Summer Goals {CELEBRATE This Week: 196}

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 summer I've decided to be completely inspired by Lin Yutang and his words:

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

This is a counter-cultural decision. The world tells us if we're busy, we're living right. 

I don't want to be busy.

I'm discovering it's a battle to find useless afternoons to spend in perfectly useless manners. I'm learning to fight the good fight. 

On Tuesday we were driving home from Steph's softball game and I saw The Sandlot advertised as the Retro Reel for the drive-in movie. My first thought was, It would be fun to get a group of friends to go together. 

Immediately I thought of all the reasons it wouldn't work. I thought of the hassle of arranging schedules. I thought of the risk of melt downs and ungrateful attitudes. I thought of the inevitable embarrassment of rude words and unkind actions that are guaranteed when we are around other families. I thought of the battle that always comes with a late bedtime. 

I thought of the space between what I used to dream for our family and what the reality is for turning darkness to light for kids who come from hard places.

Then I thought about Sam and his buddies. "The Guys" is a fluid group of fun loving kids. They're rare in their joy and their uncanny ability to include rather than exclude others. 

I decided to fight back and find a perfectly useless way to spend an evening. I figured since "The Guys" are awesome, they probably have cool parental units. I sent a text out to 7 moms telling them about the drive-in movie. Anyone in? I asked.

We all have to learn to fight busy.

We ended up with 6 carloads heading to the drive-in to spend an evening in a perfectly useless manner. There was a ragtag game of football and frisbee and kickball. We shared watermelon and Twizzlers and popcorn.

Little did I know we were living out the lessons from The Sandlot, a movie all about the power of perfectly useless afternoons spent in perfectly useless manners. This is where real living happens. 

Just like in the movie the themes of learning to live run deep. Good things happen when you are brave enough invite a new kid to play. You almost always have to leave your house to make friends. Rarely are things what they seem. And don't overthink it -- just keep trying. 

This summer I'm determined to spend more perfectly useless afternoons (or days or nights) in perfectly useless manners. In the end, I think all of the perfectly useless choices of how to spend the summer will turn out to be the wisest investment any of us could make.

Happy summer! I hope you, too, will choose to spend some perfectly useless afternoons in a perfectly useless manner. Here's to living life to the fullest! Share your celebrations below. 

My newest book is getting closer to publication. Check out this free eBook I put together that highlights 7 Leaps of Faith (and 35 Moves to Make) to use with hard-to-reach writers.

We made it! {CELEBRATE This Week: 194}

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.

*******

We made it. The 2016-2017 school year is officially closed.

You may have heard my sigh of relief. 

The relief I feel from making it to the end of the school year is abnormal. 

Perhaps it's because it was an abnormally difficult school year.

I'm not sure how to sort it all out. 

I return to celebration.

This I celebrate:

1. We are together.
2. We have a summer full of special things.
3. I'm still writing.
4. There's still laughter.

This summer will be one of rejuvenating and anchoring myself. I am slowing down. I will scrapbook. I will write a flash draft of a book about faith. I will write stories from the classroom. I will take more walks. 

I will laugh.

It is laughter that makes it possible to overcome the hard of life. It is laughter that is my gauge of celebration. This summer I will laugh.

[My apologies for the late linkup post. It seems we made it to the end of the school year and then I caught a bug that landed me in bed from 9:30 pm on Friday night until 6:00 am on Sunday morning. Still, I celebrate the good of starting summer.]

on mission

Recently someone said to me:

Ruth, you need to figure out what you want to do with your career.

It was matter-of-fact, and the directive gave me pause. I couldn't decide if it was a statement of encouragement or admonishment.  Either way, these words tumbled through my brain and clunked around my heart.

Truth be told, they're still punching my guts.

Figure out what you want...

Fundamentally, I'm not sure it's something I believe is mine to do. Maybe it's not up to me to figure out what I want. Maybe what's mine to do is to show up where I'm positioned and give all I have to offer.

If I keep trying to get things right, then I miss the living right in front of me. Perfectionism comes at a high cost. It's why I decided to become a recovering perfectionist.

To become a recovering perfectionist, there are things one must pretend to know. For example, one might pretend to know how to relax. One might pretend to know how to let things go. One might pretend to know that things will be okay if not on time.

Lately, I've not had to pretend quite so much, because I've been learning to be okay with living my mission.

Years ago I gave it a name...

Honestly, I didn't really know what it meant, but I sure liked the sound of it. Sometimes the sound of things is enough for my writer soul to pursue it. I started tugging on the idea, seeing if I could unravel the meaning of Mission Story. I delivered a keynote based on the idea and have tagged 177 blog posts.

Often I unravel meaning by weaving words.

I don't need to figure out what I'm going to do with my career, because I've already determined how I'm going to live my life.

