He made Mia healthy and strong. He kept Lanie happy through all the changes. He pulled Tess and me out of all the uncertainty. God brought us home together. He enabled us to find rest. He caused us to heal bit by bit.

I've told this story before. All those pieces are probably scattered throughout different earlier posts. But I think it's important that I tell it again. In the Bible God instructed His people again and again to remember what He had done for them. He urged and even commanded them to tell the stories of His faithfulness and all His wonderful deeds, to teach those stories to their children. When Christians gather for worship, this active remembering is a key part of what we do. We retell our story with God through Bible readings and prayers and liturgical forms and testimonies. We cannot forget all that God has done for us. And we need to celebrate, too. So often life is hard and messy. But God is good, and He makes life good. He takes care of us, and He gives us hope. Celebration reminds us that God is here, that Jesus has triumphed, that we truly are blessed. Celebration helps us to enjoy what God has done for us and what God has given us. Every moment I sit with my two girls on my lap is a gift. Every time the four of us sit down to eat together is a gift. Every night we all go to bed in the same house is a gift. We longed for these things, and God gave them to us. So yesterday we remembered, and yesterday we celebrated. There is no one like our God.

Grace and peace,

BMH