#5MFW 32
Park
31 Days of Practicing Faith
In October, I am free writing for five minutes a day—raw and unedited—on practicing faith in the every day. Each day is based on a different prompt from 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes.
{Day 21} - Park
The grass peeks through the blankets in places, looking like a brightly colored quilt with a sea of people on it. We come here often to this hillside. It's become a place of refuge for us, an anchor to our home. It's funny how we gravitate to these parks, these places to be alone in a crowd. There is something comforting in being near other people all enjoying the beauty of God's magnificent creation. All our lives are intertwined somehow in this place but the memories we make here are our own.
Each person comes here for a different reason but all get something much needed—rest or rejuvenation togetherness or escape. I think we come here to build more of a connection to this place we call home so that when we move next year we can hold this memory. It will be something tangible to us. We will be able to smell the Georgia pines, remember the way the sun set over the mountain, and hear the laughter of a park full of people.
When we lived in the Middle East we had a park, too. In a world that was mostly dusty and brown, covered in sand, we found an escape in the middle of the city. It took a taxi ride and an entry fee to get in so we didn't get to come often. But when we were missing home and life get too overcrowded in a city of 20 million, we found our way there. We would sit near other couples and listen to their conversations in Arabic, barely understanding a word or two. We would stare out over the old city, rows of buildings crammed together—such a contrast to the wide open pools and lawns of the sanctuary we had found there.
When I think back to our time in that city, it's the days in this park that remind me of the goodness we found there. In a place where life was chaotic, there was peace to be found. Not just in that park but in the home of a friend, in sharing coffee and broken English conversation, in the hospitality so freely given to us. Sometimes it took stepping out of the dusty streets to remember it, but the beauty was always there. It's always here. We just have to look for it and remember to find it.
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Weekend
31 Days of Practicing Faith
In October, I am free writing for five minutes a day—raw and unedited—on practicing faith in the every day. Each day is based on a different prompt from 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes.
{Day 20} -Weekend
I am learning every cliche people say about time is cliche because it is true. It flies. There's never enough of it. It slips away all the faster the older you get. With the first child, time seemed to go fast. By the time we had the second, it hurtled by at warp speed. I don't know where the first year five years of his life went!
Time and me—we don't always get along. I always feel at odds with it. I want to wake up early, have more hours in a day to get all I want to get accomplished. I feel defeated when I don't mark all the things off my to-do list. Sometimes my heart starts to race just thinking about the calendar and all the events blocked out on it.
When I am holding my little ones in the early hours of the morning and breathing into their soft, silky hair I want time to stand still. When I am looking at the perfect sunset going down over the mountain at the end of the best day I can remember in a long time, I want to pause it all. When I think ahead to the changes in my family I know time will bring, the emotion catches in my throat.
Somehow, I still find myself wishing time away though. By about Tuesday afternoon, I will be looking forward to the weekend. I will be dreaming about the uninterrupted writing time of early Saturday morning, the rare date with my husband or dinner with a friend, the playtime scheduled with the kids, or maybe that mini-vacation we have planned. The work week will barely begin and I find myself wishing for that Friday afternoon and the rest that awaits.
Weekends are terrific and yes, I need family time and rest. But I don't want to wish it all away. I don't want to be so busy looking forward that I miss where God has me today. Lord, help me treasure each Monday. Each Tuesday. Each day in between. I don't want to live for the weekend. I want to live for this day. Tomorrow may not come. If it does, it will certainly come too soon. Help me love the time I am in.
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Notice
31 Days of Practicing Faith
In October, I am free writing for five minutes a day—raw and unedited—on practicing faith in the every day. Each day is based on a different prompt from 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes.
{Day 19} -Notice
I don't notice little details. My husband laughs when I say I am the least observant person because he knows it's probably true. I will often drive the same road over and over without noticing the name of the street or which store I turn at to get to a certain place. If I am not driving, I don't notice anything around me. I just stare off at the passing scenery or more likely have my nose in a book.
