Traditions Heal {CELEBRATE This Week: 221}

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.

*******

I was listening to a podcast last week discussing the rub between expectations and reality. For most of us, the holiday season is filled with expectations. When reality doesn't align with expectations then we can feel disappointed.

Once again, I'm reminded how we're all bumping around this world together. My Christmas memories are warm and magical. This isn't true for everyone.

Each December, we pull out the decorations and begin to set in motion a season of traditions. At this point, I have little expectation that anything will be smooth. December is a month of meltdowns, lies and angry fits. 

I still have an expectation that it can be something different. Finally, eleven years into this forever family, things are starting to shift. I'm pretty sure it's all because of traditions. We've set in motion different expectations for the season.

1. Decorating Day. Everyone helps, and even though the oldest kids teased about watching Polar Express in the afternoon, they still piled in the living room and drank hot cocoa out of Christmas mugs. Sometimes they sang along with the songs.
2. They decorate Christmas cookies, without any prompting. They share the sprinkles, do their share of the cookies and talk about memories of overdecorated Christmas cookies when they were little.
3. Cracking the code to Christmas presents. Every few years I don't put names on the Christmas presents and they need to crack the code. This seems to bring both annoyance and delight. This year they are sure it's graduation years.

If this holiday season is a tough one, I invite you to consider a tradition. It doesn't need to be fancy, and don't overcomplicate it. Select something that helps you slow down and be present. Maybe a walk at night with a friend to see the lights in your neighborhood. Or something just for you -- a special brew you drink just on December Saturdays. It's okay if you don't have a tradition, start a new one. Don't wait. You are worth it. 

Traditions are a catalyst to healing. And the truth is, we've all been roughed up by the world and could use a bit of healing. I'd love to hear the traditions that are good for your soul.

Gnarled Healing {CELEBRATE This Week: 206}

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.

*******

It's been a week of saying hello to the school year and adjusting our schedules. It's been ten years of learning to adjust from summer to school year with our kids. It's typically a rocky transition. Change isn't easy for kids who spend their early years in hard places. 

This year has been the greatest transition ever. It follows the greatest summer we've experienced since adopting kids from foster care. I am so grateful.

We had family pictures taken by Jami Stichter. She's a former student, making these special pictures even more dear to my heart.

I love them. 

I've been scrolling through the pictures instead of writing this blog post when it occurred to me, this is the moment to celebrate. 

I wish I had the words, but the feelings are too big for my heart, let alone for a text box. You know how you read stories about people overcoming the impossible and it feels so good for your soul? Even when you're in the middle of the book and the story is getting tough, it's still okay because you know it's going to be okay in the end. You read the last words, close the book, and breathe a sigh of relief. You smile and sit still for a few moments, because it feels good to know people are resilient. 

The thing that's impossible to capture in the books is how when the story is unfolding no one knows if resilience is going to win in the end. When you're walking alongside someone on the ugly road of healing, you don't know how close you are to the chapter where everything works out okay. You're not even sure if that chapter will ever be written.

And then someone takes your family pictures and you see the thing you've been hoping for is true.

You see that not only do you believe you're a forever family, but they know it's real too. You see they've stopped faking it and they really believe it. 

Loving kids from hard places is not for the faint-hearted. One day, I'll find the words to describe this gnarled journey, and I'm going to write them in a book. You might read it and when you get to the end it's going to feel so good for your soul.

Right now, though, the celebration is mine. These kids are healing and their stories are going to change the world.

Handwritten Notes {CELEBRATE This Week: 205}

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.

*******

"I have a goal to write 500 handwritten notes each year," the superintendent told me. I smiled, because, really, how else should one respond to a gloriously gaudy goal like this? He continued, "I usually meet it, too."

