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.

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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.

Shattered Composure {CELEBRATE This Week: 214}

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 is the moment when I came completely undone. Stephanie sang a beautiful solo, and then took her place on the top riser. Quiet tears slid down my face because sometimes evidence of healing shatters my composure. The stark difference between now and a year ago was more than I could handle. For all those who are tattered and worn, press on.

STEADFAST {CELEBRATE This Week: 207}

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 The Giving Keys. It's a company dedicated to fighting homelessness. They give jobs to people, because a good job is the best way to break the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness. They are a pay it forward company, always looking to make the world a little better through people and their products. 

The first key I bought was for my friend Kim when she retired from education. Kim and I shared a love for kitschy jewelry. We liked things with whimsy and the more offbeat, the better for both of us. Kim was also a realtor. A Giving Key was the perfect gift. I bought her one with INSPIRE imprinted on it because of the inspiration she was to me as a mom, educator and business woman. At the same time I bought myself one with the word LOVE. 

When you get a Giving Key you are encouraged to live your word until you meet someone who needs it more than you do. Then you pay it forward by giving your key to the person who needs it. 

Here's my story of how I gave LOVE away after Kim's funeral.

I gave BELIEVE away last May to Monica, a person who invested in my daughter's life for 9 months. During that time, I was called to BELIEVE healing could happen. Monica was a key person in her healing. I like to think about Monica wearing BELIEVE around her neck and knowing that even though it's hard to bring light to dark places, she is capable of turning the course of lives.

Last week I gave away STEADFAST. If I'm honest, I wasn't planning to give away STEADFAST. It's my word for the year, so I expected to hold on to it. I didn't want to give it away. But when life got hairy and my friend Jasmine needed to cancel our get together, I knew it was time to send STEADFAST out into the world.

I kept wearing STEADFAST around my neck. I like the kitschy-ness of it. I like that it reminds me of Kim and the way she used to shake her key at me when I was wearing mine at the same time. I like the way I pray differently and live out the word when it travels with me all day.

A key gets real heavy around a neck, when you know it's supposed to be passed along and you're holding tight to it instead. I supposed this is true for most things, not just keys.

I saw Jas a few days later. I was beginning to feel like a thief, wearing her key around my neck. It was time to give STEADFAST away. And then I got all embarrassed. 

Why does this happen to me when I'm about to lean into love in a big, bold way? 

I did it anyway, mostly because I don't like the feeling of keeping something that's not mine. Jas knows about The Giving Keys, so there wasn't much explanation needed.

"I'm supposed to give you this. It says STEADFAST," I said passing the key from my neck to Jasmine's palm.

She laughed in her easy way. "God is funny, isn't he?" she said taking the necklace. 

"Wear it until you meet someone who needs it more than you. Then pass it on," I said.

She laughed again. "There's a good chance I'll need this for awhile."

Jasmine is in the middle of fighting the good fight and pressing on through the hard. They just finalized their most recent adoption, creating a forever family of 7.

"What key are you going to get next?" she asked. 

"LET GO," I said. "I'm not sure why, but I know a black LET GO key is definitely the one to order." 

That night, I ordered LET GO and HOPE and BE. Three keys -- I'm going to live them well and then pass them along. Isn't this what life is all about -- living well and making it possible for others to live well, too? 

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.

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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.

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:

A Writing Kind of Weekend {CELEBRATE This Week: 160}

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.

*****

The sky is grey. The rain is tapping. The weekend stretches ahead. I'm in the house alone. 

Tonight.

Tomorrow.

Sunday.

I have a book to finish. 

It is a battle of epic proportions.

I am a gallant warrior.

I wield a brave heart,

a belief in the power of story,

and gritty celebration.

I've honed the skill of whirling words into sentences,

making them line up and

penetrate hearts,

in order to change minds and practices.

This is a book of enticing kids to write...

understanding the kids who need enticing,

setting the stage for kids to be enticed,

and the necessary moves to entice kids to write.

This is a book of embracing Story (yes, Story with a capital S)...

it cracks open the stories of my own children who have hard histories in foster care,

it taps the power of writing to make sense of the world and to give kids' voices power in shaping the world,

and calls educators to action in helping  students to rewrite the way their life stories can go.

It is a privilege and an honor to write this book.

I never understood the term lifework...

until now.

This book is my lifework. It blends my storylines of momma, writer, and teacher into a guide for teachers in the trenches. It corrals brain research, stories, and practical strategies for enticing students to write. The purpose isn't just to teach kids to write. The purpose is so much bigger.

It's about empowering all children (and their teachers) to believe their stories matter. Each life is worthy. This is a book about learning to write (and rewrite) our lives into powerful forces of good.

I can't wait for it to be in your hands.

The problem is each time I begin to get a little traction, things go haywire in our home. Right now is no exception.

I'm going to fight the good fight by writing.

Brains Can Heal {CELEBRATE This Week: 144}

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.

