~Quiet? No, Not Really {Another Five Minute Friday post}

It’s that time again. Five Minute Friday.

A bunch of us gather at Lisa-Jo Baker’s corner of the ‘net and write on one topic for 5 minutes straight.

No editing. No filtering.  It’s wildly liberating. Check it out here> http://lisajobaker.com/2012/11/five-minute-friday-quiet/

QUIET.

This is funny. My house is so NOT quiet right now. It is 11 p.m. here and my daughter is playing her guitar in the living room. Another daughter is eating lasagna of all things at this hour!  Another daughter is …..I have no idea. She’s not sleeping.

My son is on his computer and my husband has gone to bed.

But besides all that I have 5 teenage boys in my basement. Laughing, joking, playing video games. We are so NOT used to this.   We offered up our home to be used for billets for a provincial youth retreat this weekend. The kids don’t have school tomorrow and they started tonight. 400 kids and leaders and wow~NOISE.

I love my quiet solitude. I like after 11 when everyone goes to bed and I bath or read or watch TV.  Quiet is Heaven to me.  But quiet also means a lack of activity and puh-lease~we have had 3 years of NOTHING happening in our home. It’s WAY past time.   So here I am: 5 boys(and their leader is coming later) in a house typically full of girls.     I prepped for this 3 night stint with deodorant, deodorizers, shower gels and extra towels.  Also, chips, jelly beans, chocolate milk and a bunch of other stuff my kids are wondering if they can sneak a sample of.

Yes, I love quiet. But not this weekend. This weekend….there SHALL be noise.  And I love it.

Roots {Brought to you by Five Minute Friday}

It’s time for Five Minute Friday once again. I join in with a bunch of gals all linked over at Lisa-Jo Baker’s place. And this is what we do:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

ROOTS~~ Go!

We’ve just moved for like the 10th time in our 20 years of marriage.  This is the 5th house we’ve been in.  I believe in laying down roots.  It is one of the fundamentally most important things for a family. It is the thing that anchors me to my own past.  It is the core of my being.

But moving around doesn’t lend itself to building a system of roots.  And that is something I am determined to change.

When we moved from Calgary 6 years ago it was like cutting down the tree trunk , but the root system stayed in tact.  It is and always will be home. It is where all 4 of our kids were born and that in itself makes it special. When my kids talk about “home” that’s what they talk about~Calgary.

And then there’s our acreage way up north in Alberta.  My dad is there. We loved living there. Our little haven in the bush~trees and a creek winding its way through our property.  Our dogs ran free. We hunted. We camped. We snowmobiled. We built a lot of memory trees there. It has a root system that we still thrive off of~~ memories are roots too.

Now here we are~back in the city of our youth. It’s new to our kids but for Leroy and I it is where we first began. Where our family has its roots~deep roots. We dated here, we fell in love, got married and began our life together here.  And as I look forward to what may come in the next few years: kids growing up , leaving home, maybe getting married and having babies of their own….we will build another system of roots.  And I’m so going to love this next decade of planting a network of roots that stands the test of time .

and STOP.

Go here and see who else is posting about ROOTS for Five Minute Friday. And maybe join in too! It’s fun!

 

LOOK {five minute Friday}

I’m on an iPad and I don’t know how to cut, paste,link,nothin’.

So if you want to know what Five Minute Friday is all about you need to go here to read up on it: http://www.lisajobaker.com/five-minute-Friday

LOOK

I am on a roof- the 7th day actually.
Kind of poetic really….7 days on a roof have allowed me a vantage point I rarely see.

I look east and I see sunrise and fog lifting.

I look south and I see waves of clouds and rolling hills.

I look north and I see miles away the grain terminals bursting with this years’ abundant harvest.

I look west and I see glorious sunsets, geese flocking to nearby fields for night.

I love this view. And though my hands hurt, my legs are weary, my back aches and my feet throb I am thankful that God has allowed me this one last glimpse of His marvellous creation. I am in love with these skies and the One who painted them. I am inspired by clean air, golden fields, the sounds of migration and the warmth of this autumnal sunshine.

I look and I see. And it is all good.

I reach~I grasp {Five Minute Friday Post}

I’ve been doing this Five Minute Friday practice for 3 weeks now. Don’t know what it is? Check it out here.

I’m going to write unedited, unhindered, unscripted for 5 minutes starting NOW…….

 

GRASP…….

 

I crawl into bed way past the early morning hours of a new day.

