Five Minute Friday: Trust

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This week's prompt is: Trust.
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Trust is a hard one. We're asked to trust in things that we cannot see and we're asked to trust in spite of things that we do see.

Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."

We go to the doctor and trust that he will make us better. We go to work and trust that we'll get paid. We leave the house and trust that we'll make it back. We raise our children in Christian homes and trust that they'll turn out fine and faithful.

It is easy to trust when life is going great. But how do you handle it when the world seems to be falling down around you? We are to trust in Him, in the good and in the bad, that He will never leave us nor forsake us.

Psalm 62:8 "Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah."

For better or for worse, can we be trusted to fight through the bad to get to the other side, or will we run at the first sign of trouble, or give up just because things aren't going our way, on our time table?

Psalm 56:4 "In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me."

Five Minute Friday: Real

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This week's prompt is: Real.

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Keeping it real; that's what me and my friends do. We share our hearts, the dark and the light. Nothing is too ugly to talk about, to learn from. We've had the love of a lifetime and we've lost it through death or divorce. We've had babies, schooled them, sent them off to war, and watched those babies have their own. We've loved our parents and said good-bye to them as they left this life. We've put Him on the cross and brought Him into our hearts. We've tested and been tested. We've been through it all and shared it all, the laughter and the tears.

Real is what we are, what we're meant to be. We live in the real and in the love that He gives us for each other.

We're living life, keeping it real, one day at a time.

Five Minute Friday: Vivid

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This week's prompt is: Vivid.
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Sometimes rainbows are bright and vivid and it is easy to see their beauty. Other times they are soft against the sky and you have to struggle to see them. Their beauty isn't fully realized by our weak, human eyes, but it is still present. We have to gaze past the clouds, into the darkness, and see with our hearts what our eyes don't comprehend.

It is very easy to find joy when the beauty doesn't take a struggle to see. It takes a realization that beauty goes so much deeper than what a fleeting glance can easily grasp and into the depths of the soul to find true happiness. It is in our hearts before it is in our eyes.

Five Minute Friday: Awake

Please click the button above and be prepared to be inspired by The Gypsy Mama's writing. Join the rest of us as we write life five minutes at a time, unedited.

This week's prompt is: Awake.

Awake. That's what I am most of the time, a walking zombie. I can't sleep, really sleep, because the bad dreams are there where sleep should be. If I do fall asleep, they follow me into the waking, along with the reminders of just what happens if I am down for more than six hours at a time. Awake and in pain, physically and otherwise.

Awake, what I want to be, fully awake to enjoy the time that I have left. Awake when everyone else is and fully alert, letting the pain sleep for a change.

I want to be awake and alert and right there in the moment when the bridge is finally crossed, when what I'm looking for is once and for all found.

Five Minute Friday: Open

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I opened the car door filled with both excitement and dread, not knowing what was before me. The drive would be over a thousand miles long...would I be able to do that?

I did and have never gone back.

That day simultaneously closed one part of my life and opened yet another and now I'd give just about anything to go back to the way that it was before I opened that car door, before my husband picked up the telephone, answering a call that changed our family forever.

There have been many openings and closings over the last seven years. I know that there are more ahead, though I don't know what they will involve, what will be waiting on the other side.

As 2011 sneaks away and 2012 is ready to pounce, I am hoping that this new year offers more openings than closings, more gains than losses, more open hearts, more love and laughter.

I hope this for all of us. May 2012 bring you days full of laughter, love, and blessings from our Heavenly Father.

Happy New Year!

Five Minute Friday: Connected

The Free Dictionary has this definition for "connected":

con·nect·ed (k-nktd)
adj.
1. Joined or fastened together.


Life these days is all about being connected, how many friends you have on Facebook, how many followers you have on Twitter, how many connections you have on LinkedIn. In reality, how many people are you truly connected with instead of to?

Are you just passing through this life, being connected on the surface, but failing to be truly fastened together with those around you in real life?

It often seems to me that the advances in technology are not truly bringing people together, but pushing them further apart. Sure, we can have friends that we've never met all the way on the other side of the world and we can learn about things that we never knew existed. All of that is great. But, when I'm sitting in the local McD's and see people come in together, but never look at each other because they are each on the cell phone, either texting or talking to someone that isn't there in the flesh, never saying a word to the person they are there with, it makes me sad. For all of the connecting going on out there, there is more of an unjoining than a joining with those right there in our presence. There is more Facebook connecting than face-to-face fastening together.

