13th Birthday Sword Ceremony

Well, it has been awhile since I have logged on here, and let's just say I've been living life in the fast lane. I have focused all of my time and energy lately into planning my son's coming of age party. Yes, it is official, I am now a mother of a teenager.

So, as you all know, I love throwing a good party, and this one was no different. My husband has actually planned the majority of it. He did an 8 month course of study with my son on learning the way of the warrior. The church did a crash course of it over the summer for the 6th and 7th grade boys, you can read more about it and see the ceremony for it here.

Anyways, with my Japanese Samurai heritage, my husband fashioned the training of a warrior after the Samurai Bushido - which translates into the way of the warrior. There were 8 traits a warrior had to learn: Honesty/ Truth, Heritage, Loyalty, Compassion, Respect, Integrity, Wisdom, and Courage. These traits easily translated into character traits of a godly warrior with Biblical truths. A mentor was assigned to each trait, and given a month to speak that trait into our son. He learned a lot, and by the end of the training, we could see the evidence of each trait retained within our son. Each of these months lead up to this ceremony - His 13th birthday, where he was presented his first of 3 samurai swords: a tonto. In the samurai culture, this was used to perform Seppuku, a ritual suicide. Because honor was so important to the Japanese, if a Samurai did something dishonorable, he would then perform seppuku, because he would rather die than to live with dishonor. We presented our son with this sword, to remind him as a godly man we are to die daily to our old ways, becoming a living sacrifice to our Lord. Romans 12:1 puts it like this: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

And Romans 6:11 says, In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

We are not asking our son to commit Seppuku, but we are using this as a symbol to remind him of this training, and it is only by dying to our old selves, our old ways that we are made alive in Christ. Dead to sin, but alive in Christ Jesus!

So, in preparing the ceremony, I was given a budget of $0, but I did negotiate out of it money to buy gold spray paint, which was the key to making this ceremony elegant. You can see all of the hard work we put into this, and the importance we saw in this for our son. We held the ceremony at Flemings Steak House. The food was magnificent, and the service was amazing!

 

 

The ambiance of the restaurant made the decorating on a budget of $0 with the exception of gold spray paint easy. Fortunately, I had a lot of decor left over from other parties, so it was easy to make the party gorgeous! Can you identify what I used the gold spray paint for?

 

    

 

    

 

   

         

It took me much more gold spray paint than I anticipated to paint all of those hideous green leaves into the magnificent gold masterpieces that they are now. I think I used 6 cans total. I realized quickly, when spray painting leaves, it is much better to go in a circular motion than a back and forth motion, as there are many angles involved with the leaves. My husband teased me as I was spray painting the leaves that I had the "Midas touch." In addition to the leaves, I managed to paint my hands, acorns, and an unfortunate frog that happened to hop by. Didn't you think the room came together magnificently, though?

As guests entered, there was a matted photo of our son with metallic markers to sign the mat. A funny story about the photo in the mat. In preparation for the ceremony, I did a mini photo session with my son, last minute. I took him into one of our spare bedrooms, draped a white table cloth over some chairs, and started shooting pictures of him. I thought they came out pretty good. They look like studio shots.

 

 

We managed to get everything set up early, and had some fun taking pictures while we waited for the guests to arrive.

Here are  pictures of him watching his life flash before his eyes. No really, we had a slide presentation that he watched for a bit before the guests arrived - all on his life =).

 

  

 

 Once the guests arrived, we divulged in some yummy food!

 

Followed by a well put together ceremony. I made a short film of pictures showing the past few months of our son with each mentor, put to the backdrop of Orphan Project's song "See What He Sees." After that, each mentor gave a speech of their time with our son. 

 

 

 

 

 

My friend Wendy, never ceases to amaze me. She once again impressed us with a gorgeous cake!

 

 

 

The ceremony ended with the presentation of the sword.

 

 

My son and his buds!

 

 

As the guests left, they were to pick up a fortune cookie. My son requested personalized fortune cookies, so I handmade over 60 fortune cookies with a fortune thanking the guests for coming to the ceremony. They turned out fabulous, and according to my husband better than the Chinese restaurants. Don't believe him, the waiter had one, and said it was the best fortune cookie he ever had, and according to his wife, who also waited on us, he's a fortune cookie enthusiast. With that said, he compared it with one of the desserts at their restaurant. Pretty amazing, don't you think?

 



 

 

Our beautiful family! We are so proud of our son!