Five Minute Friday: Purpose

Write for five minutes, no editing, just writing what comes to your heart on this week's word:

Purpose

What is my purpose on this earth? What was I created to do? I wish that I knew why He put me here. I am still here because I have more work to do, but I do not know what that work is.

If only it were so easy as opening an email or a text and finding the phrase, "Your purpose is...", then I'd know what to do, what I am supposed to do. Instead, I am here with all sorts of cravings and desires and each one with an obstacle. I want to sing, but don't have the voice. I want to be a great photographer, but I am going blind and my hands shake. I want to knit and crochet, but arthritis has more control over my fingers than I do.

I want, I want, I want...no, no, no.

Then, PLEASE, tell me my purpose, what I am supposed to be doing, Father? What important thing did you create me to do, that one thing that only I was put here to do? Please show me my purpose.

Please help me to be the me that You created me to be.

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Five Minute Friday - Want

Five Minute Friday

I learned about Five Minute Friday years ago when it was under the leadership of Lisa-Jo Baker. Now, it is captained by Kate Motaung over at Heading Home. Be sure to click the button below and join in this freeing experience of writing on a topic for five minutes, unedited, just writing, not worrying, spilling out of your heart what the prompt inspires. Come on, you can do it! Let your heart fly through your fingers freely for five minutes, link up, and then visit the person that linked up before you.



This week's word is: Want.

Want…I want to be free, free of the fear that has been instilled in me since I was a little girl. Not good enough. She does this better than you. Your bumble bee craft isn't the best. She sings better than you. She's younger.  I choose her.

I want to be free to know that I am loved and to love fully in return, to have no doubts. To be able to go out in public without how inadequate and imperfect I am being rubbed in my face and ripping out my heart.

I want to have value to those that say they love me. Heavenly Father showed my value to Him when He sent His son to die for my sins. Yes, *my* sins, just as he did for yours. I am not some incurable plague. I do have value. I got a God-said on that one and that God-said came in the form of a man nailed to a tree. If I am worth that much to Him, who are you to determine my value? And why is it so important to me to be valued by you, a mortal human, when that God-said is for eternity?

I want an answer to the questions and an end to the fear and heartache and uncertainty. I want and need a place of heart safety here on this earth. I want to be free of the fear of desertion.

I have His love. I want His peace.

*****

Now, it's your turn. Respond in a blog post of your own and join the linky over at Kate's page or answer in the comments. The choice is yours.

Have a blessed day!

Five Minute Friday - First

I look forward to being a part of Five Minute Friday again! After Lisa-Jo Baker passed it along to someone else, I lost track of it and am happy to have caught up with it again. Please click the button above and play along. The more, the merrier!

Set a timer for five minutes and start writing on the theme of the week. No going back to edit! That is a big no-no. Don't worry about grammar, spelling, punctuation or if it sounds "just right" or not. Just write it and put it out there. You might surprise yourself. :)

This week's prompt is: First

I was the firstborn. The first to walk and talk. The first to go to school. The first to get a spanking in school...got it on the first day of first grade, as a matter of fact.

The first to have the responsibility of setting an example and then getting a spanking when they messed up because I should have "set a better example". The first to find out that I wasn't the "one child" that my mama wanted. The first to feel the sting of being second-best and rejection.

I was the first of the litter to date, leave home, go to college, get married. I birthed the first grandchild on my parents' side and the first McClendon-branded grandchild for my in-laws. We were the first birthing experience for about thirty student nurses as our son was born. His first breath had quite an audience!

Someone started banging on our door and now I've lost my train of thought! That ends this "First" Five Minute Friday post of 2016. Oh well, maybe next week will be flawless. :)

Have a blessed, wonderful weekend!

Five Minute Friday: Writer

I've always wanted to be a writer. Since I was a little girl with writing assignments at school, I have written stories and poems and most anything that came to mind. That was back when I wasn't worried about getting it perfect and just so...just when I let my heart into my fat pencil and out onto the wide-ruled paper with stories about birds and how camels got their humps. I even wrote about how zebras got their stripes and about all sorts of other creatures. When I wrote about the birds, I drew their pictures, too. It was in me to give them unique trees, branches criss-crossed and special. The teacher said so, nobody drew their trees like I did, and nobody could tell the story that I had to tell.

