I Wonder: Why Her?

Five Minute Friday

Five minutes. No Edits. Just writing. 

The word is: Wonder

GO

Wonder…

Cleaning up my kitchen, putting breakfast dishes away, washing the pan, scraping off the remaining eggs...

 And the Christmas music is playing.

Amy Grant's melody...

"Do you wonder as you watch my face if a wise one should have had my place?"

Oh Lord, I wonder that daily! The pieces you've put in my life. The gifts of children. The ministries and friendships... God, do you ever wonder, "Should I have picked someone wiser?"

My eyes brim with tears as I consider His grace, my mistakes, His love, my inadequacies, His strength, my weakness, His Spirit...

And then the very next song... Strange way to save the world... "Why her? She's such an ordinary girl."

Chest tightens. I set down the towel. Tears flow.

Lord, I feel so ordinary.  So inadequate. So simple.

I thank you for choosing the simple. The broken. The plain. The unwise. The messy.

Oh come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

STOP

When my little man says "stay"

Five Minute Friday

The Word: STAY

A weekly challenge by Lisa-Jo Baker. We all write about 1 word for five minutes.

Unedited. Just thoughts.

Ready?

GO





Hectic. Start the dishwasher. Put out a clean towel. Squeeze the toothpaste and brush all of his little teeth. He giggles. Swish and spit.

Shirt pulls over his head, gets stuck, and he has a silly shirt-hat. 

Zip up the jammies, all the way up to his chin. Give a kiss on the nose. He wipes it off.

Pull back the blankets. Hug reealllly tight.

His arms around my neck, begging me to stay.


Stay.


I move to leave, and he holds tighter.

"I want to read you a story, mommy." His way of saying he wants to talk to me about cars and dinosaurs and super heroes.

I let him run his imagination for a bit. My mind wanders to the paperwork on the dining room table. The emails I've marked as important and haven't responded to. The blog I've been waiting to write. The chapter I was longing to finish.

He pauses.

I try to leave.

He holds tighter.


Stay.


How can I stay when I have so much to do? Fold the laundry. Sweep the crumbs from the kitchen. Relax on the couch.

His eyes grin. Arms wrapped. Snuggled close.

I stay. Because one day, he'll go.

STOP

Listening for the Quiet

Five Minute Friday

The Word: QUIET

A weekly challenge by Lisa-Jo Baker. We all write about 1 word for five minutes.

Unedited. Just thoughts.

Ready?

GO










In order to write about the word "quiet," I had to first go into my room and lock my bedroom door, warning the kids that I needed five minutes alone.


Even with the solitude, I can hear the clicking of my keys. The hum of the construction workers across the street. My son is right now asking, "Mommy?" Apparently a locked, shut door doesn't keep out questions and requests and urgent needs that only mommy can meet.


There isn't a lot of quiet at our house. Home Schooling involves spinning a lot of plates in the air at the same time, hoping they don't crash to the ground.


My best times of "quiet" are when I wake up before the kids and spend time with God. I'd love to say that I eagerly jump out of bed, slip on my robe, and glide to the couch with a smile across my face.


No.


Most mornings I hit the snooze a few times and then roll out of bed with a thud.


I love the quiet times. It's just the first 2 minutes of getting out of a warm bed that are killer.


"Mommy?" There he is again.


Focus, Becky. Focus.


I try and remember that in a few short years, my house will be very quiet. The kids will be grown. There will be no "mommy" through the door. No giggles down the hallway. No squeals of laughter from the trampoline outside. No questions. No read aloud books. No clamber of this or that.


The quiet times will come.


For now, I'll unlock my door and listen. To their questions. To their tears. Even to their fights and screams and complaints.

And I'm learning that even in the midst of the noise, my spirit can be quiet within me, at rest, as I listen moment by moment for that still small voice.

Shhhhhhhh

Thinking of My Roots

Five Minute Friday

A weekly challenge by Lisa-Jo Baker. We all write about 1 word for five minutes.

Unedited. Just thoughts.

Ready?

GO





Roots

I'm reading a great book by Francine Rivers called Marta's Legacy, about a woman in the early 1900s who comes over from Switzerland, and then it follows the life of her daughter, and then granddaughter.

This has led me to think about my own great-grandma. Signa came over from Norway a year after her husband Thorburgh Christiansen. Famers, they settled in Brooklyn, where my grandma, Doris, would tell stories of the various cultures who swapped recipes and songs.


They ended up trying out life in Washington as farms - can you imagine the train ride across the country? - and then went back to New York, leaving my grandma, Doris, in Chicago with family to finish up high school and get a job in the city.


