Hello! Welcome to this week’s edition of the Five Minute Friday link-up — a weekly blog link-up where we write for five minutes flat on a one-word prompt.

If you’re new, you can learn more about the link-up and how it works right over here.

This week we’re in for a special treat, as we have a special guest! Author Christie Purifoy is joining us in celebration of the release of her new book, Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace.

Disclosure: Affiliate links have been used in this post.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Christie in person twice, at the 2016 and 2018 Festivals of Faith and Writing:

2016 Festival of Faith & Writing
2018 Festival of Faith & Writing

Christie was so gracious to endorse my memoir, A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging. I adored her first book, Roots and Sky, and I can’t wait to dig into this beauty:

In honor of Christie’s new book . . .

This week’s Five Minute Friday writing prompt is: PLACE

Place

(And yes, I realized after I already asked Christie to write on this prompt that we have used it before, in August 2017, but that’s okay! I’m sure you’ll come up with something new to write about if you participated in the link-up that time as well . . .) 🙂

Here’s Christie:

It’s this bit of ground beneath my feet, and it is this particular patch of sky overhead. Today, the sky is blue. Not the intense blue of summer, but a slightly washed-out, still winter blue. Today, the ground is awful. I have one boot in slushy snow and one boot in sucking mud. There is an ancient autumn leaf glued to my toe.

It isn’t always easy to love our place. It isn’t easy for me to love this muck and slush. Winter’s beauty is fading. Spring still feels so far away. But I know what this is. I have stood in this place before. I know this is a beginning. I know that a new season is even now springing up. Do I perceive it?

I do. But, why oh why is it so ugly? Why does it tug at my boot like something alive? Something that feels an awful lot like despair?

If I didn’t pay attention to the seasons, if I hadn’t watched this particular bit of ground and this particular patch of sky for year upon year, I might not recognize this despair for what it is.

It is the moment right before hope begins to grow, like a deeply buried seed breaking open.

It feels like discomfort and dissatisfaction. It looks like mud and mess and last year’s half-rotted leaves.

But, this, right here, is a new and glorious beginning.

I will plant my feet. I will dirty my hands.

Because this place is where our dreams will take root.

This place is where our dreams will grow.


Christie Purifoy is a writer and gardener who lives with her family in an old red brick farmhouse called Maplehurst in southeastern Pennsylvania. She is the author of two books, Roots and Sky (Revell, 2016) and Placemaker (Zondervan, 2019) and co-hosts the Out of the Ordinary podcast with her longtime friend Lisa-Jo Baker. Connect with her and see more of life at Maplehurst on Instagram.


Join the link-up with your own five minute free write on the prompt, PLACE, below! And don’t forget to read your link-up neighbor’s post to leave an encouraging comment . . . 🙂

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