It's Really Real! {CELEBRATE This Week: 181}

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 launched my first course from the Discover. Play. Build. PD School. Less than 12 hours later and 68 people have enrolled!  I can't wait to hear your stories. Will you share them with me? Leave a comment and let me know how conferring with student writers impacts YOU. There are a ton of ways it impacts children, but I'd love to hear the ways it impacts you.

I'll go first.

Conferring changes me because I hear children's stories. I realize there is so much more to a child than learning the academics. When they share their stories or interests, I remember the reasons I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to make the world better one child at a time. It starts with knowing their stories. From there, I help them tell their stories better. I teach them to use their voices to change the world. And in some small way, it makes me know stories matter. Every story matters.

Thanks for celebrating with me. I can't wait to hear your celebrations about how conferring impacts you.

Dreaming Big {CELEBRATE This Week: 179}

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.

***

Oh boy!
Have you ever had news that feels so big that you're a little nervous to say it out loud?
I think this is a sign of a dream coming true.

It only makes since that I whisper the news to you, this sweet community of people who celebrate.

It's been a big dream of mine to offer online course for teachers to help make teaching writers manageable. I've been dreaming this dream for awhile. Sometimes dreams feel more like wishes. Sometimes dreams feel impossible.

And every now and then dreams come close to coming true.

Lean in, my friends. I'm not sure I can say it above a whisper yet.

I'm getting ready to launch my first online course from Discover. Play. Build. 

The heart of writing workshop is conferring. Not surprisingly, the hardest part of writing workshop is conferring. If we want to make teaching writers more manageable, then we tackle conferring.

I've walked alongside hundreds of teachers who have learned and refined the art of conferring with writers. Strengthening conferring skills transforms writing instruction from vague ideas to clear teaching points and precise differentiation.

The fastest way to make this transformation is to learn to keep solid conferring notes. Conferring notes expedite the process because they hold us accountable to lifting the level of conferences, and they support more growth in students as writers.

Soon I plan to open a free 3 session mini-course to give a taste of the bigger course, Conferring Notes 101. It's been super fun to put together. For the free mini-course videos, I'm wearing some of my favorite writer shirts and sharing the best content from the course. I want it to have the feel and mindset of Saturday morning. No hurries and time to reflect. (We can ignore Andy who says if I really want to look like a writer, I'd be in yoga pants, a worn sweatshirt, a ball cap and wrapped in a quilt. That Andy -- he *thinks* he's funny.)

You might want to pick up my free training, 3 Secrets to Powerful Conferences, by filling out the form below. (This is different than Conferring Notes 101.) It's a good taste for how the sessions will go. Plus, we'll be Email Pals (if we aren't already), and you'll be among the first to know when the mini-course goes live!

Thanks for showing up each week and celebrating. It's nice to know that no matter the week, we can find reasons to celebrate.

Mantra: Why I Write

I write...

To turn darkness to light. Stories have the power to bring light to the shadows of the world. I write to shine light into the darkness.

To choose celebration over the grit of life. Life is chaotic, and there is always a cause for an alarm. I write in order to pause and shift perspective from stress to joy. This pause allows the words to mold everyday life into a celebration.

To discover genuine stories. Life swirls and the wisps are almost impossible to grasp -- unless I put words to the page. I write to find the genuine stories -- the real and raw moments of life that will slip through my grip and I lose a piece of the beauty life is meant to bring.


To document a radical faith.  As the world pulls and demands, I write to defend and remember the One who is bigger than me. I write to build bits of this and that into a story that reflects Truth.

To play with words. I write because it's fun to play with words, to make them wobble and steady by stacking them on the page.

Mostly, though, I write to inspire others to celebrate their stories, even in the midst of the muddle. Sharing stories is the best way I know to make the world a better place. We soften and learn and rise up because we share stories. We defend and encourage and love more because we share stories. I write so others will want to share their stories. I write so others will live a stronger story. I write because story changes me and him and her and you...and together, we will make the world a better place.

*****

This post is part of a 7-Day Intentional Blogging Challenge hosted by Jeff Goins. For more information and to see what others are writing, check out the invitation and Facebook page. 