Then, came the big girl years, when nothing I ever did was right, even my writing. Inner and outer critiques closed off the heart that was trying to get through to the now-ballpoint pen and skinny-lined paper. The zebras and camels and birds went away. The writing became just school assignments, just something for a grade.

I still wanted to write, but was afraid to.

Then, I was a mama, and the hurting like I've never hurt before started, and I had to write to let it out. I had to let my Dorian know that she was not forgotten. The poems started in earnest then, telling my little one how beautiful she was and how much I wanted her here with me.

Five Minute Friday

Each Friday, there's a fun and thought-provoking way to beat up our inner critic. We write for five minutes and no editing allowed! We write what our hearts tell us and turn it in as it comes out. Join Five Minute Friday by clicking the button below.



This week's prompt is: See

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I see them as little ones trying to figure out this walking thing and reaching for my help to stop the fall,
still needing me and I want to freeze time because I know this will pass way too quickly.

I see them in caps and gowns and smiles and knowing that this day is the first day of the rest of their
lives. Looking out into the future, the unknown can be scary - for them and for me.

I see them in uniforms, one khaki, one blue and white, and stage makeup, wild hair, and
strong voices. I see the no, but realize the yes that it could be pointing to and I want them to see
that yes, too. I want them to be all that they can be and not be like me, scared off by the no's of
this life, afraid to chase after a yes because it could be disguising a no instead.

I have a vision, a vision of seeing my children out into lives of their own, happy, productive ones.

I see me as a little, old grandma lady called Moogie and David as a Gindy and lots of little people
to love as we loved our own grandparents. Like our grandparents, we will continue long after we are
gone from this life; we live in them.


Please be sure to click the button above to play along!

Five Minute Friday: She

Come on, you can do it! You can write for five minutes, whatever is on your heart, and do it so fast that your inner critic doesn't even know what hit her. Give it a try. Write for five minutes whatever comes out, no editing. No fixing those spelling or grammar or punctuation errors that like to catch each of us. Click the button above to join in this wonderful journey.

This week's five minute journey is about: She


Start


She was blue and she wasn't crying. This she was scared. They were over at the monitor with their backs to her, whispering, and alarms were going off. Something wasn't right.

They said that they'd lay the baby on her chest if everything was okay when she was born. But, she came out and they took off across the room with her, without a word, leaving her mama in freak mode wondering why her baby wasn't crying.

The APGAR was 0 and the cord had been wrapped around her little neck. She was a tiny little thing, just six pounds and fourteen ounces. So tiny compared to her older brother who was eight pounds and eight ounces when he muscled his way into this world.

She still wasn't crying, but her mama was.

She was born five days past her due date, but they said she was a preemie.

She's still a tiny little thing, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet at twenty-two years of age. She made it.

So did I.







Stop

Five Minute Friday: Lonely

You went away and I am lonely. I haven't seen you, been hugged by you, for fifteen years. A lie broke us apart and she won.

We lost.

Our family was never the same; we were never the same. You got sicker and now the phone rings and you're gone. I dropped to the floor with a loneliness of heart and spirit and guilt that ripped me to the core.

I missed your birthday.

Now there will be no more. You were my first love and my first heartbreak. You died alone and took my heart with you. All that's left behind is an empty, aching, loneliness that only you can fill, but it's too late.

Five Minute Friday: Beautiful

Light brown curly locks, baby blue eyes, and the love of purple are beautiful to me. They represent my three remaining babies, no longer babies, but beautiful young adults.

Beautiful is the laughter ringing clear from the other room as they discuss the fun time they had at Equestria last weekend and plan to join again with new friends at the next one.

Beautiful are the moments of their happiness, no matter the cost, and our time back together getting to join in their excitement.

The future is opening wide for them, taking off, and all I can do is hold my breath, thinking of what lies ahead and the vibrance of the life ahead of them.

First moments, last moments, times to be remembered. These moments are beautiful to me.

Five Minute Friday: Listen

Please click on the button above to join the gang for five minutes of unedited, uncut, from the heart writing. You won't be sorry!

This week's prompt is: Listen

Dear Somebody:

Do you ever stop to just listen, listen to how you sound, listen to how you're making me feel, how you're tearing me - no, us - down?

Did you hear way back when my heart skipped a beat when you were near and how it now just wishes that it could stop beating because I am not enough?

