I'm joining up (a bit later than usual) with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday. This week is filled with visiting family and a traveling man, Swiss holidays and kids who can't seem to be happy in or out of the house. Perspective is the prompt, and after this week, I think I need some. Thanks for the reminder, Lisa-Jo.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's Prompt: Perspective

On the twenty-four hour car rides down south, I used to sit squashed between two siblings in the back seat of the car. No min-van and iPad comforts for us. It was three to the long back seat and if you dared cross the invisible line drawn between you and your seat mate, well, you knew the consequences.

I passed the time by staring up into the summer sky in the daylight hours. I watched the clouds move slow or swift depending on the wind, and I imagined. Sometimes clouds hid a mermaid, or an elephant, or an old lady dancing. Other times, I saw a fish, a flower, or a pup on it's back with four legs in the air.

My brother and sister would occasionally play along, and I don't think we ever saw the same thing. The sky held a circus, a story, an entire world wrapped up in white fluff. And we never saw it in exactly the same way.

Sometimes we could point it out to one another, but most of the time, it remained a mystery.

Perspective always is.

Hi, there! Thanks so much for stopping by. Today, I'm linking up for Five minute Fridays at The Gypsy Mama. Won't you join me there?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's Prompt: Real

I fool myself into believing that my real life is the one that goes on in my head between the hours of ten and twelve p.m. It's the one that scares me with it's propensity for tragedy and delusions of grandeur alike. Real life doesn't look much like the one I imagine, the one I convince myself might come true.

Real life is the one lived in the waking hours. The hours where I pour cereal and wipe up spills and bad attitudes in the same swipe. Real life looks like healthy kids and a husband who loves me. It is boring. It is glorious. It is everything I ever hoped to have, and it feels nothing like I thought it would. It is deeper and richer and more bizarre than anything I could dream up in the night hours.

God indulges me. He lets me dream and worry my life into all sorts of conundrums, and then in the morning He shines light by way of sunshine and truth. I wake up to the real. I wake up to the people who love me and a view that is one part dirty floors and two parts living art. And every bit of it is the real thing.

STOP

Today I'm joining Lisa-Jo and friends at The Gypsy Mama for Five-Minute Friday. Would you take five minutes and join us there?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's Prompt: Together


It's beginning to look different, the ways that we connect, the way I sit in the hollowed out space on the sofa and she, long and lean, in the leather chair next to me. You think that being together will always look like her hanging on to the bottom of your leg, begging for you to pick her up. Then it starts to look like her snuggling next to you and asking for another bedtime story.

Hello and welcome to Five Minute Friday. This is where I sit and stare for three minutes and then write feverishly for two and then wish I could do it all over again because clearly I am not made for writing under pressure. But I have five minutes and a few words, so here you go. Meet me at Lisa-Jo's?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's prompt: Gift

I see my faults rising like cream to the surface. When they are present in the people you parent, the ones who share your very DNA, they make their presence known early on. He has my tendency towards perfectionism, she has my laziness, he, she, I could go on all day.

DNA shows it's gifts in the brown eyes and pink lips with the perfect cupid's bow, but it stands like a mirror reflecting my soul and sometimes what I see there makes me want to say 'I am so sorry'.

I'm sorry when they receive the worst of me. But, in some ways this is a gift because I have the battle scars to prove I have been through the soul war and come through the other side. Limping maybe, but heart beating and brown eyes clear and able to see. I see, and that is the true gift.

I walked that road and battled those demons and I will be standing there with the first aid kit when they face them too. May they come through the battle limping but victorious.

Stop.

It's Five Minute Friday and I'm joining Lisa-Jo at the Gypsy Mama. Join me there?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's Prompt: Loud

She came home in tears, and it's not the first time. She said there are mean girls, ones who lie and spread secrets. They write notes and list her faults; one of those faults was selfish. I told my baby that these words aren't truth, that mean girls don't know her the way we do. I said the words loud and clear.

You are loved.

You are selfless.

You are beautiful, and kind, and a good friend.

You are not their words.

She gave me a half smile through tears. I asked her if she believed me, if she believed truth and that no one knew her better than her mama and Jesus. She nodded, but from the look in her eyes I could see that the truth wasn't making it past the lies.

Why is it the lies are always the loudest?

I tried again. Louder now, and I worried that maybe I sounded angry (which I most definitely was). So I softened and we decided to pray. Whispered words from my lips to her heart and His ears.

I know that Truth comes softly and I asked that in its sacred echo, Truth would drown out the lies.

STOP

It's Friday and that means Five Minutes with the Gypsy Mama and a community of amazing women who share their hearts in five minutes worth of words. Today we're talking about being brave. Won't you join us?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's prompt: Brave

Go:

I don't do brave very well. She comes out limping, looking like someone dragged her out and forced her to participate. Which is, by the way, how I spent the majority of my childhood, forced to participate. Made to play sports in PE class, required to perform speeches in English, and reluctantly signed up for every church related children's event when all I wanted to do was sit quietly in the corner and read my book.