Is this how life is truly meant to be lived, based on cell towers and button-pushing, never looking or talking to those around us?

Citation:

connected. (n.d.) The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2003). Retrieved December 18 2011 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/connected

Five Minute Friday: Tired

Each week, we write for five minutes on a given prompt. We don't stop to edit; we just write, whether it is right or not. So, find those home keys or your favorite pen and join us over at The Gypsy Mama's blog for five minutes of unrestrained writing.


This week's five minutes is about: Tired
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Tired. Heart-tired, brain-tired, that's what I am. And the non-stop questioning is making someone else tired. I can't let go or heal without answers nor without logic and some things defy logic. I'm tired of trying and tired of nothing ever being right no matter which way I turn. I'm tired of blow-ups and tired of "fake it till you make it" and failing at even that.

I'm tired of books that promise answers, but only cause more questions, questions that no one seems to be equipped or willing to answer and just get frustrated with me asking. I'm tired of blind acceptance being expected of me.

I'm tired of sleep that brings no rest. I'm tired of daytime fears becoming night-time realities. I'm tired of being tried and left behind no matter what I try. I'm also tired of negative feelings and trying to find a reason not to have them.

I'm tired of things being billed as my "choice" when I didn't, and don't, have a choice in the matter. I didn't choose this; it just is.

Mostly, I'm just tired, period. I wish that I had gone Home when I had the chance. I'm tired of time away from those that truly loved me and there's only one way that I will see them again outside of dreamland. There's only one cure for this kind of tired and only One that can offer this rest.

I'm tired of waiting.

Five Minute Friday: Grateful

Each week, we write for five minutes on a given prompt. We don't stop to edit; we just write, whether it is right or not. So, find those home keys or your favorite pen and join us over at The Gypsy Mama's blog for five minutes of unrestrained writing.


This week's five minutes is about: Grateful.
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I am grateful for a lot of things, such as my husband, my children, and my family that lives over a thousand miles away. I am thankful for the love and forgiveness that bridges those miles. Grateful...that expresses my feelings regarding the conversation had with a friend yesterday after he called us to come and pick up an "extra" turkey that he just happened to have. He was part of a miracle, though he didn't realize it.

There are things that are a part of my life that I am not particularly grateful for, but I am trying to learn to accept this process of growth and will be thankful for the joy on the other side of the junk. I am grateful for lessons learned, if not for the process of the learning.

Grateful, in some situations, also indicates obligation or indebtedness. I am indebted to many people that have crossed my life. I will be forever grateful for the spiritual lessons that my grandparents taught me as well as the life lessons that my parents and in-laws have taught me along the way.

I am thankful for friends that I have met over the years and more recently through the blogosphere. They have taught me that I am not alone. No matter what is going on, someone is dealing with something far harder, or has been through it and survived to tell about it. I am grateful for the hope of recovery that they have given to me.

Most of all, I am grateful for my Heavenly Father, Who sent down His Son to die for me - worthless, sinful, human me - Who loved me enough to sacrifice to grant me eternal life. I am grateful for those who shared the gift of salvation with me and for having church services as part of my earliest memories.

Five Minute Friday: Grow

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This week's prompt is: Grow.
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I love to grow things - ideas, babies, flowers - and not necessarily in that order.

It doesn't take much to get my mind to thinking of ideas for this or that. I can pass something on the street, flip past it in a magazine, or catch a glimpse of something weird on a television show that sets me on the trail of other thoughts, most totally unrelated to what I saw.

Over the years, I've been blessed to watch my babies grow into fine young adults. They are beautiful hearts that touch mine each day. They bring laughter and I know we're supposed to let them grow and go, but I would really prefer it if they grow and stay here. I don't want to stifle them...This is where I need to grow. I need to learn to let go and have faith that Heavenly Father is going to take care of them in my absence. He knows their hearts far better than I do and, although I love them more than life itself, He loves them even more.

I love to grow flowers and would have a yard full of them if I could. This yard is too shady to grow much other than snakes and cats, which is does really well. Back before the drought killed my antique roses, I experimented with growing new roses from cuttings. I was successful at getting one out of eight to survive. That isn't a very good turnout, really, but I was happy to see that one little rose grow to be as beautiful as the parent plant. I hope to someday grow many, many more roses.