I am horrible with names, forgetting them easily. If you ask me to describe a person I met, I am hard pressed to describe their hair color or height.
It's not that I don't care but that my mind can't seem to be still. If I am riding in a car, I am probably thinking about the place I need to go next or the item on my to-do list I have to get to after this. If I am talking to you, I am probably thinking of my response or how I want to phrase that next statement because my mind thinks faster than my words can keep up with. If I am working, I am doing the task at hand while I think about the kids, the groceries, the laundry, and a million other things. I know better than to try to write in my own home because some distraction will take hold of me and I will stop writing to chase down some other task that seems more urgent.
Maybe it isn't that I don't notice little details but that I notice too much. I try to take it all in at once and I just don't have the ability to see it all. I need to slow down and focus on the thing in front of me, really see it. The person in front of me can so easily get lost in the jumble of my thoughts and I miss their needs, what they are really trying to communicate. I can miss out on worshipping altogether when my mind jumps around instead of being still in the Presence of God. Lord, teach me to stop. To notice. To be fully present wherever I am.
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Neighbor
31 Days of Practicing Faith
In October, I am free writing for five minutes a day—raw and unedited—on practicing faith in the every day. Each day is based on a different prompt from 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes.
{Day 18} - Neighbor
"That family over there lives in our neighborhood," I said with a laugh in one of those "it's a small world" moments. My family was enjoying a fun fall day at a farm and apple orchard in the North Georgia Mountains, about two hours from our home. As the lady passed by, I reached out to gently touch her shoulder and say "hello." Her look of surprise echoed mine at seeing someone you know hours from home but then she did the strangest thing. She hugged my sister standing next to me.
"Wait, how do you know her?" we both said. We spent the next twenty minutes talking about how she worked in the same school as my sister and mom (who proceeded to chase her down to say hello in the moonshine museum—yes, that's really a thing here in the south). We laughed as I recounted the story about how she had seen my husband out on a walk with our two-year-old and new baby one day shortly after we moved in five years ago. She tucked away the mental mom of a new mom that had just moved in a couple streets over. A few days later she showed up with two smiling toddlers of her own and a pot of soup she had made for us. As a tired mom, I thanked God for a friendly neighbor.
We didn't become close friends but we follow each other's families on facebook and say hello and exchange stories whenever we meet. But we introduced husbands and grandfathers standing around the farm in the next few minutes like we were old friends. We said good-bye and went on with our fall festivities. Because we had taken the time to get to know a neighbor, the world got a little smaller and friendlier years ago and on an autumn day many miles away. I tucked away another mental note to make a point to meet a few more neighbors. You never know when you will need a friendly face in a sea of strangers.
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Study
31 Days of Practicing Faith
In October, I am free writing for five minutes a day—raw and unedited—on practicing faith in the every day. Each day is based on a different prompt from 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes.
{Day 17} - Study
I study the way his hair falls across his forehead. He doesn't really have a part, but instead his soft dirty blond hair grows in a spiral from the crown of his head. I watch his breath rise and fall in regular patterns and his eyes dance under their lids as he dreams. I notice the way he sleeps curled on his side or sometimes will tumble over onto his tummy and tuck his legs under him, the way he did when he was a baby lying in the bassinet next to my bed.
He's my last, my baby. At five he still has some little boy features that allow me to still think of him as a baby. He runs to me to be held when he's scared. In the mornings he doesn't want to get out of bed until he cries out "mommy" and snuggles against me for a few minutes before rising. I study these days like I need to remember each moment, each feeling. The way his hand fits just into mine when he reaches up to grab it each morning while walking down the hall to his classroom. The mispronunciation of words that make him still sound so little.
I know time will snatch these memories from me. They will fade in the background of all the other days that will happen between now and the time he is grown. Maybe if I memorize them now, I won't lose them. Maybe if I hold onto them tightly in this moment, he will always be my baby. God, help me to let go just enough but still know how to hold onto this...
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