wordpress stats plugin

Real or Not Real? ~ Five Minute Friday

8:32 am By


“Real or not real?” The lead characters in The Hunger Games resort to asking each other this as they try to sort out what really happened and what was poison-induced hallucination.

“Real or not real?” I ask myself as I sit in the intensive care waiting room while our youngest undergoes a procedure. We spent hours and days there twelve years ago with our oldest. Memories are thick and my emotions raw as I remember and think, “How can we be here again?”

“Real or not real?” My oldest son choosing between anesthesia through a mask and through an i.v. He’s never had anything before, but he’s having surgery and I can’t believe I am watching a third child go under.

“Real or not real?” Reaching back into old dusty memories and trying to make sense of how they combined to form the woman I am now. The colors have faded and the details have blurred, and when I talk with family who were there too, their memories aren’t the same.

“Real or not real?” Watching people I love hurt people I love. Wondering why and how we got there and what to do to be a catalyst for healing. And will healing require radical amputation?

***

On Fridays, we write for fun, unedited, and for only five minutes. Today’s prompt was Real. Visit The Gypsy Mama to join in or read more posts.

This post contains affiliate links.

 

Filed UnderFive Minute Friday 10 Comments

Community: Born in an Airport ~ Five Minute Friday

6:45 am By

I scanned the faces in the terminal nervously, looking for a glimpse of the tiny little avatars that streamed by in my Twitter feed. We were about to spend a week with each other, and here was the moment of truth. So many were “well-known” online and I was no-one, and I wondered if I would be accepted.

I spotted them, a trio of smiles making a beeline for me. Elizabeth’s smile was like sunshine and everyone laughed and hugged and we all talked at once and my heart exploded. Writers. Christians. My people.

We sat around a long table in the airport restaurant, eating our last American meal for a week and waiting for the rest of the team to trickle in from cities across the country. Very few had traveled overseas, let alone to a poor country like Bolivia. All of us left family behind. But we were a new family, an internet family finally together in person. I knew we’d be friends for life.


©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision

 

Five minutes is barely enough time to share even this small snippet of what swirled through my head when I read The Gypsy Mama’s writing prompt for Five Minute Friday this week, “Community.”  What do you think of when you hear the word “Community”?

 

Filed UnderBolivia, Five Minute Friday 10 Comments

Molasses Morning (#fiveminutefriday)

8:36 am By

It’s been a few weeks since I participated in Five-Minute Friday. Today’s prompt is “light.” If you want to join in, write for five minutes, post, and link up with The Gypsy Mama.

***

A small voice breaks through the molasses-thick fog of sleep.

“Mom, I had a bad dream.”

Awake enough to remember that Scott had a breakfast meeting, I slide over and the little one climbs onto my already-warmed spot. I curl around him and press my nose into his fuzzy head to soak up as much of him as I can in this quiet moment. He presses his icey toes into my legs and sinks into the mattress.

What seems like 10 seconds later, he rolls over. “Mom. It’s light now.”

I grunt something that I hope sounds like “Ok” or “I know” and roll onto my stomach. It’s a day off and I want to stay in bed as long as possible.

Another 10 seconds. He is crawling over me to the other side of the bed. “Mom, the sun is up. When are you going to wake up?”

“Honey, it will get light earlier and earlier this month. We can still sleep when it’s light.” But I’m waking up a little more. Enough to know that coffee sounds really good. And my breath is disgusting even to me.

I sit up, swing my legs over to the side, and thinking only of the toothpaste in the bathroom and the coffee in the kitchen. He bounces down to the floor, delighted that our day has finally started.

 

 

Filed UnderFamily, Five Minute Friday, Parenting 11 Comments
« Older Posts

Switch to our mobile site