If I were writing a book about this, I'd love to know the history of Signa. What was life in Norway like? Why did she choose to come to America? How hard was it to know that her husband was an ocean away?

I never had the chance to ask. Both she and her husband died a year apart from each other when my grandma was only 20 years old.

So as I'm reading this book, it helps me think of my roots - what life would have been like for my own great grandparents. And it makes me want to write down the stories that are accessible today - the stories of my parents and my grandparents who are around.

STOP

Five Minute Friday: Losing My Voice

Voice

(Five Minute Friday: Unscripted. Unedited. Real.)

Growing up, I'd lose my voice to Laryngitis multiple times a year. Though I have mostly gotten a handle on my allergies, I got laryngitis as recently as this spring while my family was in Disney World. For someone who talks a lot like me, this is a big deal.

While I'm silent and without a voice, I have to learn to gesture calmly with my hands. To get my point across without a word. And most importantly - to listen.

I used to say, "God knows when I've been doing too much talking, and He takes away my ability to speak."

Even in my times with Him, I need to make sure I read - listen - to Him more than I journal back - talk - to Him.

I've just finished spending some time in the Proverbs. I think the biggest topic that stood out to me was the subject of words. What we say, how we say it. As dificult as laryngitis is, I think it would be easier sometimes to live sinlessly without words!

Here are a few of my paraphrases from Proverbs:

• Words can separate close friends.
• Whispers can tear others down.
• Words can start fires or build upon them.
• Words can show your own folly.
• Words can show your arrogance.
• There are numerous cautions about speaking too much, about speaking the right thing, about not speaking to some people, about failing to speak to others.

Wouldn't it be easier without words?

And yet...

• An appropriate word can bring joy to the heart.
• A good word is like a perfect medicine.
• A word rightly spoken is valued above the greatest riches.

Words are important. And as my five minutes draws to a close, I remind myself to use my voice to bring Him honor, and not myself. To build others up, and not tear down. To put out fires, rather than stoke them. To bring grace, and not condemnation. To speak truth that is heavy with mercy. To love. To use my voice, not for me.... but for Him.

Five Minute Friday: Connect

Five Minute Friday

Lisa Jo Baker has started 5 Minute Fridays, where friends each write for 5 minutes on the same word. No editing. No pressure. Just writing. It sounded fun, so I'm going to try it, along with my Foto Friday post. Thankfully, I'm a pretty fast typer. :)

The word:  Connect

When I first think of Connect, I think of connecting to the internet. I'm reminded of when I had to click a little telephone icon on my dad's computer in our stuffy office and wait as I heard the dial tone of the modem. What a great sound when the computer was finally online! AOL was just a baby, and I loved connecting via chat with all these "aged" college kids I was meeting in this new connected world. The Gaming Zone allowed me to play Spades with people in France. And that first month, I raked up a $90 phone bill!

Connecting online was still innocent and fun. My parents didn't worry about who I was chatting with and cyber stalkers. The idea didn't even cross our minds. When someone posted on that black screen, "M/18/Indiana" that meant he really was an 18 year old guy from Indiana. Who would lie on the internet?

Oh, how times then quickly changed.

As a mom, I joined a message board called "Moms Online" that connected women who were all due with a baby the same month. My daughter is now 11, and though the group of women has moved through various online message board websites, we've all settled into Facebook. It's not as easy to connect as a group there, but I still feel warm inside when I think of my friend Dena's house projects or my friend Maureen's soccer teams that she coaches.

Even that board, however, was filled with dishonesty. A woman named Navy was with us for a few years, and then we found out that she was actually a college girl writing a paper! My, how we all felt so betrayed! How dare she lie to us?

So I suppose the internet allows us to have a shield around us, thinking no one will find out.

How else do we use the internet to connect? Email is by far a technology that seems so ingrained into our lifestyle that it's hard to imagine a civilization without it. Facebook. Twitter. Blogging. Goodreads.

I'm on all of them.

And how connected do I feel?

Well, I see it more as a hobby. Though I'm connected to people who I ordinarily wouldn't be, like the women on my May Baby Board, for the most part, it's a nice way to share photos and funny moments with people you might not ordinarily talk to.

But if I'm your friend. If I know you in person. If we share life together. Then I want to share life together. I know it's hard with our kids and home schooling and responsibilities and jobs and ministry. I know it's not always convenient. I know it's not easy. But a personal email means more than a generic facebook post. A phone call does more than a text. And a cup of coffee is like magic.

STOP