Growing; it can be done in a multitude of ways. We can grow our hearts and minds beyond the physical boundaries of these earthly bodies. What are you growing these days?

Five Minute Friday: Unexpected

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This week's prompt is: Unexpected.
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We were riding down the freeway, probably ten miles from home, when his phone chirped. Someone was texting him, which doesn't usually happen unless he's one place and I'm another. It was my sister. My heart held on...

The text was to pray for her son's Papa Jaimie, but what I heard coming from David's lips was "Papa Jimmy", which would be mine and my sister's daddy. I thought it weird that she would say "Papa Jimmy" instead of "daddy" or "Papa Jim", but OK, in a high-stress moment, who's thinking of usual protocol?

I heard "Jimmy" instead of "Jaimie", and the prayer request was that he had brain cancer and was in surgery and would we pray for him, please? Driving down the freeway, seventy miles an hour, and I melt down. Every ounce of me that loves my daddy just lost it, thinking that it was him in surgery for brain cancer. He'll be seventy years old in less than a month and he's in surgery for something so awful.

I couldn't see what I was driving into as I aimed for where the emergency shoulder is supposed to be, but I had to pull over.

David was telling me "Jaimie. I said Jaimie. I said Jaimie." as he realized what I was thinking. I couldn't stop crying, even though it was registering that it wasn't my daddy that was in surgery, but my nephew's other grandpa.

As the sobs were still keeping me in their grip, I was apologizing for being such a baby, for still crying even though I understood now that it wasn't my daddy. Mr. Jaime is still somebody's daddy. Please pray for his healing. Thank you.

Five Minute Friday: Remember

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This week's prompt is: Remember.
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I want to remember. I do. I want to remember the good things and forget the bad things. My wiring is off because I remember the bad and it crowds out the good. I want to remember the special moments, the voices of my grandparents, more than a snippet here and there of the forty-six years that I've been on this earth. I want to remember so that they can know more about their mama than what they see before them. I want them to know about those in our family's past so that they can carry the stories forward to their own children. I want to remember what home in the country smelled like outside, in the woods, by the creek all those years ago as I zoomed by on my bicycle.

I remember the Dove soap in grandma's bathroom and the SeaBreeze and water boiling at Aunt Mae's house, but I don't remember the feel of their hands as they held mine. I don't remember why I was on the porch at Aunt Ollie's house the day the picture was taken. I remember the taste of Granny's dressing and wish I could have that again. Thanksgiving will never be the same without her.

I don't remember the doctor visit that happened on the day that my bike split apart and split me open. I've read the record of it, but have nothing in my memory banks to support that record. It makes me wonder what other things I don't remember. I also get stuck wondering if I am not remembering things because there's something wrong with me or am I not remember some of the things because they never really happened for me to remember. Maybe those sharing these events with me are the ones with the faulty memory. I don't know.

Two things that I do remember happened on our wedding day. I remember spilling hot wax down the front of my dress as we went up to light the unity candle and I remember running around to the back of the church and getting into my in-law's car instead of getting into the car that was decorated for our "escape". I made it to the door of the decorated car and turned and ran the other way. My in-laws rode in the decorated car to the reception.

I remember that letter, announcing the impending visit from David, waiting for me in our mailbox when I got home from school. It said that he would be there about the time that I got the letter and he was. I was breathless!

And I had a wet head. :)

Five Minute Friday: Beyond

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Who sees beyond the cranky face to feel the heart that's hurting? Can you look behind those glaring eyes and see the overwhelming? Will you look beyond the cuts and help her release the pain?

Sometimes all we see is a person's bad attitude or negative personality, but do we ever stop to think about what got them to that point? Can we look beyond the face of the unlovable long enough to show them real love?

What do you do to help you look beyond the surface of what's before you, to get to the core and really see the person's heart?

Maybe she's dreaming of a life without threats and feeling like it will never happen for her. Maybe everywhere she turns, there is a mountain to climb. Maybe she's longing for someone to love her and the hurting makes her angry and withdrawn. How do you draw her out?

Do you go above and beyond or do you just let it be?

Maybe, mostly, she longs for a life beyond this one where she knows that she is loved by the One that loved her enough to create her and has a purpose for her life, even though the hurt is hiding that purpose.

