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JOY IS CALLING!

Mary Kay Ash, Pink Balloons & the God Who Invented the Party

Nobody can throw a party like our Father, God.

He invented music before we ever wrote a song, flowers before we arranged a centerpiece, flavor before we planned a menu, and laughter before the first person entertained. 

He loves to party so much that He actually put celebrations on the calendar.  “And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast...” says Deuteronomy 16:14,

This past week was Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles,

For seven days, God invited His people to gather beneath booths decorated with branches and colorful fruit, share the harvest, eat, remember His faithfulness through the wilderness and rejoice. His invitation reached the young, the servant, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow. That has always been the heart of our Father. He wants His family gathered around His table. He calls the outsider closer, remembers the forgotten and makes room for everyone willing to accept His Son’s invitation to become part of His family. Thousands of years later, the decorations may have changed, but the heart of the Host has not.

God told His people to celebrate while they were still pilgrims.

Maybe that is why one of the oldest tricks in the Book is convincing us that God is the One keeping us from the fun. It started in Eden, when the serpent suggested that God was withholding something good. Yet Scripture keeps telling another story. Jesus performed His first miracle at a wedding. The father of the prodigal said, “Let us eat, and be merry.” And at the grand finale of the believer's journey , we are headed  toward the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The God supposedly keeping us from the party is the One who keeps sending the invitations.

And sometimes that invitation comes through a voice reminding us that joy is still calling. That brings us to today's pilgrim who knew a thing or two about throwing a party: Mary Kay Ash.

Born Mary Kathlyn Wagner in Texas in 1918, she was still a little girl when her father became disabled by tuberculosis and her mother began working 14-hour days managing a restaurant. When Mary Kay didn’t know how to cook a meal or handle the responsibilities waiting at home, she picked up the telephone and called her mother. From the other end came the words she heard again and again:

“You can do it, Mary Kay.”

She learned early that a few words spoken at the right moment could change what someone believed they were capable of.  Then, at  twelve years old, Mary Kay said she met Christ “in a very personal way,” beginning a lifelong walk with the One who would keep calling her toward joy.

Years later, Mary Kay would need those words again. She married young, became a mother of three, and then watched her marriage fall apart. Suddenly a single mother, she built a career in direct sales and became serious about setting goals, reportedly writing them in soap on her bathroom mirror. At a Stanley Home Products convention, she watched the company's "Queen of Sales" receive a beautiful alligator handbag and decided she would earn one too. She became the top salesperson the following year, only to discover that the handbag she had worked so hard for had been replaced with a 

fisherman’s underwater flashlight.

She had reached the goal, but the celebration at the finish line felt nothing like the one that had inspired her to get there.Still, Mary Kay kept going, until a man she had personally trained was promoted above her and paid

twice her salary.

That was the last straw. At 45, Mary Kay resigned and planned to write a book about what she had experienced: companies knew how to set sales goals, but too often failed to recognize people, reward them well, or give talented women the same opportunities to lead. What began as notes for a book became a plan for the kind of company she believed women deserved, one where achievement would be noticed, encouragement would be spoken out loud, and women could succeed without putting their families last.

God first, family second, career third, with the Golden Rule at its heart. 

Joy was calling. This time, Mary Kay answered.

In 1963, Beauty by Mary Kay was born in Dallas, Texas, with $5,000 and the support of a few family members. She chose pink as the company’s signature color, and before long Mary Kay was making the stark white bathrooms of 1960s America a little more pink. But she was building something more than a cosmetics company. Mary Kay often imagined that every person she met wore an invisible sign that read,

 “MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT.”

Before there were pink Cadillacs, there were pink balloons. One year later, at the first company Seminar, she turned their warehouse into a party herself. Pink balloons and pink crepe paper hung overhead as she helped prepare dinner for about 200 people, changed clothes to emcee the evening, celebrated their accomplishments, and helped clean up afterward. 

A few years later, those celebrations got wheels, and eventually General Motors created an exclusive shade called Mary Kay Pink Pearl.

Mary Kay wanted women to have opportunities she had once been denied, but lifting women up did not require pushing men down. Men and women are both made in the image of God, and there is room for both at His table. Joy doesn’t need somebody else to lose. Her concern for people eventually reached far beyond cosmetics. Some things even pink cannot paint over or make prettier. The foundation bearing her name has invested more than $100 million toward cancer research and helping those affected by domestic violence. Biblical joy does not ask us to call darkness light. Cancer, abuse, jealousy and discouragement can steal joy, and there are spiritual strongholds that would love nothing more than to shut down the celebration altogether.

And sometimes it is closer to home. Women do not always support other women. There will be people who think you are too pink for their taste, your perfume is too strong, your dream is too big or your joy is too loud. Love them anyway, but do not let their discomfort decide who God created you to be. Mary Kay certainly didn’t. She stayed unapologetically pink, and made room for other people to shine beside her.

So this season, as we gather around our own tables here in Beulah and arrange the centerpieces, remember the red rose of Christ’s sacrificial love, the pink ribbon for those facing and surviving cancer this month, and the purple lotus flower for those who have survived abuse or are still living in it, especially when the holidays can come with so much stolen joy. Remember Mary Kay’s invisible sign: “MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT.” Look around your table for the person wearing it. Pull out a chair. Encourage them.and celebrate them.

Whether you are in the wilderness or the warehouse, throw the party.

The little girl who once heard her mother’s voice through the telephone say, “You can do it, Mary Kay,” grew into a woman who learned to recognize the voice of her heavenly Father, her closest friend and the One she would even call her business partner:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Joy is calling. Pick up.

Until next Tuesday, may your blessings be double and your burdens be light...pink, preferably. 🩷🎈🩷

Michelle Driscoll