Five Minute Friday: View

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We made a rule when we moved into our new home. “No dirt allowed,” we had said, as if proclaiming it would keep all the grunge away and the kids would just instantly know better than to come in dirty.

Yeah.

All winter long we waited for sunshine and when it came through the windows, I noticed the grime. The dog-prints and bug splats and mud splashes, and someone kissed good-bye through the kitchen glass or at least pretended to, smudging their nose and lips and chin right at about 4 feet high.

Greasy, grimy little face prints.

Even the dust. I understand why they’re called “dust-bunnies”, because they just multiply and proliferate before your eyes.

I notice the dust in the sunlight. I watch it escape the dust cloth and settle again to mock me and I see it under the piano and covering the light fixtures, and my view is clouded by it.

Nevermind the sunlight. Look at the dust and dirt.

The sun shines in through dirty glass and shows dirty floors and my broom flies with it, vanity of vanities, trying to chase away the natural stuff of living.

I think heaven must be a dirt-less place, but I’ll have to ponder that one while I chase the bunnies. Maybe a clean life is boring and lifeless, us all made of dirt in the first place.

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Click over here to read a parable to your littles, called Motes in the Sunbeam. This was on my mind while I wrote about dust and dirt and sunlight, and how I miss the blessing sometimes when I only see the mess.

Linking up with Lisa Jo and the Five Minute Friday community.

Friends {Five Minute Friday}

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The best thing about my best friends is that we don’t talk much, and we’re okay with that

That sounds harsh or sarcastic but it’s not, it’s really what I appreciate at this stage in life. I appreciate that we are friends when we have time for coffee or time for praying together or time for a weekend away. And I appreciate that in all those in between times, the months where we don’t talk and lose track of each other’s lives, in those times we are still friends.

It can be months in between. There’s no hurt feelings and no pressure. No pouting or excuse making. Because Moms know this: that friendships change over the years and the ones that are meant to last are the ones that you don’t have to work hard at, the ones that step aside for your family, pray for your family, and pick up wherever they left off.

That’s the beauty of having friends in various seasons of life.

In high school there were unspoken rules about who you could really be friends with. Artificial friendships formed because you were all thrust into the same experiences and forced to endure them together – those aren’t typically enduring or endearing relationships.

But real life? Real friends who pray in the in-betweens and who’ve endured births and deaths and diapers and empty nests along side you – those friends are the real deal. 

Sharing five minutes on the writing prompt Friends (which is a ridiculously inadequate amount of time but I’m trying to follow the rules) and linking up with Lisa-Jo and others for Five Minute Friday.

If you’re still reading, let me just add that one thing I’ve learned over the years is that I don’t have to be just like my friends in order for our friendship to be true and lasting. Comparison kills, and I never loved a friend because they were just like me. Rather, I love them because they are different from me in ways that I can appreciate and grow from.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. ~ Plato

Where All the Broken People Get Fixed

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It’s been on the counter in my laundry room for months because there’s no glue and no way to reattach the broken pieces.

It made it all the way from Kenya and it’s too precious to throw away, so we keep that broken lion figurine in hopes of someday remembering to pick up some super glue.

It wouldn’t be that hard to fix.

And people need brokenness to be fixed.

Everyday of this week leading up to Good Friday there’s been a breaking. It’s been Matthew 18 and Galatians 6 all week and these people, all of us, we’re too precious not to be broken. Too valuable.

Sometimes we’re held together too tightly though and it takes Mighty Blows to break us, but then. Then we have communion.

Community.

A week full of brokenness leads the weak to repentance and the beauty of wholeness, holiness.

I am terribly unjust and incredibly indignant at injustice, all at the same-conflicted-time.

But the Man on the cross was broken for unjust-me, and the veil was torn and now we all see his face, seek His face, and a broken people can be made whole that way.

First the breaking. Then the wholeness.

And I never thought so many good things could come from broken people but wow. Remember Sunday?

and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” – {1Cr 11:24 NKJV}

 

{Sharing this jumbled mix of words with the wonderful community at Lisa Jo’s, where we take five minutes to write whatever comes from the weekly prompt. Today, we write about BROKEN. Click here to read what other’s have to say or to link up your own five minutes.}

On a Failing Memory {Five Minute Friday: Remember}

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A memory can be a struggle to recall or a struggle to relive and those are the things I dislike.

