Five Minute Friday - Paint

I haven't done this in a while. I think my last one was in November! Yikes.

Every Friday Lisa-Jo Baker invites women (men, too, I guess) over to her blog to get a word prompt. Simply start a new blog post and write for five minutes on that topic. It's that simple! Although, it's not always easy.

Today's Five Minute Friday word is Paint.

GO

I enjoy painting. It's colorful. It's a fun kind of messy. You can roll it on smooth, create some nice brush strokes, or you can splatter it all over the place like crazy. I prefer that third method.

It's amazing how a new coat or color can change so much.

A white room looks open and clean, but if the paint starts to crack, peel, and get dirty, it doesn't look great. If we put a new coat over top, it will look bright again, but there will be bumps and blemishes. But if you sand the wall first, then put on the new coat, it will look like new again.

Say you have a room that's painted dark green. Only those who absolutely love that color are going to feel comfortable there. Otherwise, it feels gloomy, dark, and small. Dark colors can be depressing. But if you change the walls in the exact same room to, say, bright yellow, suddenly you feel happier, and the room looks brighter and more open.

The same goes for us. And I'm not just talking about clothing or makeup, although it applies there, too. But ourselves. Our hearts, souls, minds.

We start out as perfect little babies, but soon we start sinning, getting hurt, getting dirty, and pretty soon we're not gonna look so great. We can act like everything's okay and try to keep the blemishes inside, but eventually it will show no matter how hard we try. Like putting a new coat of paint over the old one. Or we can just let it take over us. Become depressed and gloomy, like the dark green room.

But if we go to the Lord and ask for His forgiveness, dig into the Word, and allow the Lord to heal us first, then when we put on that new coat, there's no ugliness underneath to creep through. We'll be like the dark room after it's painted bright yellow.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a women's conference, and one of the speakers, Sharon Norris Elliott, talked about putting on the armor of God, and how it won't fit right if we put it on over top of the other stuff we're wearing. We've got to remove our bad stuff before putting on our power suit, so that it will fit right and protect us in the way it's supposed to. You can get her book, Power Suit: The Armor of God Fit for the Feminine Frame, here.

To read more posts on Paint, click here. (Scroll down a bit to read Lisa-Jo's post and then scroll down some more to see the list of other bloggers who participated.) To find out more about Five Minute Friday, how it started, and how you can join in, click the button below.

Five Minute Friday - Fly

It's Five Minute Friday. Get the word prompt from Lisa-Jo Baker's blog, and then just write for five minutes without worrying about it being just right. Today's word is Fly.

GO

Flight. I love it. I understand the desire for it.

The first time I remember being on a plane was when I was five years old, headed to a family reunion in Illinois. I barely remember it. I know we chewed bubblegum and my little brothers chewed on tootsie rolls to keep our ears from popping. I think it happened anyway.

My grandfather introduced me to the show The A-Team when I was ten. It is still my favorite show. Murdock was and is my favorite character. The crazy pilot.

My grandparents volunteered at a Wycliffe Bible Translators office for many years. And every year we went to their annual family weekend at a local airport. I still look forward to it every year. No matter if I get to fly anywhere else, I have a guaranteed chance to fly once every year at the fair. Some years I take a helicopter ride, some years a small plane. The planes vary. Everything from a six seater to an eleven. And I go all day so I can watch them fly.

I love driving past our local airport. I don't often get to see anything taking off or landing. But the planes are lined up on the side of the runway. And at night, the lights of the runway are almost magical. The anticipation of flight.

I hope to be a pilot, someday. Meanwhile, I can take at least one ride a year, and continue to dream.

As Leonardo da Vinci said, "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

Do you like to fly? Do you love it? Besides planes and helicopters, I love roller coasters, and totally want to go skydiving someday.

To read more posts on Fly, click here. To learn more about Five Minute Fridays, click the button below. And have a wonderful weekend!

 

Rural Wednesdays - Foggy Out There

One morning this week I let our dog outside and realized how foggy it was in the distance! I just had to go grab my camera and take some shots :) 

(Click on photos to make them bigger.)

 

Check out other rural photos by clicking the button below. And then share your own!