 I'm living Mission Story.

It's not streamlined; Story is organic. It is alive, constantly changing and adapting. It is unwritten. It's unfolding moments making days unfurling into months and seasons and years.

It doesn't go how it's suppose to go; Story is unpredictable. It's intertwined with others and together we move forward.

Because I trust Story, I don't need to figure out what I want to do. Instead, I collect and curate and connect the stories entrusted to me.

The important thing is I don't give up. As I hold firm to Mission Story, I see things more clearly. The ordinary, nearly insignificant moments that pile together to make a day are my most valued treasures.

 I'm living Mission Story.

I believe in this wild and precious Story I'm living, and I know it is worthy. So no matter how blurry the world looks or how busy I think things are or how counterintuitive my decisions seem, it all comes down to one mission --

Mission Story.

I find significance in story. I find magic in moments posing as meaningless. I seek these bits and write them down. This is my mission -- to find significance in story and inspire others to do the same.

It's not the sort of mission that marches with dominance across the top of a resume. It's not really a mission to support a career.

It's a good thing I don't really want a career.
I want to live a good story.
And inspire others to do the same.

Summer Plans: CELEBRATE This Week {193}

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.

*******

Summer is coming and I'm reminded of a long-forgotten favorite quote.

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

[Lin Yutang]

This is going to be my short-term goal. 

Useless afternoons.

Useless manners.

Because, in the end, spending useless afternoons in perfectly useless manners, is what matters most.

Let me know some of your favorite ways to spend a useless afternoon.

*****

Taking Time {CELEBRATE This Week: 165}

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'm celebrating taking time. Life can be a rat race. We can get all caught up in the things that must-be-done. We can run ourselves ragged trying to keep up. We can crush our spirits under the weight of things that we didn't have time to do.

I'm learning how to slow down. This seems a little ridiculous to me, but it is the truth. Somewhere between savoring the moments and documenting the celebrations, I became hurry-scurry and controlling.

I'm learning to make time is a lie. We cannot make time. We've been given 24 hours each day. We have been created to sleep and eat and rest and play and work and love during each 24 hour cycle. Neither of these designs are a mistake. 

The human mistake is believing things like rest and play and sleep and love are not essential. These things are just as important (or perhaps even more important) than work and cleaning and appointments.

I'm thieving. I'm stealing. I'm swiping. And I'm celebrating!

We went for walks and lingered on the abandoned bridge. We tossed sticks into the creek. We jumped in leaves. We carved pumpkins. We watched a movie and snuggled on the couch. I went to bed early. I cooked from scratch and chopped broccoli.  We played Uno after dinner. We sat and talked with one another and with friends who dropped by for unexpected visits. I went with a friend to a doctor's appointment. I talked to another friend on the phone for over 40 minutes, processing some news. I made apple crisp. We kept up with the laundry and the dishes, making them times to talk instead of tasks to rush. I drank a cup of tea (and another) at my parent's kitchen table. I wrote two old-fashioned letters and dropped them in the mail. 

I will never be able to make time.
I will always be able to take time.
I think this is a mighty act of love.
Here's to being a time thief. I hope you will join me and together we can be a band of bandits -- bravely taking time and celebrating.

Share your celebrations!

katharsis: cleansing {CELEBRATE This Week: 164}

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 week I stood on the edge of my parents' woods. I was alone, and the world was big around me. The leaves tumbled from the tip top of tall, thin trees. The wind swayed. The trees creaked. The air chilled, and the sky churned grey. I closed my eyes and breathed deep the smell of fall in Indiana.

There is something cathartic for me about everything falling down, chilling out, and laying to rest. The root of cathartic is the Greek word, katharsis. It means cleansing. 

Things fall down, chill out, and lay to rest and I feel cleansed. Amen.

I like living in Indiana because we have four distinct seasons. I'm reminded that a season never remains. This is true in life too. My life seasons never remain because we are constantly running the race before me. 

Fall is always a welcomed relief. The whole big world commands me to fall down, chill out, and rest.  I'm obliging the season. It seems I need a bit of practice when it comes to relaxing. 

In 2015 I lived unhurried.

In 2016 I've been living treasure.

It seems I've gotten a little mixed-up. In an effort to treasure every glimmer of life, I've forgotten that the true treasure is unhurried moments of allowing life to unfold.

As this season of falling down shifts into a season of gratitude rolled into advent, I will treasure unhurried moments. The heart of this mindset is knowing that I am not in control. My job is to simply believe in the goodness of God.

Share your celebrations below!

Hello Summer! {CELEBRATE This Week: 142}

 

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.

*****

Hello Summer,

It's so nice to see you again --  we've already jumped in with both feet!

