Five Minute Friday - Hands

On Fridays a bunch of brave writers gather here to all spend 5 collective minutes writing on a single prompt. It’s a great way to catch your breath at the end of a long week. This blessed, beautiful place where we open our hearts and let words and tears and the inner workings of our lives bleed and flow and dance across the virtual pages. Yes, this community opens wide and invites you in to share. Come and visit and read. You will be blessed.

Tonight, I write for the one who knows me best. Who is patient and kind above all else. Who might drive me to madness, but loves me with it too. Who has promised and to whom I have promised. And because all things are not equal, stays and fights and slogs through the mess just because. It is his hands that hold me. All the time. Though I may appear soft, and calm, and controlled (and I can be those things too), I am also wild, and furious, and purely elemental. I need anchoring. I need someone who can hold fast to the tenuous string that is my marginal connection to this earth when I fly high. I need strong hands. 

This week: Hands

Go

I have always been about two things in a man: eyes and hands. Since forever. Just ask. Other things came later – and of course they mattered. But I the beginning – the things that caught my eye were their eyes and their hands. Could I see and be seen? Could I be held?

And the last time I stopped looking, it was his eyes and his hands that caught me. That brilliant blue that changed and faded with mood and light. Sometimes grey like a winter’s sky. Sometimes pale like the last egg of the robin’s nest. And only I have seen them flash their pure Nordic ice. Only me. His hands – that finally made mine feel small. Mine that so often felt only large, capable, durable. Nothing special. Nothing romantic. Nothing that needed to be cared for. Suddenly inches smaller; dwarfed in a palm that could easily span a basketball.

Over time, these eyes and hands have seen and held me. They have watched over me. My comings and my goings. All the changes that nearly twenty years can encompass.

They saw the changes in my own hands. When they would no longer flex and bend. When nothing would like it did. When things ached more than they worked, and pain was a constant companion – more than laughter, more than silliness, more than anything else.

And those hands held my hands and wrapped ‘round them and did for them the things they could not do. Jars with lids that would not open. Shoes with laces that would not tie. Steering wheels that could not be gripped. Stacks of books that were just too heavy to be carried. Those hands did that and more. Kitchen sinks that needed to be emptied. Bathroom floors that needed to be cleaned. Dinners that needed to be made. Lunches that needed to be packed. Aching muscles that needed to be rubbed. A hurting, frustrated, angry heart that needed to be comforted, touched, and told that it would be alright in the end.

Those hands did this and more. 

Above all else, those hands have clasped and bowed in prayer – with me and for me. Beseeching heaven for me, for us, for our family: Thy will be done and Father keep us safe and whole.

Not everyone sees it.
I don’t always see it.
But those hands are there.
They hold me.
I will not forget.

Stop

 
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