Category: Friday Five

31 Days of Living Local · Friday Five

The Local Ordinary {Five Minute Friday}

Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

Because even though it’s October and I’m writing about Living Local for 31 days straight, it’s also Friday, and I’m learning to find my place in a local online community of gifted writers who let it all fly free for Five Minute Friday.  We’re linking up over at Lisa Jo’s where she makes the ordinary crush of goldfish crackers on the floorboards seem like magic.


The other day I missed my turn into the hospital in downtown Atlanta where my niece was born and found myself winding back into tree lined streets with craftsman houses from the 1930s and 40s whose yards have shrunk but whose hearts have remained the pulse of this city.

Right there barely 300 yards beyond the shrubbery were chain restaurants and bus terminals and a major metropolitan hospital, but back here was just an ordinary neighborhood. Pumpkins on porches, wreaths on doors, cars at the curb.  Runners and strollers and jogging mamas and at the end of the street a park protecting the last of the green space from development.

I love where I live.  But sometimes that pulse catches me a bit.  That idea that I could have an ordinary life in an extraordinary place and expose my children to more museums and cultures and life than I do right now.

But my ordinary heart beats in rhythm right here.  Its pulse is mountain majesty and fewer choices.  Its culture is quilters and potters and painters and tradesmen.

It’s the life I’m giving my children so that someday they can choose which ordinary is theirs.

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Friday Five · motherhood

True {five minute Friday}

Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

IFive Minute Fridayt’s Friday and that means it’s time to write for five minutes, no editing, no backtracking, no over thinking (I broke all these rules last week). Lisa-Jo provides a prompt and in this community, we write, and then we encourage one another. So link it up, friends, and share the love because “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” E.B White via Lisa Jo.

This week’s prompt is….

True

Yesterday I cried hot tears of frustration and guilt in the library parking lot and then I talked myself off the ledge and into the story hour and across town for chicken nuggets and my mama and a sweet friend who always gets it.

This morning was better, and I could feel it, the metaphorical turning of the corner in my soul. I could do this stay-at-home gig more and I could write and I could coordinate and I could feel God move.

Then the three year old tantrum woke up the seventeen-month old napping and the spiral downward started spinning.  Frustration began to mount and the gulping drowning in the motherhood began.

Because I am never enough.

I am never good enough or strong enough or patient enough.  I can’t make the right decisions and I can’t figure this out.

I thought it would be easy. I thought it would be fulfilling in all the ways it’s not.

I thought being home would make me a better mom. That’s the honest truth and it’s an honest lie to believe.

Nothing can make me a better mom except me and Jesus.

In case you’re interested here’s a little truth about getting a girl’s ears pierced at the mall. 

Friday Five · giveaways · MOPS

She {Five Minute Friday}

Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

IFive Minute Fridayt’s Friday and that means it’s time to write for five minutes, no editing, no backtracking, no overthinking (I broke all these rules last week). Lisa-Jo provides a prompt and in this community, we write, and then we encourage one another. So link it up, friends, and share the love because “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” E.B White via Lisa Jo.

This week’s prompt is….

She’ll come in with her arms full of bags casseroles and sippy cups and the extra paci hanging from her pinky. She might have yelled this morning and rushed and fought her way out the door and wondered if the ends will justify the means.

She might come in alone, her few precious hours when they are all in school or at Nana’s chosen to spend with others who rock the night with babies in swings and the mornings with tall cups of hazelnut caffeine. She might be timid or just plain afraid or too overwhelmed to know if she belongs or not.

She might be cute in her chevron print.  She might be secretly wearing the only pair of pants that zip. She might be hating the tall blonde who looks like a model and sighing in secret relief to see someone else who just is happy to have on a clean tshirt.

She might laugh. She might cry. She might connect. She might be glad she came.

I know I will be.

It’s MOPS Friday for my group and we’re filling our fellowship hall and every room in the preschool wing. Pray for us please?

Have you entered my giveaway?  Speaking of she...Marcy’s book is for all of you who have struggled with infertility and felt alone or for those of us who have been on the outside of a friend’s struggle and wondered how to help.  Click here to enter!

faith · Friday Five · motherhood · reflections

Mercy {five minute friday}

Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

IFive Minute Fridayt’s Friday and that means it’s time to write for five minutes, no editing, no backtracking, no overthinking (I broke all these rules this week). Lisa-Jo provides a prompt and in this community, we write, and then we encourage one another. So link it up, friends, and share the love because “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” E.B White via Lisa Jo.