Five Minute Friday - Tree

It's Five Minute Friday! Today's word is Tree.

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Trees... So beautiful. Some are tall, some wide, some scraggly and small like Charlie Brown's :) They provide oxygen, a place to live for many animals (and even some people!), their wood can be used for so many things, and when the leaves turn colors and fall it's simply gorgeous.

My favorite are Christmas trees. Decorated, of course. I don't like them to be gaudy. I like it to be simple and pretty. I love white Christmas trees. (Although they're artificial, obviously.)

I would love to see Redwoods someday. I so want to walk or even drive through one.

 
I love climbing trees. I always wanted a tree fort, but the only tree we had in our backyard was really small, barely even big enough to climb.

Dogwoods are another one of my favorites. So pretty when they're flowering, and the way the branches reach out in all directions.

Snow-covered trees are some of the most beautiful things you'll ever see, outside of Heaven.

Well, that's all for today :) Hope you enjoyed my photos. You can check out other posts on Tree here. And for more info on Five Minute Fridays, click the button below. Have a great weekend!

Rural Wednesdays - The Wheel Barrow

Hey! I'm joining in a great blog link-up I found called Rurality Blog Hop. Every Wednesday you can link up with your photo of rural life. I don't know about you, but I just LOVE photos. I love taking them and I love looking at them. So I was so excited when I found this on Monday and was anxious for Wednesday to get here! Then I went and forgot about it yesterday. Oh well. I am doing it now!

 Click on the button below to check out other bloggers' rural photos from this week!

Five Minute Friday - Laundry

(Doing this one a bit late again.) Five Minute Friday is where Lisa-Jo Baker posts a word prompt on her blog, and a few hundred of us now write for five minutes on that topic. Not thought out ahead of time or gone back over with an editor's eye, just written and posted.

This week's word was Laundry.

GO

I started doing my own laundry in my early teens. I got annoyed when what I wanted wasn't clean when I wanted it clean, so my mom said, why don't you do your own? I got my own basket and have been doing laundry ever since.

Since I knew how, occasionally I'd help my mom with the rest of the family's. Or I'd help my grandmother when we stayed over at her house. But I always did mine.

Now I'm married and do laundry for two. He actually does his own a lot now. Mainly because his clothes have oil and metal chips and grass stains and dog hair and things that I don't want to get mixed into my own clothes, so I would do separate loads anyway. But it's funny how much bigger his loads of laundry are and how much quicker a basket fills up when it's his clothes instead of mine.

If you look at our towel pile, you can tell they're ours. Blue and green towels with our initials monogrammed on, a wedding gift. A blue striped towel that's his and a pink striped towel that's mine. Beach towels with dolphins or colorful butterflies, and beach towels with skull and crossbones or swords. Haha.

Our sheets are a patchwork, mismatched mixture of what we had before we were married and what we've gotten since. Two almost identical red blankets, multiple partial sets of sheets because who knows where the rest of the set went. Pretty pillow shams and blue plaid pillow cases and everything in between.

And that's a good analogy for marriage. You start with two separate people, two separate piles of laundry. And then you combine them. Some things stay the same and some things become different. You lose some of who you were, not in a bad way, but in a changing way. And you gain some things, too. You keep parts of yourself but other parts change and adapt for the relationship.

I like it. It's hard work sometimes (with both laundry and marriage), but it's worth it.

Well, that's it for today. You can check out other posts on Laundry here, or click the button below to find out how Five Minute Friday started and how you can join in the writing fun!

 

Five Minute Friday - Ordinary

Today's word is Ordinary. We did this word a lot earlier in the year, and my mind keeps thinking of the same things. You can read that post here.

So instead of writing my own thoughts, I thought I'd share some quotes and sayings that I think speak to NOT being ordinary.

If you're going to be weird, be confident about it.

Don't expect everyone to understand your journey, especially if they've never had to walk your path.

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring, so I go back to being me.

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you.

Never be content with someone else's definition of you.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Well, that's it. For more posts on Ordinary, click here. To learn more about Five Minute Fridays, click the button below. Have a great weekend!