{linking up with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday…She gives us all a writing prompt and we write, uninterrupted, with very little editing for 5 minutes. Imperfect but real…This is my first post. Here it is. Yikes!}
I fight with the daily-ness of life. I wrestle tubs of laundry to the dirty laundromat where I curse a fallen towel and the fact that a quarter only buys me 5 minutes of dryer time. And I wonder where, amidst this mess, I could find the bravery to say a quivering “yes” to the bigger things of life.
I look across the folding table at the laundromat and I see an abandoned single tiny white baby sock, impossibly small to my eyes unaccustomed to baby things, and I think of the family who left it behind. The story is untold. And the untold story behind someone else’s laundry makes me realize that my own dirty laundry isn’t such an imposition. Maybe it speaks of bigger things.
This blessing of a curse of having to get OUT of my own house and INTO life with other people to do something as simple as wash my laundry sometimes it feels like too much of a metaphor, you know? I like to sit quietly in my quiet house and feel “lonely.” Sometimes being out in a crowd, with a bunch of people screaming and screeching and practically blasting life from a bullhorn makes me feel at once lonelier and startled and scared, like a fawn seeing things out in the world for what they are: that not all humans are friendly, and cars, with their interesting lights and fascinating sounds are actually quite dangerous to a little fawn, and are best avoided.
God calls me to things outside of myself, outside of my home where I find company in haphazard laundry flung over the sofa, because when this place is fully clean it seems sterile and empty and lifeless. Much like how I feel when I’ve reached the edge of being able to decipher the difference in my life between what is clean and what is dirty and what needs to be washed and what just needs to be hung up again and brushed off. It is difficult, this deciphering, sometimes. It makes words difficult. It makes it nearly impossible for me to find a way to utter “yes.”
I have to step outside for a moment, and run off the front porch into the clear, lukewarm October evening and spin around and look at the stars and it takes being reminded by stars and abandoned baby socks in laundromats to make me contemplate that maybe I have no air left in my lungs to say yes too loudly, and certainly not enough to shout it over my life.
Maybe, I think, under the stars, just maybe I have enough to say it with my heart to the God of the heavens who can hear our heart-language, unspoken but felt, as the moon rises early.
//
xo
Natalie
You did a beautiful job with your first 'Five Minute Friday' post. Keep up the great writing!
I know that desire to sit and be lonely as well as being even lonelier in the midst of a crowd. I am thankful and blessed to openly speak those feelings to the God that hears.
So glad you joined in this week my friend. Your words speak truth and vulnerability, strength and innocence. Well done!!
Absolutely beautiful. There have been times when I've seen that abandoned baby sock and crumble, wondering what that life is like. I love that you notice it too, though our stories and thoughts may be different. And I too, have cursed that time and cost of those stupid dryers!