Brave implies that there is some intentionality involved. But for me, brave has been accidental. She's been the thing I've stumbled across when my husband came home and said we're moving to London, brave showed up again when I birthed some babies, and she reappears daily when I stumble through life here in Switzerland. Brave just shows up. I don't know how she does it really, but she doesn't look the way I thought she would. She still carries a look of fear about her. Her heart palpitates and her palms sweat and her legs go weak. She doesn't arrive in a fancy gown or with bells on her toes. She slips in, all awkward and gangly and not sure if she wants to be there, certain she would rather be reading a book in the corner. But now, if she came in any other way, I don't think I'd recognize her.

Stop

For those of you with a few minutes to spare, I wrote more on bravery here. Happy weekending!

Hello there! Welcome to Five Minute Friday. I'm joining Lisa-Jo at the Gypsy Mama where today we write for five minutes on being empty. I'm a mother. I could probably write for five years on this, but I disciplined myself to keep it to minutes. Join me there?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Prompt: Empty

GO

There's a quote floating around in the ether that says something to the effect of wanting to 'die empty'. In other words, this person wants to give of themselves in such a way, that when it's time to meet God, they have nothing left to give. They already gave it all.

When I first read this quote I had small children. Three little people who made constant irrational demands: Feed Me, Bathe Me, Get up in the middle of the night and pretend that you actually enjoy this part of mothering me. I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever read. I emptied myself on a daily basis over things like stinky diapers and toddler tantrums. Obviously this person was a man and had no idea what they were talking about. There was never anything left to give.

My children grew up a little. I stopped calling the person who said that quote stupid. I realized that this season of mothering very little ones is brief. I have to be purposeful about finding ways to empty myself now. I spill myself onto these dear ones still, but these days my husband gets more, and Jesus, and my treadmill. I discovered I love to spill onto the page too.

And I surprise myself, because I realize I'm working my way back to empty.

STOP

It's Friday, and it's almost my birthday. So, while I could write for miles on the ache of getting older, I kept it to five minutes and something other than my age. Because that would be sad, and no one needs sad right before the weekend. Join me at Lisa-Jo's for Five Minute Friday, won't you?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's Prompt: Ache


GO:


The Germans have a word for it. It's called sehnsucht. I know, it's ridiculous. I know like ten German words, and that is one of them. CS Lewis uses it too. He calls it an 'inconsolable longing' for 'we know not what'. I know this longing, this ache.

It follows me, tethered to my heart by a string. I feel it when I look at brown haired babies who love to stand 'back to back' with their old momma and say "Measure me, Dad". One of those brown haired babies is taller than me now. She gave me shoes to wear because she has outgrown them. And there it is, inconsolable longing for the baby she used to be.

I know this ache every time I look out my windows and I see the mountains standing tall and proud, capped in a haze of fog or snow or cloud. I long for something when I see them. I grasp for beautiful things when I fill my home with flowers or poetry or song. I try to fill, fill, fill up on everything lovely and light because there is a longing that wants to be satisfied. But it never really is.

It is the beautiful ache and when I write I feel it grow and recede, grow and recede, as I capture and expose the things that bring the biggest ache and the greatest longing. And for a moment I know what it is I'm longing for.


STOP


Wishing you a weekend that fills up your beautiful ache.

Hello and happy Friday! It's Five minute Friday and I'm joining Lisa-Jo at the Gypsy Mama. Won't you join us?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Today's Prompt: Grit


...I'm learning can't be found in the smooth places. It's not on the swept up floors, or the wiped clean slate. Grit isn't found in the spic and span, clean enough to eat off of surfaces. Not that I have any of those anyway.

It's found in the crevices, in the down and dirty. Grit is tracked in and spilled out and in the places that send me running and looking for a place to hide. I find my grit in the place where I have to pull myself up by the proverbial boot straps. It gets in my shoes and in my pants so much so that it's uncomfortable to sit down or stand up until I shake every last particle loose.

The grit, the dirt and grime, builds something in me. The desire to hide, to get rid of it at any cost, and it rubs me the wrong way. Just like that tiny piece of sand rubs that oyster so raw it produces a pearl. I want my grit to make a pearl. One that shines and shimmers and begs people to come closer for a second look because it is just so beautiful. And then they want a pearl of their own. But, I'll tell them first that it takes grit. And it's going to hurt a little bit, or maybe a lot, and you can't shake it loose or your pearl gets lost with it.

Stop.

Well, I'm off to read what everyone else wrote. I'd love to meet you there.