Five Minute Friday: Catch

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I tried to catch a butterfly that day. Not with my hands, but with my Nikon. It was flitting around from flower to fence post and was just so beautiful that I had to have it. I wasn't paying attention. I didn't catch that butterfly, but in a way it caught me. I was looking up at it, thinking how cool it would be to finally capture a Monarch, instead of looking down. My foot caught in a hole left behind where a tree must have been years before we moved here. The rest of my body didn't get the message that my foot had stopped moving and down I went. It hurt; it hurt really bad. My camera lens was broken, the camera itself was jammed, and I was sure my leg and arm were broken. I hobbled inside the house crying my eyes out over my Nikki. Hang the arm and leg! When could I get a new camera?

I couldn't bear the thought of not having one and right away. I had gotten the camera about three months before when we were caught up in the evacuation for Hurricane Rita and ended up staying in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As the wind caught a giant mass of people, moving them around for the second time in three weeks or so, I was happy and allergy-free and toolin' around Tulsa like I'd lived there all my life. I think I caught a tiny little glimpse of self-confidence then, a thousand miles away from home for the second time in a year, because I was able to get to the store and back to the hotel without getting lost in a city where I had never been before.

I'm still waiting to catch that butterfly.

Five Minute Friday: On Friends

Five minutes. That's all it takes. Writing your unedited heart, sharing the words as they come with no corrections. It brings freedom.

This week's Five Minute Friday prompt is: On Friends.
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A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out. ~Grace Pulpit

Friends are those people that are there for you, always. They love you even when you're unlovable. They come running when you call because you need them to help you with something big or you want to blow the rent on a major fashionista shopping spree. Whatever the call, they are ready and willing to answer it...even for the down-and-dirty, heart-wrenching, crying through a case of Kleenex heart stuff.

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably. ~William Penn

More-than-name-only friends can be real with each other. Sure, there might be arguments or disagreements along the way, but the love between the people involved far outweighs the discomfort of the disagreement and they bounce back ready to kill for each other again if need be.

Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. ~Robert Brault

Real friends will try to steer you in the right direction. They won't let you do something that is bad for you just because they're afraid you'll be upset with them. They love you enough to jerk a knot in your tail when you need it.

The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you've had. ~Author Unknown

You can tell your true heart to a true friend even without uttering a word. She knows your heart and she can see when it is smiling and when your face is smiling but your heart is broken into a million tiny pieces. You don't have to fake smile with your real friends. You can be the at-the-moment-you and they still love you.

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails. ~Donna Roberts

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Note: The quotes on friendship shared above were found on The Quote Garden. Be sure to visit them for lots of great quotations!
http://www.quotegarden.com/friendship.html

Five Minute Friday: Growing

Five minutes, that's all. Write without stopping. No editing. No self-correcting. Just writing what's on your heart.

This week's prompt is: Growing.

After your five minutes, link up with the gang on the Gypsy Mama's site. You'll be glad that you did!

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Growing...it is what I couldn't see myself doing as I was doing it and it wasn't happening fast enough. I wanted to be a grown-up NOW, not years from now. But there was growing to do, both in body and spirit.

Growing up isn't easy and not all of the growing pains are physical. The heart learns a few lessons along the way, like how to say good-bye when you really don't want to. Not all of us get to grow up. Tina didn't. Patty didn't. We were just kids and should have been playing but big things came and they didn't get to grow up like I did.

Sometimes I wonder who got the better deal on that one.

Grow I did and not always in the best way. What I missed growing in height, I didn't miss in width, thanks to babies and peanut butter and diet Coke and Little Debbies that didn't lead to a Little Suz and the tumors and all sorts of growing happened in there.

Now comes the time for other growth, deep heart growth, the growth that comes with watching others grow up and fly from the nest where we both grew together and together grew.

And there's growing old together, him and me...the best is yet to be.

Five Minute Friday: Wonder

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With Five Minute Friday, we are to write on the topic for five minutes, no worries, no editing, just writing. This week's topic is:

Wonder

I wonder about a lot of things, like how my children are going to get along once they are out on their own as adults. I wonder how they will do out there in this big, not-always-friendly world. I wonder if they will stay close or if they will drift apart as has happened in my own family.

I wonder what it would be like to go to Ireland. Would I feel the closeness of family long gone while I breathed in the air there as I did standing in the Sharon Methodist Cemetery back home in South Carolina so many years ago? Would it be all that I have dreamed of all of these years? Would the family still there accept me as one of them or would I just be an outsider to them because I was born and grew up here in the USA rather than over there, in Ireland, like they did. Would they discount me because I don't have their beautiful brogue, although my blood runs green as theirs does?

