Snow Globe Snow {CELEBRATE This Week: 128}

 

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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It's mid-morning on a Friday and I'm walking in snow globe snow. The flakes are miniature. They float and twirl and spin. It's the same road I've walked for years, but it's transformed. It's more than being out for a walk on a Friday morning. (Thank you, three snow days in a row).

Daily walks keep me feeling my best. It was four days since I last walked and I could tell. Too much book writing and not enough walking make for shoulders that tingle, a hip that pulses, and a neck that aches.

The snow dances and it feels magical. I'm learning to be faithful in the small things. Walk every day. Cook more from scratch. Go to bed at bedtime. Write to my word count. Perhaps this is where the true magic lies. The magic of living well is in faith.

I used to strive for balance until I realized balance is in opposition to change. More than balance, I want to live a life hyped up on perpetual change, constant growth, and continual movement. I can't be balanced and do these things. To balance, one must be still. To balance in yoga poses, I must be still. To balance my coffee cup on the couch while I write, I must be still. Balance, even when on a bicycle, hinges on being still.

Stillness fights change as much as comfort belies growth.

Faith, on the other hand, hinges on living wild and unabashed. It means loving when it doesn't make sense to love more and giving when you don't have more to give and moving forward when you're not sure you have the energy to step. Faith is all about movement.

I've been studying some giants of the faith in scripture this week. I found that many run from God at some point in their lives. Moses. Elijah. David. Jonah. Do you know where they all end up? Every single one of them ends up in the wilderness...well Jonah ends up in the belly of a fish, which I think counts as a wilderness of sorts.

They run and end up in the wilderness. God finds them and insists they return to the thing from which they were running. It seems God gets his way when he commands his people to do something.

So if I'm determined to live this one life in a way that is most pleasing to the One who created me, then it seems that it means living by faith rather than in balance. It's not about stillness, but movement. It's not about comfort, but about change.

And when we move and change and love wildly, things get a little messy. It's nothing a little walk can't soothe -- especially when walking by the magic of faith.

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 Choice Literacy is offering my Back to Writing Workshop Basics again! I put my heart and soul into this course and it is some of the best work I've ever done! A participant described it as a course that  like tightening a favorite pair of sneakers. She was able to think about her writing workshop with intention and gained meaningful ideas for making everything run a little smoother.

When you register you receive the Day By Day book and Two Workshops DVD. If you are not already a member at Choice Literacy or Lead Literacy, you will receive a trial membership to each site. Plus we get to talk talk talk about your classroom and writers throughout the course. For more information, check it out here.

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Are we email friends yet? I've decided to revise my newsletter and use it as a place to offer stories, tips, and inspiration for teaching writers. This content goes out to my my email friends before it's shared anywhere else. Next week, I'm sharing a new assessment I've been using with several classrooms. On most Tuesdays, you can expect strategies for teaching writers, delightful stories, or little updates about my writing life.

Just add your email here and have encouragement for teaching writers delivered right to your inbox!

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