Five Minute Friday: On Going and Growing

I miss you around here.  Sorry I've been a bit absent, lately.

The days have been frantic in a mess of boxes, last minute to-do’s, and hugs and tears and the like.  I’m carving out a quick five minutes, though, for my favorite five-minutes of the week…the ones where I pour my heart out without concern for perfection and invite you to join us.  Linking up with the Gypsy Mama.

Today’s topic, as usual, is quite timely.  It’s about growing.

GO

This has been a year of growing.  Stretching, twisting, bending over backwards to stretch my influence just a teensy bit more… reaching higher that I might internalize every single second of this journey.

I’m a tall girl, and wrought with decades of midnight aching, legs being stretched internally with agony.  I know that the act of growing produces pain.

And, that pain produces growing.

I’ve burnt that candle at both ends around here… hurt to learn, learn to grow, learn to heal, hurt to heal, heal to learn, grow to learn.  And I’m ever amazed by just what the Lord is up to in the midst of all this, the majestic sort of unknown that requires such faith to stand in the midst of the pain it takes to grow.

Today for some and in previous days for others, I have said goodbye to the boys we’ve cared for here… the boys not of my body but of my heart… the boys that have called me Mom anyway, and meant it… the boys that don’t have to love us, but do and they love better than I’ll ever know how.  Pain is at its tipping point, today.  Would you offer up a prayer for us, if you think of it?  A prayer for them, for their too-often-hurt-already hearts that shouldn’t have to bear another leaver?  And for me, for the lump in my throat and the shards in my heart as we take one more step, out of one kind of pain and into another, for the sake of growing.  For the anguish Husband and I will put ourselves through for being more ‘leavers’ to come and go from this place?  For transparent love, for traveling mercies, for healed hearts, and mostly, for grace.

STOP

Thank you friends.  I’ll be back around this place again soon.  We’re jaunting all through the desert landscape of this country through the next week, but my fingers will find their way back to this keyboard once the evergreens outnumber the cactuses.

‘Til then…