The old tapes are playing and not letting me listen to the sound of my Father's love. I am enough for Him. I am His and the words of those that don't know Him don't matter. He listens. He loves. But I can't feel it because the tapes say that I am nothing, that nobody wants me, including Him.

He holds me when you make me cry and want to run and hide, but I still feel so alone.

Do you hear Him coming for me? Will you listen when I'm no longer here to hurt?

Signed,
Me
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I started reading a book this morning titled Seven Silent Witnesses: Finding Freedom Through the Power of Forgiveness. It is about a family of children that were victims of abuse and the silence in which they suffered. Although what I've read so far is about their silence, not telling anyone about the abuse, I thought about it as I was writing this Five Minute Friday post. Living in domestic violence/abusive situations, maybe you don't tell others what is happening. You keep silent, but you're hoping all the while that somehow they will listen anyway. You hope that they will hear what you aren't saying as loudly as if you had said it and rescue you from the terror.

Disclosure: The link to this book is an affiliate link. Your purchase of this book will help to support my genealogy research. Thank you for your support!

Five Minute Friday: Comfort

Write for five minutes, uninhibited, no editing, no do-overs. Just write, just right, right from the heart. You can do it! It only takes five minutes. Click the button above to play along and prepare to have your heart tugged and blessed.


Comfort I can smell the dressing cooking as we pull into the driveway. Granny's coming out onto the porch to greet us with a "Y'all get out and come on in." It's Thanksgiving again and she makes the best Thanksgiving Day dinner that I've ever had. I look forward to it; I crave it. It is tradition and I know its coming and it brings comfort, this sameness in my chaotic childhood.

There's no arguing over where we're going for Thanksgiving; I know. We're going to Granny's house. We're going to stuff ourselves silly with turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, sliced tomatoes, pie, pineapple-coconut cake and banana pudding. Can't forget that banana pudding. I lived for it. I could have eaten it all were it not for having to share it with everybody else. Daddy made it, too, though his wasn't quite the same as Granny's, especially the year he substituted beets for the bananas. That was certainly an experience.

Granny's gone and Daddy's gone and these memories of Thanksgiving at Granny's bring me comfort. They bring tears, too, because I can never go back...except in my heart and soul. Banana pudding will never be the same.

I can hear Granny calling to us as we're leaving, "Do you have to go so soon? Come back and see Granny sometime. Love yins!" and feel her gripping me in that granny-hug that I'll cherish forever.

Five Minute Friday: Brave

Brave is getting up in front of a group of people when you're rather be invisible. I'm not brave. I don't do public performances of any kind. Our daughters, however, do. Our oldest daughter isn't afraid to put on a show for people, but our youngest daughter is, to a degree, a little bit shy. They were both on stage Friday night in a play at the local college. You can visit my husband's version of the night here.

Our oldest has never had a problem with projection. She can cut through noisy rooms and be heard with no problem. She played a wicked witch of the old fairy tale variety in this play. She turned a prince into a frog and froze Little Red Riding Hood. She was believable to the point that a little kid sitting behind me and David thought that she'd killed Little Red Riding Hood. He fretted over Red until after she was carried off of the stage.

Our youngest was Little Miss Muffet. In this version of the fairy tale, she scared the spider rather than being scared by him. He tasted her curds and whey and got sick. Then, she whacked him on the head. She really enjoyed this part. She also played the Giant that was put in the position to keep the prince away from the princess that he was trying to rescue. This part involved a lot of running. Our girl has asthma, but did a fine job of chasing the people through the audience.

Our girls in stage make-up, the witch and the giant.

To me, this is brave stuff, stuff that I couldn't have done in a million years, stuff that makes my tummy tumble just thinking about it.

Brave is just doing it anyway, no matter how scared you are.

Five Minute Friday: Friend

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According to Dictionary.com, a friend is someone with whom you are attached to "by feelings of affection or personal regard." They support you, they like you, and are not mean to you.

I've had a few of those through the course of my life. In elementary school, there was Allison. She wore glasses like I did and had long dark hair. She was skinny. I was stout, or at least that is what I was told. She was my best bud. We sat together at lunch and she always brought hot dogs to school. She shared them with me. I don't know what I had to share with her, other than my friendship, but she always shared with me.

