Five Minute Friday: Depend - What time is it?!

It's Five Minute Friday time again!

I woke up pondering the word for today (it comes out on Thursday night) and anxious to write on it.

GO.

Depend is the word.

What time is it?

That's the question.

I recently spent some time holding my 97 year old Grandma's hand, talking, singing, and praying.

She was sitting in a room in her care facility with a bunch of other people in her predicament. It felt like a heavenly holding pattern. The preacher that comes in regularly talked of hope. Eternal hope.

My Beloved Grandma's eyes twinkled as she heard him talk of Heaven. She twinkled again when she got to sing Amazing Grace with her peers who, like her, couldn't remember all the words but hummed along.

Then we talked about Heaven and Jesus. He knows exactly when it's her turn and she can depend on Him to know what time it is, He is never late. He knows her. He loves her. She can depend on that too.

Stop.

Happy Friday Everyone! I pray you will depend on Jesus to know what time it is, even if you have to wait. And while you wait, sing, pray, twinkle.

Five Minute Friday: Accept

Five-Minute Friday Writing is one of my favorite things. A community that has blessed me for years.

I have to accept it. It’s real. Making time to write makes me crazy. As soon as I pull up a word document, something happens. The school calls, the dog needs outside, a sneezing fit, the other school calls, a crisis occurs, or I need to go to the bathroom. The issues aren’t original, new or even fun.

I have to accept that if I am going to write, I’m going to have to practically part the red sea of my life and just pound it out. Five minutes at a time, if necessary. That is why I do the Five-Minute Friday writes as often as I can.

I have to accept that I have a job to do. Tending to my family is my number one job. Being present for the ones God puts in my path is my next most important job. Writing is important, but not more than these, so it takes a back seat. 

Accepting my season in life, making peace with the challenges of the moment, trusting God with the words and the time to write them is stretching me more than ever before. I have a book in my head and heart just waiting to bust out of my fingertips. Some day.

Five Minute Friday: Collect

I love it when the word prompt for Five Minute Friday resonates with my recent days. 

This week: Five minutes on COLLECT

I've spent several days in the past two weeks going through my parent's history, their parent's history, my history. It has been one of the most challenging things to filter through the dusty cobweb-y, coated boxes and find the treasures that are hidden among the mountains of words (newspaper, correspondence, journals, sermon notes, church bulletins, etc.), slides, photos, china, paintings, stamps, Native American antiques- carvings, baskets, dolls, etc. 

Beloved items are kept, the blessings typewritten by parents long moved to Heaven treasured and re-read, the sacred memories stirred can never be fully contained. The good items and history documented, are let go or shipped off to those who might find value there, potential treasures for others. The "stuff" - dust coated pencil toppers of silly characters, random photos of unknown places and things, and magazines galore is launched into giant dumpster with gusto. 

Memories, experiences, love, will never be contained. I am once again reminded how important it is to COLLECT and give those things that never COLLECT dust, provide homes for spiders, or take up life-spaces. 

Stop.