(in)RL Check-In

Welcome to the interactive page for the (in) real life: Check-In Series. This is where we have re-engaged on the topic of community with six months passed since (in)RL Conference 2012 in April, where nearly 2,000 women bravely met up across the world. Connect on this page with other readers, find the five  (in)courage posts on this topic from the series, and enjoy other tools and resources, including FREE downloadable prints!

We’re spending 5 weeks chatting on the sofa over hot tea, cookies, and 5 questions about in real life friendship. Won’t you join us?

1. 09/04 Week 1: “What does community mean to you?”
2. 09/11 Week 2: “How do we stop hiding from and open ourselves up to community?”
3. 09/18 Week 3: “How do we forgive past hurt by community?”
4. 09/25 Week 4: “How do we build local community: some practical ideas.”
5. 10/02 Week 5: “How do we build community right where we are, not letting circumstances limit our connections?”

Find additional posts that explored these topics during the month of September over here.

Excerpt from Ann Voskamp’s post last week, sharing her journey with choosing joy in community:

Sara had laid in a bed, her pain at a 9 on a scale of 1 to ten, and she had sent me words. I sent her sheets and silk pink pajamas and a new keyboard. She had written more words. I had wept over deep barbs. She used vowels and consonants and the balm of the Word to free me. She couldn’t leave her house. She was dying.

But she knew it: You only really breathe inside a Body.

She didn’t let anything cut her off from the oxygen found in His Body.  

That’s what Sara had said: Choose Joy. The universe works this way: you can choose joy like your weather, like your very own sky. Like your very own oxygen.  

I look out the window to the west, to the conflicted October blue laying out over fields and I turn Sara’s ring and the pastor waits in this long gentle patience on the other end of the line and wasn’t that what Sara had wanted to encircle me: You can have every excuse — but let nothing excuse you from joy.

- To continue reading the full story, CLICK HERE.

{Free Downloadables}

For an enjoyable reminder to embrace community, we have five FREE PRINTABLES you can download! Download these FREE 8.5×11 Printables, taken from Postcards from God’s Beach House, now available on dayspring.com! Click on the prints below to download. Hang these on your fridge, decorate your office with them, or even give one as a gift to a friend!

Choose Joy

The Body of Christ

A Promise of Friendship

Things We Try to Hide

Friend At All Times

{The downloadable prints are available through dayspring.com. These are free downloads and your credit card information will not be requested. You’ll receive a link to the Printable in your confirmation email. Easy. Free. And Fun.}

{Weekly Devotional Series}

Throughout the 5 week Check-In Series, we shared a DaySpring Devotional Email on Wednesdays with messages focused on the joys and hurts of community, inspired from our (in)courage writers’ stories, shared on (in)courage and in the (in)RL resources.

CLICK HERE for Week 1: What is Community to You?

CLICK HERE for Week 2: Open Yourself to Community.

CLICK HERE for Week 3: How Do We Forgive Past Hurt?

CLICK HERE for Week 4: How Do We Build Community?

CLICK HERE for Week 5: Choose Joy – Community Beyond Circumstances

{Further Resources}

CLICK HERE to find further encouraging (in)RL tools and resources for your journey in community, and enjoy video previews below of the (in)RL content.

View the trailer of the 2012 (in)RL Keynote, where the writers from (in)courage get real honest, gritty, and vulnerable about their experiences in and out of community:

Deidra speaks to the topic of opening up in friendships:

Excerpt of an inspiring story, where God used a real life online community of women to make the impossible possible:

Watch the 30 minute video below of Sara Frankl’s story – though confined by illness, she never let her circumstances define her:

{Sara – Gitzen Girl – Downloadables}

Choose Joy Printable (PDF)

Legacy Collage (JPG)

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