Five Minute Friday: Messy

Time flies and it's Five Minute Friday again. When we writers join up for five minutes of unplanned, messy writing. That's today's prompt: messy. 


This serving Jesus thing is messy.

I wake up to my selfishness every morning as I climb out of bed, tip-toeing ever so quietly so as not to wake my sleeping beauties. All I want is time for me. Time to think and wake up and drink coffee and read a bit before my day is full of spills and whining and dirty clothes and people calling and children asking and needs arising.

It's messy in this heart of mine as I fight frustration when five-minutes into my me-time the middle one awakes all full of needs like breakfast and hugs. How inconvenient. Such basic necessities that cloud my sight from the true needs of a self-sacrificing mama who is happy to serve her three little people who will all too soon be three big people.

It's messy when I finally settle in after a long day of "why nots" and bandaging wounds of neighborhood kids who I can't seem to make understand that if they would just wear shoes they wouldn't slice their feet open and then that family shows up on our porch to stay the night and they haven't eaten dinner yet.

Don't they know my messy heart doesn't feel like serving more today?

I wonder what their problem is. Don't they know how rude it is to show up unannounced?

Then I realize that the problem is in me. It's my selfishness and pride that says that I come first or at least that I have earned some time for self-focused relaxation.

It's messy this Jesus serving thing. But mainly because it's messy in this heart of mine.

Five Minute Friday: Friend

There I was, green as the jungle around me, trying to learn life here in this sweltering humidity and heat with a five month old and barely three year old. Learning new fruits and foods and how to take the laundry off the line when the flash rainstorms came.

I’d already killed my fair share of spiders and never seen so many needy children who flocked our home every afternoon. Overwhelmed.

Oh, how I longed for a girlfriend to lean in to!

And there she was. She just showed up on our porch with her adopted daughter and introduced herself. There long after dusk, she sat with us in our kitchen and we listened as she shared her story.

We didn’t even ask if she loved Jesus. We already knew.

There bloomed a friendship of laughter and even tears. She taught me to gut a fish and we laughed when our coffee wasn’t sweet enough for her. She helped me cut up my first whole chicken and laughed when I had no idea how to make a soup.  She could make one blindfolded.

I would like to say I have taught her some things, too, but the truth is I don’t know that I have. But I know I love her and her heart for Jesus. She teaches me about faith and I watch as she loves kids that aren’t her own by flesh and blood but are every bit her own by motherly love.

In fact she loved my own daughter before I ever even knew her.

“I’ve got Jesus, and that’s all I need,” she once told me.

Her life shows it. And our friendship makes me a better person.

She doesn't look like me and she only speaks my third language, but honestly, I don’t know if I would have survived this Jungle life without her.

Thank you, Jesus, for this godly lady you have put in my life to help me look a little more like You.

Five Minute Friday is where we writers join every Friday to write for five minutes straight about a word prompt that Lisa-Jo Baker offers up. Check it out here.