I smiled bigger. I've been thinking about sending more handwritten notes. I have this terrible habit of writing notes and never sending them. The shaming evidence is currently in my car. I have a stack of 7 notes that have ridden miles over the course of many days just waiting to be dropped in the mail. A baby gift sits on the backseat with a handwritten note on top. I only need to take it to the post office and send it across the globe to Finland. Hopefully I'll do it before the sweet baby girl is too big to wear the outfits. 

"Over the years of writing notes," he said, "I've realized only good comes from it. Good for the receiver and good for me. Don't be afraid of caring too much."

I'd been thinking about it for a few days (the notes still hitchhiking in my car) when I received a piece of airmail. It traveled down the staircase and landed on my computer keyboard. I paused writing and looked up. Blond hair stuck through the banister, telling on Sam.

I opened the envelope.

Mom,I am happy with tennis. It is fun and I am learning a lot. 

I love you! 

YouTube is fun! Thank you for letting me post videos! 

LOVE,Sam

 I looked up the stairwell and a little boy smiled and waved. "Thanks for the card," I said.

"Thanks for being you," he said and blew me a kiss. "Night!"

I looked at the card again and knew it was time to stop thinking about sending handwritten notes and start doing. The card Sam sent me is incredibly ordinary. It took minutes for him to write. It warmed my heart -- for days.

I ordered 100 notecards with the intent to send them all before Thanksgiving. The next step is a stop at the post office to ditch the hitchhiking letters in my car. 

And then I need to let go of the lie that it's over-the-top to send notes. This is simply ridiculous. Gratitude isn't something that can be too much. 

I celebrate a gaudy goal and the ability to make it happen. Maybe you'll join me and send a few handwritten notes of your own. After all, only good will come -- good for the receiver and good for the writer.

Why I Still Celebrate {CELEBRATE This Week: 201}

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.

*******

I've written over 200 celebration posts, which has caused me to ask:

Do I still want to celebrate?

I cringe and look away from the sharp words. Not-thinking about something doesn't make it go away. The question taunts, demanding an answer.

The past twelve months have been grueling. Sometimes I've wondered if I'm a fake digging up something to celebrate each week.

There's nothing fake about my celebrations.

I dredge celebrations because the world is dark. 

Dreadfully dark. 

Disturbingly dark. 

Dismally dark.

The whole wide world is dark. It isn't only in shadowy remote corners, but dark is in our backyards, with kids living in cars and abandoned barns; teens lonely or drunk or hungry; dads in handcuffs and moms strung out. The world is dark.

There's a lot of talk these days about grit -- rugged toughness to get through life. Often I consider gritty celebration. I like the juxtaposition of the terms.

Grit is plowing through the dark.

Celebration is shining a light.

Maybe we wouldn't need so much grit to face the world if we took more time to celebrate.

I still celebrate because, as Kate DiCamillo wisely states, light is precious in a world so dark.

Thank you for Celebrating This Week, whether you've been joining in for hundreds of celebrations or if this week is your first. Together, we will change the world from darkness to light.

The Ed Collab {CELEBRATE This Week: 187}

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.

*******

Today I get to talk about ENTICING HARD-TO-REACH WRITERS as part of the The Ed Collaborative Spring Gathering. All day long, The Ed Collaborative is offering cutting edge sessions free for educators. Check out the agenda here. I am so excited to be a part of the generosity and learning of The Ed Collaborative. 

Thank you, Chris Lehman and The Ed Collab team. You are what is good and right about our profession.

Also, make sure to scroll to the bottom of the agenda page. You will find the adopted charities for the day. As a way to say thank you to The Ed Collab, feel free to donate to one of the day's charities.

I'm looking forward to sharing the way my storylines as a momma, teacher and writer intersect to help kids -- all kids -- write their stories and use their voices to make the world a better place. The information I'm sharing is straight from my heart and straight from the pages of my new book, which is in production now. 

If you want to join me at 1:00 (EST), I'll be sharing how to get past the behaviors of kids who don't want to write and instead meet them in their hearts and help them to know their voices matter.

Share your celebrations below.