We've been to the skate park and the library. We grabbed lunch at the school and walked through the park. We've planted flowers, went for a run, and swam in the neighbor's pool. We mowed yard, did a little laundry, and watched the world go by from the front porch. We cooked dinner together, lingered at the table, and had a family movie night.

I love you, Summer! I have high expectations.

• Finish writing a book (!)
• Choice Literacy Writing Retreat
• Professional learning at All-Write Summer Institute and the Diane Sweeney conference and the PBL conference
• Teacher Book Club reading, plus that stack of professional books that are calling my name

• Email Pals weekly notes and something new I'm cooking up to help teachers with conferring.
• The GIVEAWAY that is ending soon
• Switching my blog to a new platform (Yikes!)

• Running a 5K with the kids
• Trying new recipes
• Pies are waiting to be made and cookie perfection to be claimed
• Canning spaghetti sauce
• Freezing blueberries
• Keeping the pots of flowers alive

• Holding on to every single moment with the kids
• Adding to their school albums and collecting more memories for our scrapbooks
• Claiming adventure
• Reading books
• Visiting people
• Exploring places

• Family Genius Hour (Sam insists)
• Selecting topics
• Dipping into research
• Dreaming up my own project, too

• A visit from Karianne (our 2011-2012 exchange student) and her mom
• Welcoming Martha, our 2016-2017 exchange student

• Kings Island
• Tennessee
• Church camp
• Boy Scout camp
• Football camp
• Band camp

Summer, I celebrate you, not just for all that you hold, but for the way you hold me. I slow down, linger with my coffee, scribble in my notebook, and watch the world go by. Thank you, Summer, for letting me live this one precious life as fully as possible.

****

An InLinkz Link-up

The Best is Celebration: CELEBRATE This Week {102}

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 love having a teenage daughter. My favorite season of parenthood yet. This girl is so much fun.

These words on Instagram, posted by one of my favorite writers and speakers, could have been my undoing. 

I could have thought, rather sarcastically, That must be nice for you.

I could have thought, rather practically, Just wait a week or a day or an hour.

I could have thought, rather callously, Maybe it's because your daughter hasn't looked trauma in its ugly eyes and is fighting to wholly heal.

The truth about things that could be our undoing is they don't have to be.

I will not allow a post or update or pretty picture to make me feel inferior.

I will not give space for self-pity to take root because of comparison.

I will not succumb to thinking anything less than the best of people.

I reread the caption, My favorite season of parenthood yet, and I was reminded of a young momma who was completely captivated by her blue-eyed toddler. I was younger then, before I was scraped by the ugly of the world, and I was enamored by how quickly my little boy changed. I missed the late night bottles in the wooden rocking chair, but I loved that he danced in the kitchen while I cooked dinner. I missed pureeing the baby food, but I loved that he took the last sip of my tea each morning.

I realized parenting was always going to be about missing something and loving something new. The seasons change. I decided then, as a young momma -- before I knew the way trauma changes a child and before I knew I had two daughters and another son out there facing the ugly this world offers, waiting to someday let me be their momma too -- I decided I would always allow my favorite season of parenthood to be the current season.

The Instagram post stung not because I'm an inferior momma, but  because it revealed that I'm not keeping up my end of the deal. I'm not letting right now be my favorite season of parenthood.

Today I claim the territory of being a momma to a brand new fourteen year old (happy birthday, Hannah!) as my favorite time to be Hannah's momma. Today I celebrate a few of the things I love about having a teenage daughter.

• She paints her nails and talks to me about nothing and everything while she does it.
• She helps clean the house, and it is usually better than what I do myself.
• She laughs at my quirky jokes.
• She does her own homework and helps her siblings with their homework.
• She stays up a little too late reading.
• She still snuggles on the couch under a quilt during a movie.
• She likes to share clothes with me.
• She asks me to pray for her.
• She reads scripture and likes to talk about it.
• She's curious.
• She's grateful for family.
• She loves me back. 

I was too close to missing this updated perspective because I almost let something I saw on social media be my undoing. In a world that demands people to jockey for attention, I will pause before reacting

And in this pause, I will sort through thoughts and feelings and perceptions until I find the best in others and the best in myself.

This is celebration.

Thanks for joining the celebration. Link up below and then invite a friend to join too.

Vintage Slice 1

March 1, 2011

Hello March. I’ve been waiting for you. My soul feels you.

Last summer I longed for a change in season. Summer wasn’t in my heart, but it held on and kept coming back and back and back. I couldn’t escape the summer memories, memories reminding me that sometimes life is just plain hard.  Winter was welcomed. The snow soothed my soul. The grey days hugged me.

And now here you are, softening the earth, sunshining the sky, transforming me. Thank you March for knocking on my window and offering a new beginning.

Vintage Slice