*****

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CELEBRATE This Week LXXXI (81)

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 turned my Instagram account public. I've been using it to collect & document celebrations. I love it. Please follow me there: @ruth_ayres to find celebrations throughout the week.

***** 

Someone sent me a thank you note. The old-fashioned kind, where it's blank inside and you use your own handwriting to fill it up.  I didn't do anything to deserve this thank you. I didn't take a meal or give a gift or help with a project. The return address wasn't from a close friend or family member. 

The thank you was simple, but loud to my soul. I've had the privilege to invite the whole town to be part of a bible study. In the process, it's becoming a network for women of faith in our community.

It was a natural step, but one that felt risky. It was a step waaaaaay out of my comfort zone. It's been a step where I've battled the the voices in my head that tell me I'm ridiculous.

Recently, I've been wondering if maybe all this working-up of my soul, stepping into new writing territories and chasing down a dream I never expected, but makes a lot of sense, is totally smoke and mirrors.

At the same time, I've been flooded and nourished by messages and scripture and teachings to never give up. 

Never

Never

Never

Never

Never

Give Up.

I thought maybe I was just making it all up -- these steps I keep taking are maybe on the wrong path. Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe I shouldn't be writing. Or studying. Or teaching.

I look down at that handwritten thank you note and I realize it's more than an off-handed note. It's sustenance. It's evidence. It's the grit that I need.

I will stay the course. Dreams are only accomplished when we don't let go when things get a little rocky. 

I celebrate staying strong, even when it feels like it doesn't matter.

*****

We have been celebrating for 81 weeks. I. Love. This. 81 times we've been coming together to find the joy in the midst of life. 81 times we've dug to find magic in the muddle. 81 times we chose to celebrate rather than wallow. 81 is significant enough to change a life. 

It has changed mine. Thank you for investing in this corner of cyberspace. It comes as no small thing that you chose to celebrate here.

Share below!

CELEBRATE This Week: XLVI

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.

***** 

Happy holiday weekend!

 I love questions. I ask a lot of questions, and have learned over the years this can be unsettling to people. But once you know me, you know I'm not trying to intimidate, I just think in questions.

This week I'm celebrating some of the questions rolling around my brain.

1. Beyond notebook decorating day, how do writers take ownership of their notebooks? Once we open the covers, how do the pages fill up with meaning and purpose for a whole entire classroom of unique and independent writers?
2. How can I help teachers believe in their students?
3. How does organizing cross country pasta dinners and running kids and cleaning and laundry and running kids some more add up to my big dream of being a writer about faith and adoption and parenting?
4. What does it mean to be under the authority of Christ?
5. Should I put just one color of mums in my planters or a variety of colors?
6. How do I love more when I'm exhausted and annoyed?
7. What does it look like when "love does" in my corner of the world?
8. What kind of system will allow me to document my conversations and remind me to follow up with people?
9. What kind of commitment do I want to make to social media?
10. How can Story connect home and school lives? How can I be the fuel for starting these connections.

I'm looking forward to celebrating with you today. Happy Saturday!

CELEBRATE This Week: XLIV

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.

***

This week, I found my footing. It wasn't an easy task and there were some moments days this week when I thought maybe I'd never be sure again.

Life is changing.

There is always a need to learn the new steps in this life dance.

School started.

And on the other end of the drive home there is another whole day waiting. Kids ready to play and Hannah needs picked up from practice and there's homework, not just for kids, but for parents -- who had that idea? Dinner is ready for the oven (thanks to Cooking Day and 34 freezer meals). Youth group and football sign up and go to the phone store because it's time to add another line for the almost 13 year old, are all items on our calendar.

It's 9:00 before I have time to breathe alone. 

And I think maybe I should just give up the pipe dream of writing.

I celebrate this hope.

I celebrate Story, because Story is always more than a pipe dream.  Story is bigger than words on the page. It is living and serving and loving and laughing.

My Story is a resolve, deep in the soul, to not let go of my purpose. The week started by stirring up my inadequacies and attacking my comfort. My heart cracked. Sitting at the other end of the week, I realize my dream wasn't being torn away and wadded up, but rather it was growing. It is bigger than my grasp and at the same time it is built by tiny choices.