****

Spring Break Word Count [CELEBRATE This Week: 186]

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.

*****

This year I've had the special treat to meet with two fifth grade girls who love writing. We meet weekly(ish), talk about working the words, write, and share. They each are working on fiction stories.

They remind me of how simple it is to invest in the lives of others.

I issued a spring break word count challenge. If they can write more words than I do over spring break, then I'll buy them lunch. They bargained to add their words together to beat me. We made plans for writing time and determined the parameters for what words count (notebook writing, story writing, random scenes, articles, and long letters to mail) and what words don't count (text messages, grocery lists, or typing from notebook to Google Docs).

I plan to write 1000 words each day. There will be notebook work, articles, blog posts, and short stories for a new book idea I'm toying with. I also must write acknowledgements and work out the closing thoughts for The Next Book (which is in production). 

Oh! It has a title that is closer to being official -- Enticing Hard-to-Reach Writers.

I'll be writing in the early morning hours, sneaking in mid-afternoon articles, and writing before bed. I think this is a good way to spend Spring Break 2017.

Happy writing!

Cactus Living {CELEBRATE This Week: 185}

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.

*****

Last year, when things turned grey,  my friend, Becca, gave me a miniature gerber daisy in a tiny pink pot. I love daisies. They are my favorite. This one gave me much hope. It kept blooming -- over and over. It promised hope. 

I kept it alive through the summer. Then something, probably a chipmunk, snagged it off my front porch. 

A few weeks ago, Sam and I came across miniature cacti in a store. They were lined up in tiny pots. No two were the same. "We should get one for the window sill and for Becca," he said.

"I was thinking the same thing," I said.

Sam picked out one with a bright pink bloom. "This one is perfect for Becca," he said. I agreed.

We picked a plain one for our kitchen window. I wondered if it would be hardy enough for my house.

I dropped it while carrying it inside. It survives.

I don't know how much to water it. It survives.

Jordan knocked it over with a renegade fork while doing dishes. It survives.

I realized I might be in a season of cacti living. Hard and hardy. Survival and vitality. Prickly and steadfast.

Then I noticed brown spots, and I wondered if maybe it wasn't surviving. I kept an eye on it and the spots became lumps. I wondered if it contracted a disease. The bumps grew, and I thought maybe it was a fungus. 

I figured the cactus would bite the dust at any moment.

Then the lumps grew a little more. I realized they are buds. I think my cactus might be growing blooms.

Isn't this just how life goes? Just when we think we've come to the end, there's a bud and hope that things will soon bloom. And when that happens, I hope it is better than I could even imagine.

Inventor's Brain {CELEBRATE This Week: 183}

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.

*****

Sam hijacked my Instagram feed this week with this photo. Andy and I were cooking dinner in the kitchen and he said, "I'm inspired by all of the wind. All I need is two old belts and five paperclips, and I'll be able to put the idea in my head into the world. "

He took his supplies and went to the basement. (It's his workshop. Every inventor needs a workshop, according to Sam.) It's not very easy to get winged arms up the narrow basement stairs. We heard him before we saw him. 

The first run didn't go so well. "It's a good thing I have my helmet on!" Sam laughed as he hurried back to his workshop.

Sam deemed the second run as successful as possible given that he'd ran out of duck tape. Sometime after dinner he hijacked my Instagram account. The caption read:

This is how I spend my Wednesday evenings: inventing.
Correction: every evening I spend inventing.
I'm trying to "fly." This last run gave me 2 seconds of air time!
If only I had duck tape, I could flyyyyy!
#hijackedbysam

Sam is in 5th grade. He tells us often, "I don't have a school brain. I have an inventor's brain." Sam scores high on standardized tests, he loves to read, he thinks about numbers in unconventional ways. He is a spacey, brainy, witty kid.

School isn't on his favorite list.