I wonder how things will work out for me and my husband after we're on our own again without the day-to-day responsibilities of children. Will we still be a team or will we fall apart because they aren't here to bind us together?

I wonder how this current crisis is going to play out. I know that Heavenly Father has it under control and He will provide, but I wonder how and when He will do it.

Five Minute Friday: Home

This week's prompt is: Home.

Home. This word conjures up so many feelings. Happiness, sadness, confusion, anger, hurt, excitement, adventure, familiarity...history. No matter the bad things that have gone on, it has been my family's home for well over three-hundred years. It is where we lived before the United States even existed. It is where those that came over from the other home of history joined those that were here already and we became one and became family.

The houses were each different, but all the same....little white cottages there across the Atlantic and small, white frame mill houses in South Carolina. These were the houses we made into homes, where we brought love and babies were made and love grew up and they moved away, but never far. At least not all of them.

It was unnatural to leave and my heart has fought it ever since.


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Five Minute Friday: Backwards

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Backwards...

As the clock ticks forward, my heart is constantly looking back. I remember my grandparents and a time when I couldn't imagine a time without them. Now, I don't have to imagine. They are back there, in the memories that I struggle to look back to and remember.

I remember back when I was a little kid and going to school and sometimes liking it, sometimes not.

I feel back to that time in my Aunt Charlotte's backyard, the Coke bottle piercing the underside of my big toe. I remember the pain of the car door closing on toes and other times on fingers.

I remember something that I shouldn't remember, sitting with my great-grandmother on the couch in my Aunt Mae's front room, but she died before I was three so there should be no real memory for me to look back on...yet there is.

I remember atrocities that no child should ever experience or witness from many years ago, but I can't look backwards five minutes and remember the start of the conversation that I am currently in. I can't remember the order of events from our day out working.

But, I can look backwards, smell backwards, remembering the Dove soap in my grandma's bathroom and the Sea Breeze at Aunt Mae's house and how she boiled the water that we had for drinking. I look backwards and remember brushing long strands of shiny, silvery, beautiful hair and hoping that some day mine would be as beautiful as hers.

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Five Minute Friday: Every Day

This Five Minute Friday prompt was brought to you by The Gypsy Mama. Please visit her blog and join in the fun!






Every Day

Every day, I wake up and make a mad dash, hoping that I won't be too late and end up taking longer to get to the adventures of the day. We plan and plans change at the drop of a hat. One evening, we can have a calendar full of things to do, then wake up and find that we have absolutely nothing to do for that day after all. That's how it is with the work that we do every day. Every day, on call. Not knowing or knowing for sure. Every day, wondering what is going to work out, if it is going to work out.

Every day, still no rain. Every day, the corn burns deeper back into the ground from which it came. No puffy ears of corn, just sun-scorched stalks and acres and acres of emptying bank accounts and another hard year for the farmers who count on this for life, for living, for their future. Every day, a future uncertain. Every day, questions brought up and questions unanswered, and questions answered with answers unfavored. Every day, the only thing that is certain is uncertainty.

Five Minute Friday: On Forgetting

The following prompt came to me via Five Minute Friday on The Gyspy Mama blog.

I am always forgetting things and sometimes forgetting people, or at least where I left them, so that I often don't end up at the right building to retrieve them at the appointed time.

It is getting pretty scary for me, this forgetting. A while ago, I had to sign a paper and I signed my maiden name instead of the married name that I've had for over 26 years now. How weird is that?

My maternal grandma had Alzheimer's Disease. She would forget things. She would remember things. You never really knew what you were going to get, the remembering or the forgetting. From what I was told, the signs were there in Grandma's late 40s. I am almost 46 years old...this isn't lost on me.

I might lose my keys and not even remember having them in my hand, though I know I drove the car just moments before. Some time periods are total blanks. Something had to happen during that time, but I have no clue what.

There are big spaces, really big as in years, in my childhood that are a blur. Worse than a blur, actually. I can't even see the blurry screen of those memories. Nothing is there. It is like someone erased the tape of parts of my life that I knew happened because they had to happen for other things to happen, but I don't remember them at all. Nothing. Total blankness.

It is scary, this forgetting.