January 13:Writing Prompt #13-Clean Slate

Explore the room you’re in as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Pretend you know nothing. What do you see? Who is the person who lives there?

     There’s a fire burning in the gas fireplace with a dog lying on his dog bed next to it.  The TV is on, displaying a hockey game, and there’s a photograph on the entertainment center of what looks like a family of 2 boys, a mom, and a dad.  A basketball is lying in the flying next to some empty boxes for a PS4 and other newly received items….probably gifts from the recent holidays.  It looks like a typical, middle class, American family home. There are some items of interest though that I can’t place. There’s an interesting piece of art over the fireplace mantel of a women and some children. The setting looks tropical and rural.  There’s also some pottery with a tropical look as well and two photographs of sealife, a turtle and a ray.  This indicates to me that the family either has visited or lived previously in a place more tropical than the NW. 

     Whenever I enter someone else’s home, I am naturally curious about their lives…how their families and lifestyles are different and similar to my own. It’s difficult to look at my own living room and think the way I do as I enter someone else’s home…To me it seems a warm and happy place…somewhere I would be comfortable, but I decorated it and picked out the furniture with my family, so of course, it’s comfortable to me…it IS me.  A CLEAN SLATE is not as easy as it sounds. I know I hang onto way too much that I need to turn over a clean slate on, but that’s human nature, nature that we have to fight against daily in order to move forward in certain relationships and duties in our lives.  Forgiveness, Prayer, and time is the only way to wipe any slate clean, in my opinion, so I’ll keep working on that, and maybe one day, I’ll be able to see my past as a clean slate and move forward to the next adventure while leaving my “heavy life load” behind! 

“Then Peter came and said to Him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’ Matthew 18:21-22

January 12: Writing Prompt #12-Take two

Run outside. Take a picture of the first thing you see. Run inside. Take a picture of the second thing you see. Write about the connection between these two random objects, people, or scenes.

     Nature and Gunner.  All around us in our neighborhood is nature from the evergreen trees to the wetlands behind our house to the mallards in the drainage ponds, and the rabbits in the grassy, green spaces…nature is what most folks move to the Northwest to be more a part of, and even though we are in a slightly industrial and brand new housing development, there is still plenty of nature all around us.

     Gunner is our rescued German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) 2 year-old canine (or more accurately put, our new baby in the house).  We’ve only had him 3 months, but he has quickly become a very important, slightly all-consuming part of our family.  Because he was a rescue, there’s so much we do not know about him like his exact age (we are guessing around 2), and why he ended up in a shelter…well, nature has taught us a bit of WHY we think he was in a shelter. First off, GSP’s are bred to be some of the best hunting dogs there are, particularly for bird hunting.  It is literally BRED in them to hunt and flush out prey.  Even in our limited hunting scene, which is the nature found in the green spaces and 200 feet of wetlands behind our home, Gunner cannot help but focus all his energy and time on searching for birds and rabbits to chase.  The connection between Gunner and nature is unbreakable…we have had to go to an electronic collar just to pull his attention away from his prey drive to come when we call him.  GSP’s are known escape artists, thus the reason for his homelessness and for our purchase of an e-collar for him.  He is doing really well, but nature will always be the strongest draw for him…the one temptation he simply cannot resist, his best and worst trait. 

     Oh, to know beyond the shadow of a doubt exactly what you were made for…Gunner knows what he was meant to do and cannot help doing it with all his being whenever he has the chance.  It’s amazing to watch him in action….I hope someday to find the same thing for myself…to know what God made me to do and do it with all my being.  What were you meant to do and are you doing it? 

“Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.” 1 Corinthians 7:17

January 11: Writing Prompt #11-This is your life

If you could read a book containing all that has happened and will ever happen in your life, would you? If you choose to read it, you must read it cover to cover.

     No.  I wouldn’t read it because then it would be too easy to be lazy and “wait” for the big successes in my life, and it would be too depressing when anticipating the most tragic times that are coming.  I know, for a fact, it would be too much for me. I wouldn’t be able to not think forward about what is to come and that would change how I live. I would rather be fully present in each day, finding contentment in what is now rather than in what is to come. 

“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:11-13

January 10: Writing Prompt #10-32 flavors

Vanilla, chocolate, or something else entirely?

    Jamoca almond fudge….need I say more? OK, I will…it has everything necessary in a super dessert: coffee (caffeine), nuts (healthy fat), and chocolate (which needs no further explanation-it’s chocolate).  It’s been my favorite since I was a child going to the Baskin Robbins 31 flavors on the corner of Airport and Whitesburg road in Huntsville, AL to now and whatever state, city, or country life takes me to.  I was never able to settle on a single flavor. 

     I caused my mom grief as a teenager (and many other times since), wore strange outfits in high school with multiple swatch watches on one wrist (don’t ask me why), and was always part of the in between crowd…not really popular, a nerd, an outcast, or any other one category. I was just me, even though I wasn’t sure exactly who that was until my mid-thirties.  I was insecure and quiet until you got to know me, and I wanted desperately to always make the right choices, but struggled with the temptations to check all the other choices out too…just like everyone else. J 

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Romans 7:15-20 (Paul speaking)

What’s your flavor?  And what does it say about you? 

January 9: Writing Prompt #9-1984

You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.

     My grown children and I sit in the corner of a very dark room. We cannot see anything, not even ourselves, so we huddle together in silence.  The longer we sit, I feel an oppressive heat as if a hot, wet blanket is being draped over us.  It’s uncomfortable to say the least….I whisper encouraging words to the boys, but their minds drift farther and farther away from the conversation, and I start to feel their inner pain. From heartbreak to regret, anger, revenge, and jealousy to hate and bitterness, I feel it all, but it’s inside them.  I realize after a bit that there’s someone else in the room with us, someone who has my boys’ full attention, and I can’t pull them away from the trance they’ve been put into by the snake in the room…I’m losing them to his sly persuasions, deceptive temptations, and clever rationalizations.  It’s my greatest fear revealed, and I am helpless to stop it.  My children are miserable….and now they’ve moved away from me and the corner where we sat in solidarity, and I can’t find them; I can’t see them. I can’t get to them…I’m scared that I’ve lost them forever, and they will never know how precious they are because they have taken the wrong path and been overwhelmed with life’s pain and unable to lift themselves out of the pit they’ve found themselves stuck down inside.  All I can do now is pray and trust in God’s ultimate power over the situation and our lives…

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22: 6

“He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps.” Psalm 40:2