Welcome to this week’s edition of the Five Minute Friday link-up! Whether you have a blog, a social media profile, or a good old-fashioned journal, we’re thrilled that you’re here and look forward to writing with you!
If you’d like to share your work, you can join the link-up below using the instructions found here.
This week’s Five Minute Friday writing prompt is: PRESERVE
Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.
This past summer my daughter was home from college, but we didn’t see her very much. She was either working double shifts serving food at a restaurant thirty minutes away, or hanging out with friends.
One day the week before she had to go back to school, she asked me if I wanted to go get bagels together and walk around a farmer’s market. I figured she just wanted me to pay for the bagels, but I couldn’t say no.
Of course I took advantage of the opportunity and gladly accepted the invitation.
It was the week after my birthday, and at the farmer’s market we came across some of my favorite flowers — proteas.
I *very* rarely see proteas in America. They happen to be South Africa’s national flower and since my husband and kids were all born in South Africa, they became a favorite of mine.
My daughter offered to buy me some, and I said, “It’s okay, they’re too expensive.”
“But they’re proteas!!” she exclaimed.
Then she said, “I’m getting them for you for your birthday.”
She snapped this photo on the way home and posted it on her Instagram account:
When we got home, I already had a protea table runner and a beaded protea candle holder on the dining table. The proteas fit right in:
They didn’t last long, but to my delighted surprise, instead of wilting away with petals falling off, they dried beautifully.
I saved the dried flowers in an empty glass bottle. It was as if the Lord gave me a way to preserve the memory of that morning with my eyes and not just my mind.
STOP.
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Join us with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, PRESERVE, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment:
If I could preserve these days,
lit by beauty, wracked by pain,
I would look hard to find the ways
to hold them close, have them remain,
for cancer has become the giant
from whose shoulders I see far,
and vision has become compliant
to look on things just as they are.
This perspective I would never trade,
not for health, wholeness and youth,
for of the trial is something made,
something that can bear the truth
of love and death and gain and loss,
of the Blood below the Cross.
Four minutes and a bit. OK.
Thank you for sharing. May He preserve your healthy cells and surround in every side your unhealthy cells. In Jesus name amen!
How very sweet and beautiful in every way!
Psalm 119:25 I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your word. One translation says revive instead of preserve. Similar? No. Maybe… Do we want to stay preserved in a jar, never opened and just looked at? Do we want to know Jesus in a book and never LIVE Him? He has called us to more than hanging out until heaven. He has promised abundant life here and now! How do we do more than just sit in our “holy jar” and hang out preserved until we go to heaven? How do we live like there is no tomorrow, dance like no one is around, and be the men and women we were created to be, not preserved for a later time or a better time or a holiday, but living now, abundantly. Lord show me how to taste and see that you are good. I’m tired of eating dust. I’m tired of sitting on a shelf preserved until a better time when I am stronger or more capable. Help me shine even now in my weakness and depression and anxiety. Show me how to get off the shelf and live!!! In Jesus name amen.
A lovely birthday gift from your daughter!
They are very pretty.
I wasn’t at all familiar with proteas – they’re quite striking! What a great gift.