Five Minute Friday - Leave

Fair warning – this is going to be an emotional, hot mess. I knew the second I saw the prompt, what I would be writing. There are already tears pouring down my face. I’m sorry. I don’t know any other way to do it.

On Fridays a bunch of brave writers gather here to all spend five 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.

This week: Leave

Go

It is terrible, awful place when you come to the point in your life when you have to seriously consider your parents’ mortality.

It’s not like this is a surprise. Birth. Life. Death.  It’s pretty well laid out an understood. But don’t we understand it on a completely different level when the birthing, living, and dying becomes the experience and story of someone we know? Someone who is close to our heart? Someone who is in our heart?

My father is in the hospital. Again. This is not a new thing. And perhaps, not even a surprise. He has been with us here on this earth for eighty years, and against so many odds, has remained with us through several strokes and other major illnesses.

Through it all, he has been a stalwart survivor. Beyond belief. Every time I got a call about another stroke; every time I had to get on a plane to fly home, I thought, “This is it. This is going to be the time I have to say goodbye.”

Three thousand miles away with no highway to get there is a rotten place to be when your family needs you. Just a plane. Which means hedging, and guessing, and planning – when to go, how long to hold off. What time is the right time? Let me tell you – there is no time. Not when your heart just wants to be there right this second for all the seconds that are left.

From a heaven-bound view, I am not worried. My father’s faith is my foundation and I know where he is headed. Part of me cheers because there will be no more pain. No more suffering. Only glory. Only life unending in the presence of the Savior.

But oh my heart – that is only part. As much as I can say, “the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” and “I know that my Redeemed lives, and at the end he shall stand on the earth,” and that in those passages lives the promise of redemption, resurrection, and reunion, there is part of me that goes all Dylan Thomas saying, “Do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

God help me.
I am not ready to say goodbye to my father.
I am not ready for him to leave.

Stop

Here, that promise from Job - an exquisite rendering from Handel's Messiah

How to Join
Want to know about how Five Minute Friday got started, and how to participate? All the details are here. No editing or second guessing. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community.

I'd love to connect with you some more - stop on by the Three Bees Facebook Page or connect with me on Twitter @3BeesBlueBonnet. Let's continue the conversation!

Celebrating Another Birthday - With My Love

He's a bit more clean shaven these days,
but I love this picture.

Dear S,

It’s your birthday today – the twentieth one we’ve celebrated together. I can hardly believe it. Hardly believe that the year has flow by so quickly – how is it October already? Hardly believe that we’ve shared twenty years together – how did that happen?

When we met, I never imagined that I’d be spending twenty years with anyone. Remember our long standing joke about what I said on our first date? About this being a fun time but not being serious and never, ever going anywhere? I guess you and I are just on the longest trek not going anywhere that any two people have ever taken.

But we’re not going “not anywhere,” are we? These twenty years have been a journey of growth and discovery like neither of us ever imagined.

I’m so grateful to be on the journey with you.

You are my rock – strong and steady; a stabilizing force in my life; a strong foundation; the one I can count on.

You are my laughter – the one who unlocks my weird; the one who releases my funny. You know I am far too serious – good some of the time, but not all. You’re my safe spot for all the wackiness to be unleashed. You make me smile.

You are my romance – still; dancing in the kitchen; holding hands walking down the hall; quick kisses stolen in quiet moments; attraction that still holds and deepens – though neither of us looks like we did in our twenties. Okay, I take that back. You look exactly the same to me.

You are my safety – in an era where a woman is always supposed to stand on her own; you let me stand – you want me to stand – you like me strong. But you know that I can’t be that way all the time. And when the times arise that I crumple and fall; when it’s just too much. You are there. The safety of your arms surrounds me. I can gather myself. I can breathe.

You are my right hand – shopping, adventuring, directing a play, embarking on an artistic turn – you are there. Encouraging me. Supporting me. Filling in when I need another play for another part. Building something. Carrying something. Always believing.

There are a million reasons to celebrate you today – my love, my best friend, my partner in crime. I will celebrate each one.

Happy birthday, and may the year to come be another adventure together in blessing and love. I wish for you the very best of what lies ahead in this life.

Always



I'd love to connect with you some more - stop on by the Three Bees Facebook Page or connect with me on Twitter @3BeesBlueBonnet. Let's continue the conversation!

Five Minute Friday - Long

I’ve been away too long again (P.S. I wrote that before the prompt came out!). But this community – it never fails to reach out and embrace – even when one has been away. I’m so grateful for this space; and for the women that I’ve met here; with whom I’m building relationships.

For all the talk about how online is incomplete, I have yet to feel that here in this space. Except for missing the joy of being actually together chatting on couches or sitting across tables with sweet tea or coffee, there is nothing truly incomplete about this friendships and this space.

On Fridays a bunch of brave writers gather here to all spend five 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.

This week: Long 

Go

There’s nothing like a good laugh full of irony and this prompt might be it. I’ve been away from my blog for a while. Away from my words. To be honest, even in the still, quiet times where it’s just me and a real live page – nothing digital – there has been an abundance of white space.

And while I love white space – I need, desire, crave white space in all iterations in my life – the dearth of words has been hard to bear.

It’s not for anything dreadful and traumatic. I’ve been there before. This is not it. It is a comfortable, if somewhat guilty, silence with a lingering feeling of obligations not met. But there has been nothing on my heart that will come out in words.

I have certainly not stilled my thoughts – those run rampant and wild; percolating into effortless bubbles. I feel like a three year-old with a wand and a bucket of soap on a breezy spring day, flinging shimmering cascades of effervescence into the air, only to have them vanish in a moment. 

Creatively, I have not been in silence. My thoughts, feelings, and ideas have been spilling out in my art.

Smile with me.

I have always wanted my art to spill out but have never felt I had anything worthy of spilling. And now – a joyful profusion comes out like a dam has burst. Where has this come from?

And curiously, why can’t they both pour out at the same time?

My friends and community gather round and encourage me. Where would I be without these voices that anchor me, connect me, and point me back to truth?

I’ve heard some snort derisively at the idea that there are seasons – laugh at the idea of the ebb and flow of this thing we call life and the ability to capture the essence of living with our words and ideas. Laugh away. Clichés are sometimes birthed in truth and oftentimes perpetuate themselves because they endure.

So this is my quiet season.

It feels too long. But let’s face it. I’ve been away longer than a few weeks before. Maybe you have too. Maybe you’ve struggled with the idea that your voice has gone silent for a time.

Honor the quiet.

This is what I’m learning. The lack of tangible words is not a lack of words altogether. Sometimes, it is a growing time. Learning to be more precise and intentional with what we do say.

Words matter. They always will. But I want to say the right ones. Ones that have weight, and meaning, and integrity, and truth.

Even if it is a long time between posts.

Stop

How to Join
Want to know about how Five Minute Friday got started, and how to participate? All the details are here. No editing or second guessing. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community.

I'd love to connect with you some more - stop on by the Three Bees Facebook Page or connect with me on Twitter @3BeesBlueBonnet. Let's continue the conversation!