3 hours ago
Showing posts with label Five Minute Friday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Five Minute Friday. Show all posts
2:07 PM
I stare at the pile of 4x6 photos, trying to muster up the gumption to start sorting. Over the last ten years I have fallen woefully behind on getting photos printed, and in a manic spurt of motivation, I have printed two years worth of photos all at once. They arrived in a big jumble, and I must pick through them one by one, separating them out by year and month, and then put them into albums.
There are no shortcuts here, so I sit crosslegged on the floor and start twelve piles, one for each month of a year that was finished a decade ago. As the photos slowly start resembling chronological order, I find myself lingering over each one a little longer. There is one of that time we went to the zoo when my oldest was a baby. There is one of his first Thanksgiving, and I can see how his hair stood straight up in a golden fuzz around his sweet face.
I watch myself in these photos, as my belly goes from flat to pumpkin-esque, as my next child grows inside. Then there she is, squinted eyes and puckered newborn lips surrounded by dark hair against the hospital sheets.
Before I know it, not just one hour but several have passed. The photos are sorted, and I have painstakingly put them into albums. An entire day's work, and I've only improved the status of this ridiculously delayed photo project by 25 months. It took me six months to get organized and motivated enough to accomplish even this, and I feel that these albums will never be complete.
But I will keep trying, I'll keep finding pockets of time to sort through our family's history and preserve it as my kids grow and change more with every year. Even in this one day, I've watched my first and second babies go from a bundle in the hospital to chasing and popping bubbles in the backyard, from a black and white outline on an ultrasound to crawling across the floor with a two-toothed grin and sparkling eyes. I want to watch the rest of my children join our family in photos, I want to watch as my husband and I gain a few gray hairs and laugh lines, as these albums are slowly completed, one by one, year by year.
And when this season of parenting children in our own home is complete, when I close the last album containing their childhood, I hope I can say I we all enjoyed it to the full.
Stop.
Outside, my little brown-haired boy, dirty shirt and bare feet, is spinning furiously on a tire swing hanging from a pine tree. A curly-haired girl laughs and her hair shines as she spins him faster.
Farther down the hill, the boy who made me a mom is jumping on the trampoline with my last baby, who doesn't look like a baby anymore. The trampoline squeaks, and he gets a mischievous look on his face while she shrieks in delight as she is bounced high into the air.
The leaves on the wax current bushes are still green, but that indescribable green that occurs when there is gold shimmering underneath. Our old hound lays on the porch, his head resting on his paws, his sides moving in and out evenly as he naps in the sunshine.
A puff of air ruffles my hair, and my husband comes to the kitchen for a midday snack before heading back upstairs to work. Sounds of the piano come from the other room as my oldest daughter plays a couple keys; and then she mutters to herself as she puzzles out the notes on her sheet music. A cheerful Christmas song fills my house as she tries again, and I realize that the season of our Savior's birth will be here before I know it.
But for now, I sit here, listening to the hummingbirds whirring outside, the shouts and joy drifting in on the breeze, the single notes being plunked in the background. The porch glistens where it's still wet from the rain, but the sun is shining, and the blue sky is taking over the storm clouds. I'm surrounded by all the most beautiful sounds in the world, the sounds of my imaginings come true.
I think now about how years ago, when I pictured my future family and home, I couldn't have dreamed up anything better.
In this moment, on this last day at home before our summer is over, I am wonderfully happy and thankful.
"I disagree."
I took a deep breath at these words that have never failed to increase my heart rate, whether I'm hearing or saying them. What followed was the first real friendship conflict in my adult life, with a person I cared very much about. She tried to convince me of her point, and I tried to convince her of mine. Later on the phone, we were at an impasse. And I took another deep breath and said "You know, it's okay if we disagree. We don't have to agree on everything to be friends."
It's a lesson that has been reinforced over the many years since then, and I've had more and more friends who have shown me how to disagree well. Dennis Prager also taught me something about disagreements between friends with his refrain about the goal of discussions, which he says should be clarity, not agreement (example).
Certainly there are times when a correction may be required between brothers and sisters in Christ on issues that can be obviously cleared up by the word of God, the Bible, as the standard to which believers should conform their minds and lives. But in general, I think "clarity over agreement" is a rule to live by when dealing with more nuanced disagreements. When I keep that principle in mind, it is much easier to be gentle and thoughtful in my responses, to speak the truth according to how I understand it in God's word with love. It also allows me to be more open to hearing out someone else's perspective, while clarifying my own thought processes on the subject.
As I think about the topic of disagreements, I'm also reminded of the Bible verse which says "faithful are the wounds of a friend" (Proverbs 27:6). I don't think this verse is saying that every wound by someone you think is a friend will be faithful - indeed we are fallen human beings, and we too often approach disagreements with pride and self-righteousness. But I think what this verse is saying, to both the person being confronted and the one doing the confronting, is to approach these discussions with the goal of wounding faithfully.
That means avoiding sarcastic jabs. That means seeking the good of your friend when you confront them, not seeking to be right. And that means that just because a friend may say "I disagree", it doesn't mean they are intending to hurt you. Indeed, if your friend is a true friend, the momentary pain brought by their challenge is likely meant as a faithful wound, for your good. And approaching confrontation from the perspective of striving to be faithful, and giving a friend that benefit of a doubt that this is their intention, can ultimately sharpen both of you. If it's handled rightly.
That's the trick, isn't it. Handling disagreement rightly. So difficult to do, but worthy of the effort of practicing at getting it right.
Stop.
This post is a participation in Five Minute Friday, which I would like to start practicing more regularly! I almost didn't write it, because disagreement - who wants to write about that? But I guess the point is to challenge and stretch myself a little, so I'm aiming to be back next week with another installment, even if it's another topic I don't want to write about.
I think this linkup is a bit of an exception to my general linkup dislike because you really can use the word prompt however you want, and the five minute timeline encourages honesty in a good way.
I'm going to join in, but you should know that I wrote for seven minutes, and I did add a few words here and there for clarity. Not exactly following the rules, but this is my blog, so I can do what I want! I might join in when the word is interesting, but if it's a stinker of a word, I will have no problems skipping it. Stay tuned, but for now, here is my first installment.
6:55 PM
It’s funny how one little word can take your mind on a whole new track. Purpose. A word that isn’t just a word, but seems to prompt a question.
"What is my purpose?"
That word and that question seems to come at an interesting time for me, because I have struggled with it. For the last couple years, I have lost sight not of my overall purpose, but my day-to-day purpose to a certain extent. I always have my overall purpose in mind because of the catechism our pastor’s wife taught us when I was a young teenager.
What is the purpose of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
That is always my ultimate purpose, and the purpose of every human being if they are willing to look and find it through what Jesus did for us in dying on the cross. He enables us to live out our purpose, the one that the human race lost in Eden. He got it back for us.
But still, my day-to-day, personal purpose has been wanting. For a while I tried to find it in this blog. Writers all around me seemed to be striving and reaching much bigger things - writing books, earning money, building a ministry.
I tried for a bit too, but it all just came up empty. Like chasing the wind.
This year I’ve been slowing down and realizing that my personal purpose won’t come from “making something of myself”. I think my greatest purpose comes into my room at an ungodly hour every morning, and asks if it’s time for breakfast yet. And I’m learning to stop striving and reaching for something bigger than the four brown-haired-heads slurping Fruit Loops and spilling milk.
I was looking too hard for something different that wasn’t there.
My purpose is sitting right there, at my kitchen table.
7:02 PM
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