I am worn and weary.  My body is weak with pain and overstimulated nerves that seem to torment me day and night these days.  Stress.  I shouldn’t, but I do. I stress and worry.  I lose sleep and pace in and out of my house~ looking for a meaning and a stabilizing of all of this upheaval.  Life.  Complicated. Messy.

 

And in the midst of my worry, I reach~I grasp.  And my hand finds you.  In the dark, in the stillness. You are there. Breathing heavy and carrying your own worried dreams into the sleep that eludes me.  We touch and for a moment, we forget.  And this is the precious beauty of us.  We are ONE. And when the reaching and the grasping lead to holding and sharing, this is when we conquer those fears and stresses together.  And that is when we rest.

 

Stop.

 

Now go HERE to Five Minute Friday’s posts on the subject of GRASP and read what all of these other bloggers are sharing too!

How Wide….{Pray for Emma}

It’s that time again…Five Minute Friday.  Did you hear? Did you know? I started joining this fabulous group of writers for 5 minutes of uninhibited writing just last week. It was my kick-start to blogging for this fall. And here we are, it’s Friday again. I haven’t even given more than 10 seconds thought into what I’m going to write for the theme this week so this should be really fun. Unless it’s really lame. We shall see.

WIDE  ~ that is the topic……here we go…….starting…………..NOW

This week I got to witness something that I have witnessed before: the width, the depth and the breadth of the Body of Christ rallying and covering a family in prayer at a critical time.

You see, my former pastor’s daughter Emma, is in ICU at Sick Kids hospital in Toronto. She was admitted last week with double pneumonia and within a couple of days the diagnosis turned to leukemia.  She is only 15(barely).  Actually, she will be 15 in October.   I remember the day she was born.  A sunny October day and our church once again had prayed that baby into thriving liveliness.  Her mom; on bed rest for 6 months with a plancental abruption. The doctors said this baby would not make it but our church rallied and prayed. The width of those prayers went farther than my mind at the time could comprehend.  And she was born, healthy and strong.

Today we rally again and the throngs of churches and people from one end of this land to the other. People from other nations. People from the south and the north, the east and the west.  People who know them and people who don’t.  We pray. We wake.  At 3 a.m. . At 5 a.m.  When God calls, we wake.  We pray and we cover this girl with a mighty wind of God’s healing words.

How deep.  How high and How WIDE is His love for us.   Pray for Emma.

 

And update: May 20, 2013 Emma flew fully healed, into the arms of Jesus.  See this post: https://prairiejuan.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/planting-flowers-and-the-rhythm-of-grief/

Done.

Today I Focused {Five Minute Friday}

I haven’t blogged for a really long time and honestly I haven’t been able to just sit down and come up with something concise and thoughtful. There are lots of partial posts, starting lines, sentences and topics piling up in my drafts folder but I just haven’t been able to ………..FOCUS.  So what the hay………Lisa-Jo Baker and her fabulous crew of Five Minute Friday bloggers have peaked my interest just enough to think that maybe I need to jump in.  And wouldn’t you know, Lisa Jo’s topic for this week is indeed FOCUS.  So, here goes nothin’ : no editing, no stopping, no pre-planning, back-tracking or over-thinking…I’m just going to blog for 5 minutes straight…..

AND …BEGIN….

We moved into our new house almost 7 weeks ago.  I am at a loss for routine, structure and where I really belong.  I have lived in the city…a long time ago.  18 years ago actually.  But now, with 4 kids and their lives I find that it is different and I am lost.

Boxes are still packed and stacked.

The kitchen is a disaster! Too small, too disorganized, not enough cabinets! I can’t get creative in there.

Our bedroom? It’s a mess too. And all my husband has asked for is that things just get sorted out, put away and organized.  Does he know who he’s talking to?  Yikes.  Trouble. That’s me.  The unfocused problematic child of procrastination and distraction.

So today, I stopped. Stopped waiting. Stopping *Pinning*.  Stopped wondering, pondering, thinking and re-thinking. Today I did what I always do the first week after we move(we’ve done this 10 times before…did I mention that??)…

I rearranged the furniture in my living room.  Like 3 times.  I had to get it right. It wasn’t right . It was too straight, too long, too boring.   I had to change it up. I unwrapped pictures to hang.  I hung a rusted star garland.  I angled that TV cabinet and moved that ridiculously heavy pump organ.

I focused on one thing. One goal. One room.  And you know what?  I love it.  It feels like me. It feels like home. It feels like I want to do another room.  I have waited for this feeling for weeks.  And today it happened.

I focused.

AND…….Done. 🙂

Click on this image to see what Five Minute Fridays are all about. And maybe….you can link up the next time!