Five Minute Friday: Open

Open the flood gates of heaven!  We say that but do we mean it? Do we know what that would look like? Or only what we want it to look like? Prosperity, Goodness, Blessing, Overflowing Cups?

Open our eyes Lord, we want to see Jesus?  Do we? As He really is and not how we perceive Him to be?   Recently at the If: Gathering one of the speakers said (My BFF Jen Hatmaker): I thought I was confident in God, but I was just confident in my understanding of Him.

I would say only confident in my perception of who I want Him to be, not who He Is.

I say I want to be open.  Opening my hand to the poor, the widow and the orphaned.  Do I?  Why are my fists clenched.  It's not enough to SAY it!! I'm not talking about works here people... but again as my BFF Jen Hatmaker says: We have to stop blessing blessed people and serving the saved!  WOW.  That is from last years IF:Gathering and I'm still shaken by it.  Imagine what might happen if I listened to this years!  :)

What poor and widowed and orphaned do I know?  Oh yeah, my neighbors!  Across the street, next door, in my community.

Open.  My eyes, my hands, my heart.....

The One Where I {link up) for Five Minute Friday - Grateful

If you've heard me say it once  you've heard me say it forty times: #1000gifts.

Take the joy dare. 

Slow down to see the miracles. Because there's a little something special in every day.

I've written my three things sporadically over the past eight months, started on my birthday.  At first I wrote them faithfully, but then I didn't do it as often.  But I do it.  Every month is new I start up again.  :)

Here is a spattering of my #1000gifts

1. Life
2. Birthdays
3. Health
4. Pumpkin Lattes
5. Cake
6. Rain
7. End of Summer
8. Dishes
9. Laundry
10. Ezra 4

100. Fire
101. Burning Desire
102. Burned Dinner
103. Burning Bush
104. Sun
105. Muscles
106. Shared
107. Saved
108. Surrendered
109. Sweet Sweat
110. Leave It On The Pavement
I stopped counting in my journal and began on Instagram.  I really need to go back to the journal....

Three Things Hard:
Trust
Submission
Acceptance

Three Things Rising Up:
1. The sun with new mercy
2. The sun with new mercy
3. The sun with new mercy

Three gifts Stacked, Stashed, Stilled:
1. Dishes put away by the teenager
2. Chocolate
3. Quiet house in the morning... to go with my coffee

It's hard for me be to grateful, it really is.  Isn't that the jest of the garden.... of original sin..... ingratitude.  I'm ungrateful, for the smallest things... for the people around me who I love and adore (but they get on my nerves),  the fridge full of food (yet I can't find anything to eat), the music blasting on my stereo (and with Sirius XM, there's nothing good to listen to).

Todays Prompt Is: Three Gifts In The Dark

1. Sleep.  Must.Have.More! Yet grateful for good night's sleep!
2. RRC Track Workout.  I get up at 4AM to run in the dark on Tuesday.  I'm grateful for my running club that offers this kind of workout for my very low membership fee!
3. Stars.  You can't see stars unless it's dark.  There's beauty in that, both when you're looking and the stars and when it's dark in your life.  Look to the Morning Star! 

I've got to get better:  In counting my blessings. (and I don't mean stuff)In getting to 1000 gifts.  In slowing down to see the miracle.  So many things can go wrong in the course of a day, a week, a month... a life....  So many things that really in the scheme of things don't really matter.  What I was upset about last month, who can remember?  What about last year at this time?  Who knows? 

It's time to slow down to see the miracle, choose joy, pass joy onto others, teach our children to live with gratitude, not entitlement.  It starts with us.  It starts with me, the ungrateful.

The One Where I {link up} for Five Minute Friday - Friends

What a great topic.  

I'd say I have a lot of friends.  It's odd that at this stage in life I can say that.  I'm a runner and I'm a part of 3 running clubs so I know a lot of people.  But I only have 3 - 4 really good friends. 

Kat - I met her a small bible study group.  She stood up for me at my wedding.  We've been friends ever since.  I talk to her at least weekly.  We attend church together, eat together, run together, do life together, drink A LOT of coffee together!   I love her.  I love her like I love my sister.  Except she's like my older sister.  And as the oldest in my family, it's a treasure to have an "older sister".   She is beautiful and better yet, we share clothes and shoes and purses!!   She talks me off of the ledge when I'm just about over it about non sense and life.  We pray together and cry together.  Because I know her; I will be forever changed.  We were meant to be together.  She gets me.  She doesn't judge my craziness, she just loves me.  

Jen - although she's moved out of state now, I still talk to her weekly, sometimes daily.  We have children born a month apart.  Our kiddos have similar struggles, as do she and I.  We became fast friends when we met in Sunday School; 9 years ago.   She's taught me so much!  So much.  Like "everything's gonna be okay" particularly with my kiddo.  She's the first person who I met whose child has the same issue as mine.  I don't know how I would have gotten through elementary school without her!  If anything can get this momma to melt down it's her kiddo struggling in school life.  He struggles a lot, so melting down is common place around here.   And she listens to me rage against the machine!  And runs with me, and prays with me, and drink coffee with me, and does life with me.   My life is forever changed because I know her.  And she knows me.  She Knows Me!

My Runner Girls - they see my struggles, they pick me up, they encourage me, they push me, they believe in me.  We are a group of women with similar struggles, lives, goals.  The running keeps us going, but it's the life we're doing together that keeps us together.   It's the meals that show up at your door when you've come home from the hospital, it's the text that says "hey we missed you today, is everything okay." It's the understanding that today, not matter what's going on, we're gonna leave it all on the pavement.   We walk together, talk together, run together, grow together, encourage one another, cheer for one another, push, pull and carry one another to the start line of races and across the finish line… of life.  They believe in me when I don't.  And there's plenty of times I don't.  They believe in me anyway.  Encourage me anyway.  They know I'm capable of way more…. and push me to rise to the occasion!  Bless Them!!  They also like coffee, so there's that too!  :) 

It hasn't always been so… I haven't always had good friends.  I've struggled with acceptance and accepting.  But I've learned so much being in relationship with these women.  And drank many cups of coffee!! :) 

The One Where I Talk About Gardens {Five Minute Friday}

So this is my first Five Minute Friday.  The topic is gardens.  I love gardens.  I wish I could grow something, anything.  Every year I think I'll have a garden.  I buy all the stuff. I till, I plant, I feed, I water.  Nothing.

I weed, I water, I till, I feed, I watch, I wait.  Nothing.

I've said on more than one occasion that I can kill Ivy. I can and have.  I've even killed cactus!  Yea, I'm that girl.

My grandmother had a garden, a big garden, a garden we ate from.
My mom had a garden, a big garden, a garden we ate from.
My sister had a garden, a small garden, a garden she ate from.

I'm a Texas, a southern woman, and like Weezer says in Steele Magnolias, I grow tomatoes because its what we do! I don't make the rules! We're southern!

I've never grown a tomato.   I've tried for years.

I like the thought of a garden.  Of growing vegetables that I'll eat.  To feed my family. I think it's a beautiful wonderful thing.   This like in many areas of life, I need guidance, and by guidance I mean "a tour guide" someone to walk me through it and help me step by step.

I think there's something Edenic about gardening, it all started there in the garden.  What in my minds eyes looks like a beautiful garden.  Where you walk through and have plenty of fruits and vegetables to pick fresh off the plant or vine.  

It leaves me wanting, that I can't grow a garden, or even a plant!   Maybe this spring I'll try again.  maybe I should start with one plant, or maybe flowers, instead of a a full garden!