Welcome to the final Five Minute Friday link-up of February! If you live in the northern hemisphere, spring is around the corner! 🙂
If you’re new to the FMF community, a special welcome to you. If you’re interested in joining our private Facebook group, click here to sign up.
Click here to learn more about the link-up and how it works.
This week’s FMF writing prompt is: ORIGINAL
Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.
Confession: I’m not the most flexible person when it comes to plans changing. Once I have an idea in my mind about what is supposed to happen, it takes me a minute to adjust, adapt, and recalibrate to a new plan if one comes about.
(One of my children may or may not have inherited this trait of mine.)
But recently I was invited to attend a working retreat for Christian writers and speakers. The idea was that we would get away and have some focused, uninterrupted time to work on our individual projects, with fellowship at meal times and in the evenings.
What we all expected would be a productive writing weekend turned into so much more. As the coordinator reflected afterwards, it turned into a spiritual refreshment retreat. Women were prayed over, encouraged, challenged, and lifted up. We joined voices in corporate prayer and worship, and several women were brave enough to verbalize their heavy burdens so the rest of us could somehow help share the load.
It was unexpected and perhaps not our original plan, but nothing was a surprise to God. He always knew exactly who He would bring together and what kind of work He would do in each heart.
So, I guess sometimes veering from the “original” plan is not so bad after all . . .
STOP.
Also, I’m cooking up something fun for the month of March!
We’ll be having four different guests — one guest post each week — next month.
Stay tuned to read some great writing and meet new writer friends!
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Join us with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, ORIGINAL, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment:
Original is what I’m not,
everything’s derivative,
and the best that I have got
is really quite indicative
of very much a second-rate
approach to creativity.
They say good’s mortal foe to great,
but that does not apply to me,
’cause I just dance on down the road,
with legacy a small concern;
the artistic psyche’s not my load,
and I’m glad that I did learn
really early in my years
that great ambition runs with tears.
In the orchid room of Longwood Gardens I marveled at the varieties of the plant. Hundreds were displayed in rows on the room’s walls. They were all so beautiful and so different. I took picture after picture; my phone’s camera simply could not capture their beauty. Some looked like monsters (not kidding), while some looked “normal”; like, what I think of when I hear the word orchid.
The plants’ blooms range from delicate, almost fragile in appearance, to bulky. The variations in color, shape, size, locations in which they grow, or wouldn’t thrive, almost overwhelm me.
My friend and I summoned each other, “Look at this one”, “Have you seen this one?” We didn’t want the other to overlook a single one. Though we spent 20-30 minutes in this room, the time was insufficient to take in all their features.
Most captivating to me was that the same God created each one. Each an orchid, each worth noting.
In a world where original communicates to me the first, the best, the only, I find delight and liberation in the variety. None was better than the other. Each was beautiful. I reflect, I feel set free. To be who God created me to be.
*If I can share the link, feel free to peruse the orchids virtually: https://longwoodgardens.org/gardens/conservatory-district/orchid-house
Often, it is a good thing when the original plan doesn’t work out. Seems my plans always have to be tweaked!