It's been a while since I've taken part in Five minute Friday, but today that's all I have to spare. Join me at The Gypsy Mama? The rules:

It's time for Five Minute Friday with The Gypsy Mama. You know the rules: 5 minutes, no editing, just for the joy of it. Join us?



Prompt: GROW


It feels unnatural that it should hurt so much. Personal growth is hard enough, but to live it three times over in my children? Excruciating. Pain seems to be wrapped up in the DNA of growth. I wonder if it was meant to be this way, if the pain of growth is a sign that it's happening. A sign of something bigger and better ahead. I hope they grow to be giants; giants of faith and love in action.

It will cost them, in tears and heart hurts, but I see their potential. I know that God sees it too, and I try to rest in the fact that He will help carry the burden of growth. He knows what He made them for, and some day they'll know it too.

He made them to be giants. My job is to tend the seed, water and feed their souls, and pray for grace in the growth. His is to prune. Theirs is to learn trust in the process, even in the pain.

STOP

They rise out of the chaos. The child, his parents and those who come to worship. It's unusual. Unexpected. I thought it should be more simple, more I don't know, barn and stable-ish or something. But it's not, and Gaudi surrounds the Holy Family with what looks to my eye like a little bit of crazy.

I realize now that it makes sense. It is different, yes, but it is beautiful in it's way. It's beautiful because it's true. Christ did come into the chaos. We worship in the chaos of life and a fallen world. It is unexpected, this art, this truth, this God in the flesh.

And isn't He always? God lives in the unexpected. He uses the weak, the humble and the poor in spirit. He lives among the poor, the widow and the orphan. And He rises out of the chaos, and allows us to meet Him there.

STOP

Photo: Taken at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. More to come soon!

I'm visiting with Lisa-Jo's crowd again for Five Minute Friday:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Go a little overboard encouraging the writer who linked up before you.

I could spend these five minutes writing about how Jesus gives us true rest, and about laying our burdens down, and all that spiritual talk. But, can we just be honest for a moment?

Sometimes it's not about the emotional or mental burdens we carry, sometimes it's just the fact that the kids have been up vomiting all night, or your husband decides to sleep in the middle of the bed, elbows firmly planted in your face. Or possibly, it's about the gospel of busyness which keeps us all tied up in un-holy knots.

Sometimes, it's about taking a real break, a genuine step back from life and allowing ourselves to feel that rest isn't the burden we make it out to be. It's a gift that we are given and so rarely take.

I hope this weekend you'll find the time to unwrap it.

Stop.

Wow, why does this five minute rule never get easier? I don't know if I'm designed for this speed. When you're resting this weekend, hop on over to The Gypsy Mama for more.

Kimberly

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you.

Prompt: Beauty (or How to Love the Unlovely)



I can talk about beauty. I wake up to it every day, to emerald waters against snow capped mountain, to rolling green hills and alpine forest. I live in a place that can only be described as God breathed. No man could create such a thing.



But, as life is temporary, so is my situation. It's likely that we'll be leaving Switzerland to move back to our adopted home state of NJ next year. Cue the weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don't find much beauty in a place populated by strip malls and highways. My husband says we need to bloom where we are planted, and after I resist the urge to poke him in the eyeball with a fork, because obviously he is blind anyway, I try to see what beauty can be found there.

I try to look past the never ending skyline of suburbia and see to the heart of my home. I see beauty in the well worn path to the home of a dear friend, beauty in my place of worship and in freedom, and beauty in knowing that familiarity does not actually breed contempt, it breeds a sense of belonging.

STOP.

Head on over to Lisa-Jo's and read more about beauty. The real kind.

Kimberly

I thought I'd give the Gypsy Mama's Five Minute Friday another try. It's more challenging than I expected, but this week's prompt hit on a topic very close to my heart.

Here are the rules:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you.

It's been many places over the years, and I think we've left a bit of ourselves in each place we've called home. I'm not exactly sure where home is anymore, but I do know this:

Home is where I understand the underlying meaning, where I can laugh at all the right places and nod to the cultural references.

Home is the terraced place in the middle of the big city where my son drew his first breath and fell asleep in his Mama's arms.

Home is where I struggle to make sense of the crazy that is a foreign language, and where I wake up to an Alpine view that would make God weep for the beauty of it.

Home is where my husband mows the lawn and I make babies, and we build a life and a family.

Home is here, right here, on this blog where you and I meet over a word or two.

Home is....

Head on over to Lisa-Jo's to read more.

Kimberly

Today I thought I'd try something new and link up to The Gypsy Mama for Five minute Fridays. I confess this was a huge challenge for me. I am a lover of words, but quick and verbose I am not. Most of my writing comes about as easily as pulling teeth, but I'm giving it a whirl anyway.

The Rules



Each is necessary and fruitful in its own way, and most days I think the seasons of my life are too.