This week’s prompt is….

Mercy

You know it doesn’t always have to be as big as a home in Kenya.  That’s amazing and beautiful and makes me want to get on a plane tomorrow–

but I can’t.

Because it’s here too.  In the small and the everyday and the ordinary.  It’s in the open invitation to lunch so that everyone feels included and it’s in the understanding smiles you exchange without words to the mother who had the screaming toddler on the playground.  It’s in the hands of the friend who took my tray one night at McDonald’s when I was seven months pregnant and three kids in already and so overwhelmed that a single milk spill unraveled my control.

I’ve found it in the quiet words of the secretary when she doesn’t chastise me for calling for the third time in a row to change pickup arrangements.  Sometimes it swings loudly and shrieks joy and “Look at me, mommy!” after a morning of tempers and strong wills.  I think it’s given in the simple, like the times we choose to know or speak or ask rather than assume or complain or judge.

Unfortunately we who claim to know Christ can give it least.  We forget we were once all women at the well or thieves on the cross begging for someone to give us water that will truly quench our thirst.  We take it for granted and we forget to give it away.

“Do justice, LOVE mercy, walk humbly with your God…” ~Micah 6:8

It’s an act, a verb, a command this love mercy is.

It’s what happens when we get past our version of what should be and start living with and loving on the version that is.  Wrapping ourselves in the safe bubble wrap of But, I’m praying for her isn’t always enough. Sometimes people need the apology they don’t deserve and the hug that isn’t forced and the kinship that isn’t fake and the home that saves their babies.

Sometimes we forget how incredible it can be to show a little mercy.

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Confession: I almost didn’t write a post today.  I tried and failed last night and if I’d been speaking I’d have said it was because my tongue was thick and clumsy and couldn’t form words, but I was writing so instead it was my fingers that couldn’t seem to find that magic moment with my brain to put what my heart was singing down into coherent sentences and imagery.  So I gave up and went to bed and tried again this morning and gave up again.  Then I went about my day and waited for God to speak. He did to me, and I hope he did to you too.

One of the reasons I was so finger-tied is because today’s prompt was written by Alia, who is one of my new favorite people.  Between the praise I got from her and Lisa Jo last week, I figured I could retire from blogsphere a pretty happy little writer.  I wanted to do justice to her words and to this cause because loving on and supporting new mothers from anywhere and from any walk of life is so near and dear to my heart.  It’s why I coordinate MOPS; it’s why I’ll be pleading again for more workers because today in Chic-fil-a I didn’t invite moms because we don’t have the space for their children.  That’s an awful feeling, to know someone might need the resources you have but there’s no way to offer them without more physical or financial support.  I know most of you can’t come over my way and rock babies on Friday mornings, but you can click here and read about Mercy House and the amazing good it’s providing these mothers who are our sisters in motherhood.

And if you’ve been stalking Alia and me on twitter, you can find the recipe for fried okra right over here.  

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Friday Five

Red {Five Minute Friday}

Lindsey P. Brackett1 Comment

IFive Minute Fridayt’s Friday and that means it’s time to write for five minutes, no editing, no backtracking, no overthinking. Lisa-Jo provides a prompt and in this community we write and then we encourage one another.  So link it up, friends, and share the love because “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” E.B White via Lisa Jo.

This week’s prompt is….

Red

There’s one of those red solo cups someone wrote a song about on my counter but there’s nothing medicinal in it. Just remnants of sweet tea and the fatigue of a mama too tired to think about the load unload rinse wash repeat cycle of dishes for one more weary day.

That cup’s a token of a week gone wrong and right in so many ways it should be reality television.  But it’s not.  It’s just my life.

It’s all our lives really.  Days that are harder than the one before and weeks that suck all of life’s joy down the drain with the soggy cheerios because someone said or someone did or someone didn’t or someone should’ve.

I made dinner from scratch tonight and fried okra while shielding my favorite shirt from grease splatters and the toothcutting baby boy pulled my legs and the homework was almost done and my big girls shelled a peck of purple hulled peas.  But I couldn’t bring myself to use real glasses.  It was too much in a long list of too many reasons why I felt deflated and flattened and red solo cups were easy.

In a week of hard choices and difficult decisions and bitter tears and hurt hearts, choosing the cup I didn’t have to wash was easy.