five minute friday: begin

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker today for (her final) Five Minute Friday, where we write for five minutes flat. No editing, no backspacing, no need for perfection. Just come as you are kind of writing. The prompt today is:  

BEGIN

My broken completions

my un-extraordinary conclusions

my irrevocable finishes

somehow, suddenly and without realization,

are becoming something new.

This fresh beginning,

well it isn't fresh to me.

They tell me it's new, it's right, it's good

and I bite my tongue and try hard to believe them

but it seems all I can taste is this stale, salty air

Sometimes beginnings are smudged dirty with grime marks,

lined with long forsaken heart fractures

filled with missing pieces

and splintered parts

and fragmented bodies

Sometimes beginnings simply look a whole lot like endings

and tonight I whisper to myself, quiet,

that is okay.

Because when tomorrow comes soft and fast and pink with daylight,

even when nothing seems new or fresh or right or good,

it will still be a beginning, after all.

This new hand lettered print of mine is on sale for 50% off with the coupon code "iambeautiful" at the Choose Brave Shop, choosebrave.bigcartel.com. (On sale til August 4th) 

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five minute friday: belong

Linking up with Crystal Stine today for Five Minute Friday, where we write for five minutes flat. No editing, no backspacing, no need for perfection. Just come as you are kind of writing. The prompt today is:

belong...

You don’t belong there. 

That’s what I think when I see you today. All hooked up with those watercolour bruises on your hand; the IV drip the lullaby which sings you to sleep. And you just don’t belong there. 

For the hundredth time, I wish it was me in place of you. I wished that during the diagnosis, during chemotherapy, but today I wish it harder. It still doesn’t come true.

You don’t belong there.

Not on that bed, or in that gown, or with that bracelet which bears your name wrapped all tight around your skinny wrist. 

You belong in a thousand, thousand other places. 

On the beach, your floppy hat perched right on your head, the yellow bucket swinging low in your hands, while you stoop gently to carefully pick up shell, after shell, after shell. 

Sitting on the porch swing, your book in your lap, a cup of coffee steaming hot beside you, with the birds chirping loud and you humming along to their tune. I’ll tell you a secret: your voice is even prettier then theirs. 

At the table around us, your hands clasped with mine and his and his, like an unbreakable chain, a force to be reckoned with, and we all know you’re the head of that force, because you’re stronger than all of us combined. 

You belong whole. You belong healthy. You belong here. 

And here you’ll be. 

Soon. 

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five minute friday: writer

GO

I always wanted to write, but never thought I could be a writer. 

I thought to myself, “Maybe I can write, but surely I cannot be a writer. Writers are qualified and experienced. They know what they’re doing. And I do not.”

But then Jesus whispered into the very depths of my soul these words: writers tell stories. Writers create. Writers breathe life into dark places. Writers inspire. Writers tell the truth. Writers encourage. 

I paused. I wanted to tell stories, wanted to create. I wanted to tell the truth, and to inspire and encourage. 

It dawned on me then. I wanted to be a writer. 

But am I qualified? Am I experienced? Do I even know what I am doing?

Doubt clouds my thoughts all the time - but still, I write. 

Even in my under qualification, my inexperience, my self doubt, I. Can. Be. A. Writer. 

Because writers are anyone who want to tell their story, and the story of others around them. 

I want to write. 

I want to be a writer. 

I write. 

I am a writer.

STOP

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker today

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