A PARTY
The uneasy feeling surprised me.
Thoughts bounced through my head, scrambling to organize into sentences that begged to pour from my lips. Forget that I said I wanted this, don’t go to all the trouble, really I don’t need this, let’s just do something easy.
I would lay awake that night wondering at my emotional response, wrestling with the question that emerged from the shadows of my quieting thoughts. Wrestling with THE question.
Did I believe I was worth it?
With my 50th birthday just around the corner plans had begun for my party, a party that I had requested. I never meant to ask for it, or at least didn’t mean for the secret desire to leave my lips. But sitting around a table with friends almost two years prior, the question about celebrating a decade had come and without thinking I had blurted my response. I want to have a party.
There it was. A little girl’s desire laid out on the table. Perhaps I was the only one who realized the moment of honesty for what it was.
I do not recall having an ‘official’ birthday party since I was sixteen, since a day in November thirty-four years ago when a small group of friends gathered at an ice cream parlor to watch me unearth a car key from my sundae. This is the last ‘party’ that I remember.
To be clear, my big day has always been acknowledged, lovingly so. But as a Thanksgiving baby it always seemed too much to ask for anything other than a family-focused, holiday-centered, side note of an event.
A birthday is just another day after all, as most adults know full well.
But in a moment of unguardedness, in a moment when the conversation was light and unfiltered, a little girl had spoken from my very grown body. I want a party. And in my husband’s true fashion, if a party is what I wanted, a party is what he was going to give me.
If admitting ‘the want’ was brave, holding onto it would prove far more challenging.
Now that party plans were underway I could see the effects of what I had asked for. Reservations were being made, invitations being sent, friends being recruited for help. I could see the time demands it was placing on my husband. I could imagine the time demands it would place on my friends.
People would need to plan and coordinate and attend. And it would all be for me.
And in a flood of emotions I wanted to make it all stop. I wanted to take back that moment at the table when I had so casually admitted my desire. I simply did not want to be a burden.
Or so I thought.
But when I allowed my emotions to run their course, to bounce around my body without condemnation until they had collapsed like a tired toddler, I found a deeper source, a deeper question. I found THE question.
Did I believe I was worth it?
Ah, familiar ‘friend,’ I have seen you before.
The question of our worth is one we are asked frequently, even when we are unaware. Unchecked it is the greatest threat to our identity, the greatest challenge to our strength, the most vicious attack on the little girl that lies within.
Are you worth it? Are you valuable? Valuable to yourself, valuable to others?
I wish I could tell you that after a calm moment of philosophical pondering my answer that night was strong, but it didn’t feel that way. In the midnight quiet of my bedroom my inner voice paled in comparison to the booming question.
Do you dare believe that you are worth it?
Yes, was my barely whispered response.
In the moment I doubt there was much conviction, but it was strength all the same.
The question has come before and I have little doubt it will return again. Our worth and our identity are two of our greatest strengths and it is only items of value that are at risk of being taken. Who we are and the beauty we bring to the world will continually be challenged and will need to be protected. These truths are our treasures - whatever it takes, don’t let yours be stolen.
I am worth it. I am valuable.
You are worth it. You are valuable.