Not that all the memories are bad. Just that there are so many I forget and ones I wish I could.

I want to remember every soft curl and eyelash and sweaty little forehead, nuzzled into my shoulder. I want to hold on to every tiny sock and toe and euphemism and funny word they said, and let go of the decibels that were hot and the crucibles that burned loud.

I don’t think our minds are meant to hold everything.

There is an arc over all my memories, the ones I forget and the ones He holds onto. Grace that covers and fills in gaps, love that unfolds like a curtain.

I remember that there were bad times but always a Protection, because I haven’t forgotten who I was or who He’s always been – always the Hand softening the fall and the Hammer refining the fallen.

I remember that in all my lineage, if my genealogy were written, there was never a perfect soul but only those made perfect by bleeding.

And I’m more attentive now. I see more because of pen and pixel and I record what is grace so I can remember better.

{Remembering today with a group of writers who set the timer for five minutes and go for it. You can join us or read what others have to say on remember over at  Lisa-Jo’s.}

Let God be Awesome {Five Minute Friday: Ordinary}

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When the Bible says that Elijah was a man “with a nature like ours” that means he was ordinary.

Like me and you.

When God chose Gideon out of the smallest tribe, He chose ordinary. He took ordinary and reduced his army, sent the extras home and showed Himself strong on Gideon, on Israel’s, behalf.

Big time. Extraordinary.

Because only God does the miraculous with a little dirt and saliva, with men who will walk crazy-circles around a walled city till it falls, with our small and ordinary lives.

So we wash clothes and pick up socks off the floor, scrub toilets and scrape remnants off the plates, and God sees our ordinary. He sees our day in and day out lives and He sees Gideons and Elijahs and Marys, all humble and lowly in our menial tasks.

And He shows up extra-ordinary.

We’re doing Kingdom work here in the trenches, with laundry and legos and piled under mounds of books and papers. I feel a sinking sometimes in the mundane of everyday, but four people call me mom and I call Jesus for help.

 So I’ll be ordinary and let God be Awesome.

Linking up with a community of writers at Lisa-Jo’s who think it’s fun to try to write for 5 minutes without editing or overthinking. It’s called Five Minute Friday, and today’s writing prompt is ORDINARY.

What Mama Did {Five Minute Friday}

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Lisa-Jo has had guests at her place this week, writing about their moms. Click here to read them all.

Today’s writing prompt, then, is to write our own, “What Mama Did”. In five minutes.

I hesitate.

Because I know what my mama will do. She will cry when she reads it.

GO

And that’s what mama did.

Mom is tenderhearted and her emotions are right there, at the top of her tiny 5’2″ frame. She will apologize and she will pat her chest and try to compose, but what she wants is a hug and not a kleenex.

Mom brought countless hot rags to my bedroom in the middle of the night when the pain of the earache was inescapable, because she didn’t want anyone to hurt alone.

She’d remind me after volleyball daily-doubles that if it hurts, don’t do it.

She has always had clothing for every size and season because she is sentimental and because there might be something there that someone would need. Regardless of the billion times since I was 13 that I refused her style choices, she keeps trying.

Mom would give you her last dime and a loaf of bread, though her own possessions have never been great or glamorous or enough.

She  frets over gifts and worries that they’re not enough. She buys your birthday gift 3 months early and gives it to you too soon because she just loves you and loves to give to you.  And that is enough.

Mom will call you if she hears an ambulance  just to be sure it’s not you, and she’ll text just to say she loves you. Then text again to let you know she’s alright, just missing you.

She’ll tell you to go to the doctor when you’re sick and be sure to get enough rest and maybe you need to take a break.

She’ll cry when you give birth because she knows it hurts and because she couldn’t be happier about another baby to love.

And that’s what mama still does.

She cries because she loves and it hurts, to love so much.

STOP

{Mom – sorry for all the times I’ve made you cry. Like now. I love you!}

Linking up with a community of writers at Lisa-Jo’s who think it’s fun to try to write for 5 minutes without editing or overthinking.