*****

When we adopted Stephanie at age four, she was a spitfire. Steph survived her hard start to life by always being in charge. She determined what she wanted by doing the exact opposite of what anyone wanted her to do. She figured out this was usually the safest option, and she learned how to get her own way.

When we became Steph's forever family, she was attending a preschool for children ages 2, 3, and 4 with anger issues. Sometimes I have to say it again, because the words just don't make sense. Stephanie attended a preschool for young children with anger issues.

If I'm honest, I kind of liked not knowing there are preschools for two-year-old, three-year-old, and four-year-old children with anger issues. Childhood shouldn't be spent in anger. Childhood is for make-believe and laughter.  When you have a history of hard, it is sometimes difficult to make-believe and twirl around the yard pretending you are best friends with unicorns and butterflies.

We're grateful that Stephanie is a spitfire. Her strong will and fiery temper kept the girls safe in those early years.  When kids experience trauma, especially the kind of trauma that lands you in foster care and leads to termination of parental rights, your brain changes. Your emotional control center , the amygdala, enlarges. When the amygdala is enlarged, it leads to extreme emotions. The primary emotion children from hard places feel is fear. There are three reactions to fear: flight, freeze, or fight.

Stephanie is a fighter.

It used to be believed that once a brain was altered from trauma there was nothing that could be done to change it back. The best option was to learn to live with extreme emotions. It turns out this isn't the case!

Recent brain research shows that brains can heal and that amygdalae can shrink back to a normal size. It's not easy, but it's also not complex. The way brains heal is the same way healthy brains are developed in the first place. They are well-nourished and needs are met.

When we meet the needs of a child from a hard place, we begin to heal their brains. It isn't instantaneous, and I know first hand that it isn't easy. Children from hard places can be very difficult to love. Some days it's so difficult that I wonder if it's true that brains can heal.

Then I saw Steph go outside with her music, colored pencils, and intricate coloring book. She slammed the door a little too hard, the only sign of her anger. I watched her while the minutes disappeared, and I remembered the little girl who learned in the therapeutic preschool for kids with anger issues to sing as a way to self-soothe. I watched her lips move along with the song. I watched her color and stare at the sky and smile as a bunny hopped across the yard.  She took deep breaths and colored more. 

I find her remarkable after eight years of learning to love her more. Day after day of ignoring the fight and believing in filling her needs. Offering her hugs instead of what she deserved. Finding grace and mercy in deepest parts of my soul and offering them to her, while the enemy whispered that we enable her and she will never be grateful and she will always be filled with anger.

I step outside, with 12 year old Stephanie. "I'm okay," she says.

Tears brim past by eyelashes. "I know," I say.

She turns back to filling the butterfly wing with turquoise. I snap her picture.

She looks at me. "Why'd you take a picture?"

"Because I want to remember what healing looks like."

She smirks at me and says, "You're so weird."

I laugh a laugh that is too loud, and I hug her. She giggles. "Like, really weird, Mom."

Stephanie is healing as her needs are met again and again. I celebrate this healing.

And there's an even bigger reason to celebrate -- teachers can heal brains too. There are many children who are still in hard places. Their last hope of healing may be in our classrooms. As teachers meet needs, brains heal. As brains heal, the trajectory of a child's life is altered. 

And, I believe, the world becomes a better place.

Here's to celebrating teachers, because we change the world.

[Just FYI, my new book is a lot like this blog post -- only much longer with stories that are told as close to my bones as I can tell them. It is a collection of stories, much like this, and a call to action for teachers to heal brains, help students tell true-er stories and share their messages with the world, by enticing all students to write with practical leaps of faith in writing workshop. (Can just say, it makes me smile to pair the word practical with the phrase leaps of faith!)]

I'm so happy to celebrate with you!

An InLinkz Link-up

Forever Matters + I Need Some Help {CELEBRATE This Week: 132}

 

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.

******

Jordan turned 11 last week! It was the 4th birthday we've celebrated together. We are over halfway to celebrating more birthdays together than without one another. Time together...it makes a difference. I know it's important how we spend our time together, and it's important how much time we spend together. Sometimes I forget all of those moment pile together to make forever. 

Forever matters. Four birthdays seem like forever to our little man. I'm grateful to get to be his momma. Here's his birthday photo, which actually is a perfect capture of who he is right now. 

*****

I'm very excited to be rounding the final bend of creating a FREE ebook for my email pals! I'm looking for 20 people who are willing to read and give feedback on it. If you are interested, please let me know in the comments of this post and I'll send you a PDF of it. I'd like to know your thoughts by April 4. (Just for reference, most of my blog posts are around 500 words and the ebook is 1000 words. It's a speedy read.) You guys! I am overwhelmed by your responses to help me...thank you! There are now 20 readers. I'll be sharing the ebook with my email pals, so if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter yet, then please join below.

The first page of the FREE ebook I'm working on.

 *****

As always, I'm glad you are here to celebrate. Happy Easter!