In middle school, there were Mae and Bernice. They were very sweet girls. They had their own crosses to bear, but took this shy city girl under their wings in that backwoods prison of a school. They introduced me to some new phrases and implications that I hadn't learned the previous year at the Christian school that I had attended. They were Christians, too, but had phrases for things that I'd never heard about. I was asked if I was fast, and I thought they were questioning my ability to run. I found out later that "talking" meant something else entirely, too. I learned a lot that year.

Then, there was high school. My best friend was Holly and did many things together at school. I was shy and she wasn't, so we approached the boy that I liked. She talked to him and I giggled at him through the chemistry room window. At a Friday night football game, she quizzed him up about how he felt about me. It went down hill from there. I didn't go giggling at the window anymore, but she was there as my maid of honor when I married that goofy boy five years later.

Now, I have a sister-friend over a thousand miles away that I've never seen in person and only talked to on the phone a couple of times. She knows my heart; she can read it like a book. She knows when I'm hurting and puts up with my hiding moments. We pray for each other, laugh with each other, cry with each other. We're going through the change together, both looking at emptying nests and major life changes, not just body changes. She'll be my heart-sister till the very end and on the other side of this life. She is a blessing to me. I thank Heavenly Father for the time that He brought her into my life and for her graciousness when she welcomed me back with a happy "SUZ! Is that you?!" after my prodigal journey.

Just like coming home.

Five Minute Friday: Here

Five minutes, that's all it takes to unlock the heart sometimes. Click the button below and join us each week as we write for five minutes, no editing allowed. Just let it out as it comes to you and share the realness.


I am here, but I am not. My body is here in 2013, but my mind is many years in the past. I can remember the nail going into my foot as I ran around the tree and the Coke bottle in my toe while going for the baseball, but I can't remember whether to turn left or right at the stoplight today.

I am there, searching through the cemetery trying to find her grave or the library searching the microfiche for the paper containing her obituary, but not here aware of what is going on around me. I am stuck back there, in the past trying to revive a girl lost much too soon, leaving a little boy behind.

Here is slipping away from me and all that I seem to be able to grasp is the past. This journey is scary because I don't know where it is headed. I know where it went for my grandma and I don't want to go there. I want to be here with my family while they are here. I don't want to wander off alone and lost, even though I've never left the room.

Five Minute Friday: Home

Please click the button below to join in the straight-from-the-heart, no-editing-allowed, five-minutes-only writing adventure known as 5 Minute Friday. You'll be glad that you did!

    Today's topic is: Home.   Home.

It is a notion that should bring comfort, not confusion. But, that is where it is right now. I feel like a little girl without a home. I grew up in South Carolina where over 300 years of my family lived before me. I lived there until I was thirty-nine years old, so pretty much in all ways that should be home.

We now live on the Texas Gulf Coast and have lived here for almost nine years, long enough for this to be home, too. David's family has history here, about a hundred and twenty-five years worth, give or take a few. The majority of our lives, however, was spent in the upstate region of South Carolina. When we both think of home, that is the place that comes to mind.

Part of me felt for a long time an incredible pulling to go back to South Carolina. I longed for it, yearned to be back where the history that was my family's was made. Now, that is exactly what it is - history. The pulling has gone with the closing of the last grave, the sprinkling of dust of what once gave me life, and the grief that brings hurt and its companion anger that drives away all that seeks to return to heal.

With tears and want, that door is closed.

This place will never be home and that place can be no longer.

Five Minute Friday: Again

It has been quite a while since I've participated in Five Minute Friday and I have missed it. I hope to get back on an even footing and back to participating in this on a regular basis. Please be sure to click the button below and join in the fellowship!


Here we are, again, starting over, from the ground up. But the foundation is rebuilt, too, because we're digging down deeper into the Word, again. We discovering His promises all over and knowing that He will get us safely through to the other side.

We aren't alone in this; others are walking this walk with us. Not just those that have been with us the other starting over times, but new ones that are blessed and are blessing it forward.

Again the sparrow comes to remind me that we, too, are important to Him. He takes care of the sparrow and He will take care of tomorrow. Worry has no place here. It is a lesson that I have to keep learning because I get scared and wonder about the hows and the whens and the what ifs when those do not matter. What matters is the Who and He has it covered.

Five Minute Friday: Trust

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: 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

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: 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

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: 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

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.
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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!