Right now he's working on a train layout. He called Papa yesterday and asked for a piece of foam installation board to build a "vertical layout for his trains." He wrote a sticky note reminder and put it on my steering wheel so I wouldn't forget to stop at Papa's house for the styrofoam.

He met me at the door last night. "Did you remember the foam installation board?"

"It's in my car."

Sam and the styrofoam were heading down the basement stairs into the workshop before I put my shoes and school bag away.

Sam comes up the workshop stairs and says, "You might not think a vertical train layout will work, but I think if I figure out the right angle it will."

I nod and keep writing this post.

"I like inventing, Mom. I get to use math in creative ways. I like to make up stories or think of advertising jingles for my inventions. It's not really playing, it's just fun."

I look at him. His eyes are wide. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop inventing so I can get better grades at school."

Sam is sensitive and his eyes get watery. "I don't want to give up my inventor's brain, but I don't know any other way to get better grades at school."

I want to tell him not to worry about grades, but he is concerned about his grades. (His concern is valid.) "Maybe you can work on focusing in school. When you're at school you do school work. When you are at home you invent."

Sam is sincere when he says, "An inventor's brain doesn't work that way, Mom. When I'm at school and we're talking about finding area of triangles, my brain begins to think about my train layout, I think about how I need more tracks, and I could figure out how many new tracks by using parameter instead of area. Then I start wondering how knowing area would help me. That makes me start thinking about painting my layout and then I think about the pond I want to add. I probably need area for that because you need to get the special gel to make it look like water. Only I don't need to know area of a triangle, I need to know the area of an oval. My brain starts thinking about filling the pond with triangles, but that won't really work either. I probably need a different formula."

I nod, unsure of what to say.

Sam continues, "See what I mean? I have to just turn off my inventor's brain." He blinks back tears. "Then all the fun will be gone, but my homework will be done."

I take a deep breath and say, "You know, Sam, it's Saturday. I don't think we need to figure this out right now. Saturdays are a good time to just be who you like to be. Don't worry about being something else."

He worked a little more on his vertical train layout. Then he moved on to a Lego creation. Now he's talking with Andy about fishing. I hear him say, "When I get home from bowling, I'm going to ride my bike over to the river and put in a line."

And I'm left wondering how will his inventor's brain survive school? 

Share your celebrations...

merry christmas! {CELEBRATE This Week: 172}

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.

***

Christmas is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.

--  Dale Evans

This is one of my favorite pictures. It was taken Christmas Day 2009, four years before Jay became part of our forever family.

The girls were home for less than two years. It was becoming evident that adoption isn't always a warm and fuzzy experience. It was a dark time for me. I'm glad I didn't know then that the road to healing was going to be years, maybe even decades. Unfortunately there are many untold stories of adoption. There are too many partial stories -- those that romanticize the healing process.

The truth is, healing from trauma is gnarled and ugly. Facing the hurt and harm, and then choosing to move on can be, in many ways, even more painful than the original trauma. Christmas, though, it always gives me hope. 

It is always, always the best day of the year for our family. We stay home all day long. Everyone maintains self-control. We've yet to have a meltdown, an argument, or a fit on Christmas Day. It is a modern Christmas miracle. 

I am not being dramatic. Every Christmas we are blessed with a miracle of an entire day of FUN. 

It is how Andy and I choose to live. We live FUN. It takes strong and rooted faith to live fun.

Fun is Andy's One Little Word for the third year running. For awhile I thought it was fluff, and he was mocking One Little Word. Now I realize that it takes true strength to keep living fun year after year.

On this holy weekend, I celebrate that Andy and I lead our family in living FUN. We are proof that even in this world where horrific things happen to little kids, we can believe (with a know-so hope) in complete healing. We celebrate the baby in the inn with no room, because He came to offer hope that it is possible to turn darkness into light. 

This is why Andy and I choose live FUN even on the not-so-fun days. On Christmas Day all of our kids choose to live it too. It gives me hope that one day they will learn to live FUN on every day of the year.

Add your celebration here: