It’s Friday, and I’m meeting up with the community of Five Minute Friday at the Gypsy Mama for some free writing fun. Here are the rules: follow the prompt, no extreme editing, write for five minutes flat and encourage the person who linked up just before you. Would you like to join?
Today’s word is FOCUS.
{GO}
It’s one of those weeks where my vision is foggy and fractured. Where I can’t quite seem to find up. It’s one of those weeks where it all feels so important, and I feel like my head is walking around separate from my body.
And my heart.
I wait for news from urgent care after my girl’s fall. We think her right arm is broken and that she’ll have to miss the soccer season, but it turns out just to require a sling for a week. (Grateful.) We wait on words about family, linger in some places of difficult in between, hear reports of loss too devastating to imagine.
Pieces of freelance projects streak past my eyes, and school papers fall into stacks on the counter.
I have a basket of clean sheets that’s sat in my room all week.
I have minor conversations that I keep reliving, and I have bad dreams about worms in fruit.
I am struggling to hone in.
My friends remind me to live simply. Let the other stuff go. Allow things to just float on by.
I remember a prayer retreat several years ago where I learned to think of my distracting thoughts like leaves on the river, and I watched them that day on the Sandy. My thoughts, my worries traveling on down to their home. And that day their home was not me.
Lala and I sit on the porch in the early afternoon sun, and it feels like ripe apples, and I am looking right into her beautiful eyes with their dark lashes. I am tracing the shape of her little feet with my fingers.
The thoughts have floated on by, and there we sit and smile, talking about the trees.
{STOP}
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived
Oh Ashley! This touched me. Sometimes nothing short of a child’s dimpled hand or little pudgey foot, and a spoon of peanut butter can set us right again when all is eddied and scattered. Bless little Lala! And bless you! I thank your friends for their good advice! xxoo
Yeah for Lala in all her wonderful sweetness, a spoon full of peanut butter in the sunshine and dear friends. :)
And that day their home was not me….loved that line! What a victory, to be able to let your worries go!! Great post.
Thank you for your comment, Brenda. It’s a challenge, but yes for little victories. Letting go of one worry at a time.
Wow…I totally get what your saying. I too feel this way, often…far too often. I am trying to live more simply than I have in the past — it is working, except when some of the busyness of life is out of my control; kids’ homework, school open house, activites of the children….the paperwork – oy!
This thought resonates — “It’s one of those weeks where it all feels so important, and I feel like my head is walking around separate from my body. And my heart.”
Thank you for your words and bless you in that intention to live simply. Life still swirls, things are still out of our control, but it does seem like when we have simplicity as a desire of our hearts, we are more likely to know what direction is “up” and What and who are most important. Peace to you.
Oh yes!!! very very close to my heart right now…
Thank you, Martha.
Your words are so true Ashley & I’m soo sorry my story gave you ” bad dreams about worms in fruit”!
Trying to live in the moment today with day 3 with my feverish little boy…please pray for him as I’ll be taking him to the doctor this afternoon!
I’m so sorry for what you’re going through with your sweet little guy. I’ll be praying. No, actually the weirdest thing — I’d had several nights of worm in fruit dreams before you even told me that awful story about your infested hand-picked blackberries! :)
Thanks for your prayers Ashley! I found out he has a bad ear infection (probably in both ears) & he’s starting on antibiotics.
That is soo weird about your dreams! :(
I don’t know why your words resonate with me, as they do with those who know you and those who know you through your words. I read them and feel them inside of me and always feel teary, touched, recognized. I thought of my little girl’s beautiful eyes and crinkled up nose and happy smile; bangs getting a little too close to her eyes, and how I made sure to stop and take them in today, and wish that I had taken them in more . . but tomorrow’s another day. Thoughts floating away like leaves is a beautiful image and helpful. Thank you for sharing that! Glad your little one is on the mend and that you can find your focus amid the fog, enjoy the little one in front of you and let those worrisome thoughts float on by . . . at least for a bit.
I wish as always, that the 5 minutes would go on! All the best to you and thank you for sharing your thoughts and words and encouragement with us. :)
E, your words have a beautiful effect on me, too. I so appreciate you sharing your response to what God has put on my heart to share — a blessed picture of full-circle encouragement. :-) And thank you for your telling of that tender moment with your precious girl, noticing and taking in the gift that is yours, right in front of you. Ahh.
Thank you so much Ashley. This is an amazing connection. I am listening for what God wants me to know and do and am seeing such beauty all around me, just by opening up my “eyes and ears”. I get many glimpses of what He needs me to know right here through your wonderful words and the encouragement and connection of your friends and family. Just had to share . . being brave! :)
Yay, e! You are brave. I am thrilled for how God unites hearts and how he uses our stories — one to another — to encourage, nudge, affirm, challenge, bless. And listening to God…what a good, good place to be. I need to continually be reminded to stop the yammering and open to what he is saying to me. :) Bless you, friend. Grateful for your presence here.