Stop Waiting for Sunday
Why the most important celebrations happen in the middle — not at the finish line
👋 Hey, it’s Leo. Welcome to my weekly newsletter for intentional parents who refuse to drift through life. Featuring real stories, practical tools, and honest encouragement for building a family culture your kids want to replicate. New here? Take the 3-minute Family Rhythm Finder to get personalized family rhythm ideas you can start this week.
Anyone familiar with the Easter story knows it’s easy to skip straight from Friday to Sunday. To completely miss the Saturday in between.
To go straight from the suffering to the triumph. The cross, to the empty tomb. But there was a day in between, when nothing had happened yet, when Jesus’ followers were sitting in grief with no idea how the story was going to end.
Whether you read the Easter story every year or not, there’s something to be learned about the in-between moments. Families can have the tendency to go through life in a way that skips over the in between. We wait for ‘Sunday’. Whatever that means in our life, whether it’s the big moment or the arrival of something long anticipated. But in the anticipation, we rush right past everything happening in the waiting.
I know because I’ve done it before. But I’m trying to change that.
When my daughter was learning to walk, I noticed something about how my wife and I responded to her.
Every time she pulled herself up to standing, gripping the edge of the coffee table, concentrating with her whole self, we cheered and clapped. Every time she let go for a second and found her balance, we cheered. Every time she took one lurching step and sat down hard on the floor, we cheered.
We weren’t waiting for her to walk across the room before we celebrated. We were celebrating everything. The standing. The wobbling. The falling. The getting back up. The shuffle before the tumble.
She wasn’t just being relentlessly pushed toward the finish line. She was being cheered in the middle of the process.
She may not be internalizing much, but what she does learn by our cheering the little things is that what she’s doing right now matters. We see her. Keep going.
At some point, she will take her first steps. And we will celebrate that too, but the process to get to walking matters too. The in between, or the ‘Saturday’ moment, matters.
It’s not the most natural thing to do, my tendency is to wait for the big things and just celebrate those, but I strive to live my life consistently celebrating the small moments. Because without Saturday, there’s no Sunday celebration.
The Easy Thing To Celebrate
Most of us were raised in a celebration culture built around arrival. You finish the sports season, you get a medal. You make the team, and everyone hears about it. You get the grade, and it goes on the fridge.
None of that is wrong. Outcomes matter, and finishing things matters.
But if you think arrival is the only thing worth celebrating in your home, you could accidentally teach your kids something you don’t intend to: that the journey, the standing, the wobbling, the falling, the getting back up, doesn’t count until it produces a result.
That’s a problem. Because most of life is like the Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Most of the growth happens in the unglamorous, unremarkable stretch between starting and arriving. If your kids only learn to value the finish line, they’ll spend most of their lives feeling like they haven’t gotten there yet.
Celebration isn’t just how you reward your kids. It’s how you teach them what matters.
Three Shifts To Change What Your Family Celebrates
1. Celebrate the decision to keep going, not just the outcome.
When your kid chooses the hard thing and tries again after failing, keeps going when they wanted to quit, sign up for something that scares them, that decision deserves to be named out loud.
Something like:
“I noticed you kept going even when it got hard. That’s not easy, but it’s important.”
That’s teaching them to recognize the moment of choosing as significant. That skill will serve them far longer than any grade.
2. Celebrate what you see, not just what got scored.
Grades and results are easy to see because they show up on paper. But the things that actually form your child’s character, like patience, persistence, courage, and generosity those don’t come with a scorecard.
You have to notice them. And then you have to acknowledge them.
It’s witnessing and noticing out loud. Praise says, “Good job.” Witness says, “I saw what you did, and I want you to know it mattered.”
Your kids need to know you’re also watching for the things that don’t get trophies.
3. Let them see you celebrate your own becoming.
When you make progress on something you’re working toward, say something about it at the dinner table. Not to brag, but to model. Let your kids watch you feel good about your own growth. Let them see that adults still try hard things, still struggle, still mark the progress when it happens.
If your kids only ever see you celebrate their wins, they never get a glimpse into the growth process. But if they watch you celebrate your own Saturday moments, the workout finished, the hard conversation you had, the week you showed up when you didn’t want to, they learn that growth never stops.
That’s a lesson no trophy teaches.
One Thing to Try This Weekend
You’re probably going to be with people you love this Easter. There’ll be food and noise and kids running around and a hundred things pulling your attention.
In the middle of all of it, find one ‘Saturday’ moment in your child’s life and name it out loud.
Not an arrival. Not a finished thing. Something they’re in the middle of. Something they’re still figuring out. The friendship they’re trying to navigate. The skill they’ve been working on. The hard thing they haven’t quit yet.
Look at them and say: “I see what you’re doing. I’m proud of you for not stopping.”
That’s it. You just celebrated a ‘Saturday’ moment.
Here’s a question worth sitting with this weekend: What’s something your family is in the middle of right now that deserves to be celebrated even though it isn’t finished?
That’s how you build a family that celebrates becoming, not just arriving.
P.S. — Celebration is one of the four pillars of the Family Alignment System. If you want a rhythm that makes this kind of intentional celebration a regular part of your week, not just a holiday moment, it’s worth a look.
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Love this! And I think I needed this as my family is in their own long season Saturday moment right now. Thank you for sharing this.