Worship {Five Minute Friday}

August 30, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

It’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.

This week’s prompt is….

Worship

Churches aren’t perfect. They’re made up of messy, broken, difficult, cantankerous, controlling people who have all been amazingly forgiven.

Forgiveness is the song of the church. It’s the hymn that’s sung over and over by a great God who is bigger than us because He can forgive so much more readily, so much more easily, so much more forgetfully than we ever can.

Church is supposed to be the place you come when you have no where else to go. The place where we can be raw and real and so much less than perfect. The place you need after the Sunday morning meltdowns over shoes and hairbows or the sanctuary you crave after chaos and confusion have had their reign everywhere else.

But the church itself? That’s not worship. That’s a place that feeds worship and communion and fellowship.

But worship…that can happen when you aren’t even looking for it because He’s always looking for you.

I’ve gone to church my whole life and been in many different settings from mountainside chapels to stained glassed steeples.

But in May I sat and held a friend while she cried from the depths of her soul and there was nothing to be said except to invoke the name of Jesus. It didn’t look like worship.

But it was.

Always, always, that is worship at its truest. The call to Christ and the forgiveness of sins that tears down the veil.

May you experience it today when you need it most.

Small {five minute friday}

August 16, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

This week’s prompt is….

Small

The wide wood planks are the color of honey and just as sticky under the the baby’s chair but they still sparkle through the grime when the summer sun hits full-force at five o’clock in the afternoon.

Yellow-gold walls disguise crayons and remnants of art-displaying scotch tape and the baseboards are witnesses to three babies who have learned to scoot and crawl and walk across the floors of a home that was never meant for four.

A house that was never meant for four. Because this home certainly was.

There’s a garden plot he and the girls tilled by hand and there are splatters all over the carport because I let them help paint our “new” table. My fridge has never opened all the way because there’s a wall in the way and sometimes one can’t get through the door for all the babies and shoes and kittens.

It’s so small here that my mother told me when we moved in that I could never have another baby in this home.

I’ve had two more.

And I’ve learned that small is a state of mind and not a state of hospitality.

Friday Five · gus · motherhood

Story {Five Minute Friday}

August 2, 2013 Lindsey P. Brackett6 Comments

This week’s prompt is….

Story

Usually I’m a good girl, a rule follower, a yes, yes, yes, responder who just wants to please and takes everything as it comes. I only really said no once.

I said no to the curly haired, dimple cheeked, screeches at his big sisters when he wants more juice baby boy sleeping in the crib down the hall.

I didn’t want him at first. And that’s the bare ugly truth of what is becoming my story. When I found out I was pregnant, I cried for days. I hid in the shower and sat on the floor and could barely hold up my head because my story wasn’t supposed to be the girl who quit her job and was just a stay at home mom. My story was supposed to be doing great things and writing profoundness and making differences and finally getting to breathe after three girls and a brief career.

I was ready for my story. What I wanted.

Thank God I’m not in charge of what I want. Thank God He knew I needed that baby to be my story of grace and redemption and brokenness and life and love.

I want him now. I want him to be wholly the man the Lord has set him apart to be. So much more than this weary selfish mama could ever raise him to be.

I want my story to become his story; how there’s always a plan and a purpose and a gift when we say yes to God.

Friday Five · writing

In the Morning’s In Between {five minute friday}

June 28, 2013 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

It’s time for Five Minute Friday! Come one, join the party. Everybody’s doing it 🙂

In Between

It’s still dark enough that I have to squint to see the keys I’m not as familiar with on the laptop I’ve balanced on my lap on a sofa that was painted in nailpolish Monday afternoon. It’s still quiet enough that I can hear the birds in the backyard and the creaking of bed springs as my husband shifts in an effort to avoid the getting up. It’s still early enough for the big ones to be sleeping and my little man is talking to himself in his crib behind closed door not realizing I am up and available to give him his morning banana and cup of milk.

It’s in between the solitude of rest and the chaos of life that I’ve found my moment to write.

I know people who work late at night after bed, people who carve out their own space during naptimes and drop off times, people who can work with the buzz of children in their background and the hum of the words in their heart.

I need the quiet. So I”m trying to get up in the in between, trying to make at least one hour of the day about seeking and sorting and stumbling through this new path.

Five minutes goes by faster than you might think.

Friday Five · motherhood · reflections

The Rhythm of It All {five minute friday}

June 21, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett2 Comments

Rhythm

I turn dough over onto my table worn slick and tired by the beat of plastic spoons and the bottles of nail polish spilling over and the bread kneading on its cracked surface. There’s flour everywhere but especially on me, and the tv is too loud and the girls are too bicker-y and the baby is trying to climb up my legs and I’m kneading dough.

And I wonder: how in the world did Ma Ingalls do all this? Did she make bread in the quiet before the sun rises and the non-stop pulsing of children begins? Did she ever throw up her hands and want to quit? What did any of them do, these pioneer women who managed all these households where everything was made from scratch and there was no playground at Chic-fil-a to escape to and laundry had to be hung to dry and then ironed and then put away? What did they do about the arguing and the messes and the complaining and the tired?

Or are we just fooling ourselves? Have we created worlds that are so unnatural and so hyped up and so tricked out that we can’t fathom a world of simplicity and routine that exists just for survival?

I knead dough and turn it over and work it smooth and cover it with a dishcloth. The baby has moved on to the leftover pop-tart on the floor under the table and the girls have settled on some stupid sitcom I should make them turn off and the table needs cleaning before lunch can be served.

But I settle into a chair with a forgotten cup of coffee and listen for a moment. To the rhythm of this crazy life.

It’s Five Minute Friday everyone! Grab a laptop, a pen, an iphone, whatever and join up!