Celebrating Milestones, Graduations, and Accomplishments with the Focus on Yehovah

Recently on Facebook, someone asked about celebrating milestone birthdays and achievements.  Over the years our family has changed our views on these types of celebrations, so I thought I would blog a bit about that change and where we are now.  In this post, I am going to focus on graduation from high school.

When we got married, Jeremy’s mom, who is an amazing party planner and gift giver, always made those special days in our lives seem so wonderful.  Growing up, it was not as big a deal at my own home, and honestly, I am just not that big on “celebrating myself.”  But, I knew that when Jeremy’s mom gives a party or present, she thought about it and the person she is giving it to,  a lot.  It meant a lot, and I realized I wanted to work harder at making those people I loved feel that kind of special love.  But this has been an evolving process.  As we began to have children we thought we would make certain birthdays special, like, 5, 10, and 15.  That is exactly what we did for several years and our oldest two children had coming of age celebrations at age 15.  You can read more about that in this post.

But as our family continued to grow in size and in our faith, we realized we wanted to prepare our children in a different way for their life in Messiah.  Our homeschooling focus took a more Biblical foundation, and we stepped back from holiday celebrations.  As we were making these changes we decided to make sure that all celebrations in our lives focused not on man’s ideas, but on Yehovah God and His Work in our lives.  Our children’s high school graduation requirements took on a new look as well.  Lydia was the first student to achieve all the new graduation requirements, so we decided to celebrate what she learned through her high school career, and how Yehovah prepared her for the next season of life.  She was the first child to have a graduation ceremony.

(The three students that graduated before Lydia did give a public speech for graduation, but we did not do a ceremony like we did for Lydia.)

When Lydia had completed all her academic requirements for graduation.  We invited about 200 people to a dinner and ceremony.  We served a catered meal, and various special guests spoke over Lydia.  Lydia gave a speech, sang some of her original music, and read from her Hebrew Bible.  She also presented roses to people whom she felt had played a major role in her development in Messiah up to that point in her life.  Her dad and I presented her with special gifts.  We rented a church fellowship hall for the party.  My mother in law decorated the hall in Lydia’s graduation colors of choice.  We had a fancy cake, and gifts were given to Lydia.

Last year, Brenden and Rebekah graduated.  They are not as outgoing as  Lydia, so did not want to have as big of a guest list at their ceremony.  So, we held a smaller ceremony for them to give their required graduation speeches, and for us to speak blessings over them.  We had singing and prayers.  Then following the ceremony we held an open house for others to come and bless them.  We served punch, cake, and a meal for the open house.

The goal is always to bring glory to Yehovah for what He has done in our lives.  So, the theme of the graduation is centered on that.  We display some of their school work and any certificates they received during their schooling.

This graduation party is one of the ways we choose to celebrate what Yehovah has done in our children’s lives.

Video of Brenden and Bekah’s ceremony

And a recording of Lydia’s speech.

Written by Katie