Listen To Me {five minute friday}

June 14, 2013 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

So on Fridays, I like to just write. Freely without much forethought, just writing to see what comes out. Lisa-Jo hosts this party and her blog’s my favorite and my go-to for encouragement on motherhood and writing. Five Minute Friday, check it out, write your own, link it up, leave some love.

Listen

There’s a bird outside making its morning chirping so loud I can hear it over the humming of the fridge and the cranking of the AC and the whirring of the laptop in this early morning quiet. Their doors are all closed and I can’t hear them breathing but I know they’re there waiting until the coffee maker dripping or the cabinet door squeaking or the faucet running clean water makes them think it’s time to rise.

I’m hiding in the quiet trying to listen. And trying not to.

Trying not to hear a voice that sometimes whisper this is no good, this is not worth it, this will never amount to food on the table or a new pair of shoes or engine repairs on the truck. Trying not to believe the lie that if I try, I’m going to be crushed under by the weight of words and judgement and criticism.

Trying instead to listen hard to the hum in my head, the buzz of language and beauty and grace and story that begs to be told somehow in all different ways.

View: Five Minute Friday

May 24, 2013 Lindsey P. Brackett7 Comments

It’s #FiveMinuteFriday and I’m up for the twitter party. First time ever. Head over to Lisa-Jo’s and check it out.

Prompt: View

There’s no view like the one of your beloved strapped to a gurney with about a million wires of all shapes and sizes and colors coming out of his chest. There’s no view like the messy life you see flashing before your eyes in a heartbeat that lasts an eternity when the doctor man whose kids you’ve coached tells you your 32 year old husband is having a heart attack.

That view will terrify you right down to your knees and leave you shaking for hours after even when the diagnosis has changed and the prognosis is suddenly so much more this side of positive.

But the view that comes from the inside of your eyelids while you sob out hot tears and some sweet stranger holds your hand and whispers Jesus, that’s a view that will change you. Forever.

The month of May has been tough for my amazing community, but these women who surround me with their children and their meals and their smiles and their prayers are amazing. The Lord is building up a mighty rock among us as we continue to grieve and believe. This week they are praying me through my husband’s illness.

faith · Friday Five

Comfort {five minute friday}

May 11, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

It’s a bit late for me to be blogging, but it’s the first quiet time I’ve really had all day and the first time this week I’ve been able to compose thoughts into words that might be comfort.

If there’s anything I’ve learned this week, it’s that comfort comes in many ways. It comes in steady rain like tears. It comes in purple sunsets over Afghan deserts. It comes in rows and rows of those who love others before themselves.

It comes in extra car seats so there’s room for just one more. It comes in lattes and hazelnut creamer and pink hydrangeas. It comes in messages and tweets and Instagram.

It comes in nails painted blue.

These little ordinary moments of comfort, they can never be enough to take away the hurt. But, hopefully, gracefully, they can be enough to get you through another day.

This week my community is in fervent prayer for a family who lost their infant daughter. Will you join me in lifting them up to the only One who can bring comfort?

faith · Friday Five · motherhood

Broken: Five Minute Friday

March 30, 2013 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

I knew many would use today’s prompt as a beautiful expression of the raw broken-ness we see in Christ crucified. I, too, shudder when I ponder the depth and magnitude of that moment that broke the cycle of sin and condemnation.

But this word…when I saw it, I thought immediately of a post I wrote a few weeks ago. A moment about how motherhood can make me feel broken. Because lately, that’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot. How mothering breaks us in so many ways.

It’s broken my confidence. It’s broken my plans. It’s broken my solitude. It’s broken my heart.

Motherhood is tough, unyielding, hardcore, breath-gasping broken-ness. And last night when I lay awake after settling the preschooler back at 3 a.m., I thought about that cross, that pain, that humiliation that broke the body of my Savior, and I thought how I could never do that, could never endure the pain meant for someone else….

unless that someone was my child.

Yes, motherhood breaks us. It breaks us of our selfishness so that we can identify with Christ for just a nanosecond of that moment and understand why He would allow himself to be broken….

for His children.

Friday Five · motherhood

Cancelled Again {five minute friday}

January 25, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

It happened again last night. The one stop call that tells us school is cancelled in our little neck of the woods because of the possibility of inclement weather.

I’m pretty sure Northerners chuckle at us over that. If they care to notice at all that northeast Georgia is getting a bit of ice on roads and back decks and front patios.

So again. Just like last Friday. Extra hours at home. Which is fine. Which is great. Which is sweet if I’m in the right mood to just enjoy some extra time with my girls and their artistic temperaments and their love of 80s shows on Netflix.

Except I wasn’t really. I’m in an organizing mood. A cleaning mood. A clear out the cobwebs kind of mood. Doesn’t really work with a houseful of ornery kids.

Again I pick up the toys. Again she dumps out the box of My Little Ponies and packs them into the carrying case for the American Girl dolls. Again I sort the legos from the zoobles from the Happy Meal toys and again I find them scattered all over the house, a trail of breadcrumbs from the kitchen to the bedrooms to the hiding places under the computer desk. Again I sweep the floor and again he drops puffs and bits of bread just to see them fall. Again I stack the books spine to the edge of the shelf for easy access only to find them piled beside the bed and shoved between the couch cushions.

Again, again, again.

Yet I keep trying, I keep hoping, I keep believing that if I just fix it again, this time it will stay put away.

Someday that will work, and then, am I really going to be wishing to do this all over again?