***** 

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Messy Christmas {CELEBRATE This Week: 113}

I debated whether to link celebrations during these holiday weekends, but I decided we must claim celebrations on the ordinary days and the holidays. I hope you carve out a few moments to document your celebrations. Merry Christmas & next week we'll celebrate Happy New Year!

It's pretty at Christmas time (even without the snow), and I think some of the prettiest decorations are nativity scenes. This season, I've been struck how our portrayal of the Christmas story is a prettied-up version of what happened that night. It was not a picture-perfect holiday card.

Mary was a teen mom who just gave birth in a dank barn. Joseph was clueless about how to be a dad. The cows, they stomped. The dirt, it stirred. Mary and Joseph tried to figure out what to do next. There was stress, little rest, and a big mess.

They didn't try to pretty things up. Rather, they leaned into the mess and chose to believe God to be who He said He would be. For it is written, "And blessed is she who believed in the fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."

Mary didn't need a camera filter to make the moment memorable. She didn't try to control this story line. Mary didn't manipulate, didn't run, didn't pretty things up. When everything was ugly she chose to believe God in the middle of the mess.

It's been a reminder for me this Christmas.

I post this family photo on social media and people like it and comment about our beautiful family. And I wonder if I'm a bit of a fraud. 

This picture was taken in the midst of hard. The parents -- Andy and me -- we were making some tough parenting decisions. And the kids -- they were battling grief and anger and selfishness. They were questioning if family is forever and if they really belong in this family. They were reaching out to birthmothers and grieving birthmothers and trying not to despise birthmothers...all while trying to accept unconditional love from a forever momma who doesn't look one bit like they thought their momma should look. Meanwhile the glue of love was tested with a push and pull that would make concrete crack.

Yet we are a beautiful family -- a beautiful mess of a family. We aren't so different from every family, even the holy family, who started in a dirty stable in the middle of a mess.  If you're looking for a reason to lean into the ugly this season, then let it be this. That baby, Jesus, He came to live next to the mess. He doesn't need things prettied up; He wants an act of radical trust.

In this favorite week leading up to Christmas, I could have given up on the hope that we are a beautiful family. Or I could have believed the lie that it's unfair to be a momma to kids who have experienced the ugliest this world has to offer. Or I could have allowed my joy to be stolen and my peace to perish.

Instead, I stood firmly in my belief that God is good and He works things for the good of those who love him and are working according to his purposes. It isn't always easy to believe in the goodness of God. The middle of the mess makes it easy to believe the ugly of things.

It's a battle I'm willing to fight, because ultimately I know, the messier my story, the more I can give God the glory.

This is my celebration -- I have a messy story that every now and then lives up to the pretty pictures. Today was one of those days. It was the best day ever for our little forever family. The. Best. Day. Ever. I can think of no better day, than the day we celebrate the Savior who saves us from the ugly, to claim as the best day ever.

Merry Christmas!

An InLinkz Link-up

CELEBRATE This Week XCIX (99)

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 marks 99 weeks of claiming celebration.I know I'm supposed to have something special for week 100. I've been thinking about it for awhile. Thinking about how I should do this or should do that or should...should...should.

I've decided, instead, to release myself of should.

I'm counting on the magic of celebration to to move us. There are no bells or whistles or extraordinary giveaways planned for next week. Instead, there remains the standing invitation to pause and celebrate. I hope you'll make time to celebrate next week and to invite a friend.

******

Right now it would be easy to think of all the things I should have done. Instead, I'm claiming celebration by documenting this --

1. Andy and I both slept off colds over the holiday weekend. Only partly awake, I shuffled into the kitchen in the late afternoon. I blinked when I saw them gathered around the kitchen table, playing Monopoly. They smiled at me. "Feeling better?" they asked. "Look, we made our own snacks...You can't play board games without snacks, right?" I rubbed the sleep away from my eyes and smiled. It's a powerful thing to see all those (miserable) hours of sitting around the table (with snacks to entice them) and insisting on fair play transformed into their independence and enjoyment of playing together.
2. Jay asked, "Will you help me figure out what to do with a class? I'm having a hard time and I thought maybe you and Dad can help me figure it out." Wow. 
3. Sam said, "We need a new rule, Mom. You come home right after school and don't leave until after I'm in bed." It's been a rare week when I've been gone every afternoon and evening. I'm grateful for his sweet reminder that spending time together makes a difference.
4. We watched a super fun movie all together on Friday night. I savored every moment of all of us together.
5. I read Sunny Side Up this week. So did Sam and Steph. We plan to talk about it over coffee and hot chocolate on Saturday morning.
6. My friends from high school all sat together around a kitchen table for a visit. It's been 20 years since we've done that.
7. Kate is snoozing at my feet. I'm beginning to get  used to having a constant protector.
8. I get to talk writing every Friday morning with a good friend.
9. Stephanie can run the cross country course without stopping. Her dimples are gorgeous when she smiles and she smiles real knowing she can run the whole time. I love her mental toughness.
10. The weather changed. It was chilly and grey and rainy. I loved it.

Thanks for joining today!