That's enough to keep me writing.

That's more than enough for a celebration.

*****

 Share your celebrations below. I can't wait to read school stories, because I'm sure they will be fueling us in the weeks to come!

Dream for Me {21 of 40 Stories}

(Something happening, which I love, is people are sending me songs when they hear one that reminds them of my writing.Here is one.)

Little did I know this year of deciding to LEAP would also be about daring to dream. I'm clinging to this truth about dreams:

God dreams for me.

The Creator of the whole entire world, the universe, and infinite outer space, dreams for me. The One who walks on water, heals the paralyzed, and raises men from the dead, dreams for me. The God who brings water from rocks, splits the Red Sea, and uses boys to defeat giants, dreams for me.

The Bible is filled with  stories of people who follow God's dream. They put down their dreams and pick up God's. Noah builds an ark. Daniel faces the lions. Mary is an unwed mother. Paul goes to prison.

The Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, never stops dreaming. I'm here for this time and place to fulfill a dream.  It's why Jesus said:

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)

Part of living the dream is knowing I have to put down my hopes in order to pick up the dream that is just for me. If I don't pick up the dream God has for me, then I lose my life. In other words, I miss the point of living, and I miss the blessings.

It takes faith to accept a dream from God. (Plus a good dose of humility.) Finding the dream for your life isn't about figuring out what makes you happy. It isn't about finding what you're good at doing. It isn't even about making money.

It's about obedience. Doing what I'm made to do, even when it doesn't make sense. I'm enamored by people who follow their dreams. Often it seems so natural and easy. From the outside it seems like they are living a dream based on happiness and talents and treasures.

In reality, there is risk every step of the way. There are moments upon moments when they choose to do things they are afraid to do. When people dare to follow God's dreams, when they leap, there is always fear. 

The feeling of fear is a sign of living with purpose. It is proof of obedience. It is faith in action.

*********

I've been reading about dreams. Here are two of my favorite books on the topic.

Obedience Leads to Clarity {20 of 40 Stories}

Click here for the backstory.

A bit from my journal...

1 John 5:4: For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.

I know from 2 Peter 1:5-11 that the path to faith is...

Love for Everyone  
which enhances
Brotherly Love  
which enhances
Godliness
which enhances
Patient Endurance
which enhances
Self-Control
which enhances
Knowledge
which enhances
Moral Excellence  
which enhances
FAITH.

If I'm going to have faith, it begins with loving people. This Radical Faith I'm after, it starts with loving more.

1 Corinthians 13:2 -- If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing.

*****

I collected these thoughts in the first few weeks of 2014. Then I wrote this question in my notebook: What am I made to do?

The answer both surprised and comforted me --

{Be a SOUL-Nourisher.}

I love this and am wondering how it would work as a tagline on a business card:

Ruth Ayres, Soul-Nourisher

What does a SOUL-Nourisher do? you may ask. I know the answer because I made a list back in January.

A Soul-Nourisher

Encourages

Inspires

Supports

Challenges

Loves

At the time I closed my notebook and sat for a moment, wishing I could be more Soul-Nourisher and less soul-drainer. I realized this inkling of a dream wasn't so much about what I do, but about being obedient to the One who created souls. This obedience rests on faith, not on a goal or a dream.

I felt completely clueless about what I was supposed to do.Then I realized, I don't have to know where I'm going to know how to be obedient. Obedience is about the state of heart, not about the steps of a journey to get to a dream.

For the past three months I've been in training in order to learn to obey wholeheartedly and immediately. I've learned rapid obedience. I've learned to hold on to my convictions even when it's hard. I've learned to obey when I don't wanna. (I'm sorry for the whine.) It hasn't been easy and it is uncomfortable.

It is also necessary. I need to be the kind of person God can trust. Of course this is going to be a lifetime training as I become the person I was created to be.

But I'm happy to find myself in a place where the obedience has led to clarity. I'm standing where I'm able to see a little bit around the bend in the road. I see how it might be true, I might be able to be more SOUL-Nourisher.

Join me tomorrow for CELEBRATE This Week as I share a new dream.