Five Minute Friday: Beautiful

Joining in with Lisa Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday where you write unedited for five minutes straight.  Here goes:

Beautiful.

Everything is is society today is beautiful, or cute, or awesome.  Nothing is just average, or, heaven forbid, ugly.  I hate to be a curmudgeon, but not everything is beautiful.  I'm just as guilty as anyone.  I've yet to find a way to be honest and kind at the same time.  How do you do that?  I have a friend who speaks the unexpurgated truth, without meanness.  She just gives you her opinion, even if it's negative.  I envy her courage and honesty.

The word beautiful is so over-used, it's lost its meaning.  I must find a way to restore the beauty to the word beauty.  How are you doing that?

End



Read more about beauty at Lisa Jo's blog!

Nancy

Five Minute Friday: Home

I drove over 400 miles today and now I am home.  I am home in my comfy PJs.  I am home noshing on a steaming bowl of leftover spaghetti.  I am home where the kitty tries--unsuccessfully-- to help me eat the spaghetti.  I am home with my feet propped on the coffee table while writing.  I am home where I can enjoy the quiet.  It is wonderful--home.  It is the place I long for, the place I run to, the place I dream of--which is now reality.  I drove over 400 miles today and now I am, blessedly, home.

Where are you this Friday evening?

Nancy

Five Minute Friday: Race

On Fridays we play around with the Five Minute Friday meme. Here's today's musings:

The race is to the swift.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Most races involve single-mindedly following one course of action in a manner which makes the runner complete the course ahead of all other runners. Success in this type of race involves choices by the runner based on choices by other runners. It can be as much reactive as proactive.

There are other kinds of races, though—the kinds where the runner is expected to accomplish a set list of tasks issued by the race organizers. Those tasks can be the same as others, or they can be comparable.

While both involve competition, which is a more apt metaphor for life? Should I scheme to shoulder ahead of my fellow competitors, or should I work to accomplish the tasks set before me by the Great Race Organizer?

I'm going with the latter. When Paul talks about running “the good race,” I do not think he meant that he pushed himself to pre-eminence; I cannot help but think that he viewed his own personal race course—fraught with obstacles—to have been completed according to God's direction.

So, no more looking over my shoulder. I'm running the course God has set out for me.

Lead me, Lord.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Five Minute Friday: Grasp

On Fridays we scribble along with the nice folks at Five Minute Friday.  Here's the latest as it rolled out of my exhausted brain:

I grasp at them.

The grains of time's sandglass

barely slow down as they

sift through my winnowing fingers.

They are the moments of my existence,

and I feel them slipping away

into the ocean of memories

that is my past.

They join other memories

making eddies of sorrow and joy,

and when I dip my hand

in that maelstrom,

I cannot retrieve joy without sorrow.

But, along with with sorrow

are the grains of joy.

So should I live that,

when my aged mind begins

to drown in the sea of memories,

the sorrow is but a small eddy

in a joyful ocean.

Starting today.

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Five Minute Friday: Focus

Around here we join other Five Minute Friday folds to write for five minutes, raw, half-baked, authentic.  Here's today's entry on FOCUS:

Focus.

Snort.

Focus?  Of course I can--look at the shiny, sparkly thing!--focus.  (Shameless, I know, but I could not resist.)

Focus.  Ahem.  Focus.  There was a time when I had focus and a mind like a steel trap.  Now, my mind is like a steel sieve.  Oh, I can focus on most of the big stuff before it oozes through the mesh, but the small stuff is beginning to get away from me.

And, there's so much of it--the small stuff.  No longer can I follow one responsibility exclusively to its conclusion; multiple activities demand my attention at the same time.  Not all of those activities are of equal importance and just prioritizing them is exhausting.  Speaking of exhausting, did you know . . .

Oops.  Focus.

It's better when I rest.  So, get enough rest.  Sure thing.  Right after I write this entry and update my blogs and plan the next activity and go to the garden and feed the cats and . . . and . . .

Focus.

"Looking to Jesus . . ."

Focus.

"the author . . ."

Focus.

"and perfecter of our faith."

Focus.  On You.

I get it, Lord.

Focus.


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Five Minute Friday: Graceful

It's Five Minute Friday again! Here's the latest, unedited:

Graceful.

I've never been particular graceful. I reached my full height at an early age, so my brain and body did not always seem to be connected. My family was not all well off, financially, and dancing lessons and organized sports were deemed too expensive. My interest in, and some aptitude for, piano was indulged at great personal sacrifice by my parents and grandparents (who were not well off, either). Not just because the library loaned books for free, reading was highly encouraged as a recreational pursuit. So, I'm not particularly graceful. In fact, I'm downright clumsy. But that's okay because that kind of graceful may be socially desirable, but has no eternal benefits.

Grace-full.

That's what I'd like to be. All this week I've been studying about grace—the grace God offered before I even knew I needed it, the grace God offered when I realized that I could not ever be worthy on my own, and the grace God offers which molds me in His image. That's the kind of grace which reproaches, reproves, encourages, upbraids, educates, and comforts me. That's the kind of grace I can only have when I surrender to His will and let Him fill me.

Like a pitcher.

Is that what I am? Am I His pitcher, to be filled with His grace so He can pour it out on those around me?

I like that. Fill me, Lord, with your grace, then pour it out on a world thirsty for You, then fill me again with the water that quenches Eternal Thirst.

Grace-full.

Thank you, Lord.

Five Minute Friday: Change

Fridays around here are for writing, for five minutes, unedited, hot-off-the-press. Today's topic is

Change

Always a good thing, right? Because lack of change is stagnation which is, after all, no change at all. But is change enough? How many times have I made a decision to change just so I would not remain the same? How often has that change effected a positive result?

In all honestly, more often than not. I think I've been lucky. Just because the results have been positive does not mean that the change was necessary or even good. Perhaps the change was safer than digging in; perhaps I should have taken another path.

All I know is that change, for change's sake, is not enough any more. I cannot just change; I must grow. Emotionally. Ethically. Spiritually.

Growth. Now that would be the right change.

Read more at Five Minute Friday!