Five Minute Friday: Broken -

My bestie, Emily, joined me today on Five-Minute Friday! I'm so happy she did. This weekend is an emotional anniversary of the loss of a best friend of hers. If you stop by here, make sure you read her post too. BE Brower - Broken. It makes me ache and feel honored to have known Lane. If you feel so led, please keep his family & friends in your prayers as they go through this 1st year anniversary. Thank you.

With love always,

~ Jean Marie ~ 

From Lisa-Jo Baker, the Gypsy Mama: "On Fridays around these parts we like to write. Not for comments or traffic or anyone else's agenda. But for fun, for practice, for joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker. We love to just write without worrying if it's just right or not. For five minutes flat."

Today's prompt: Broken. 

~ Go. ~ 

"Let's don't say goodbye, I hate the way it sounds. 

So if you don't mind, let's just say "for now", 

and I'll see you when I see you." 

~ Jason Aldean ~

It was a year ago tomorrow that I woke up and checked my e-mail and saw that Lane was gone. The world came apart and shattered once again, as it had been all summer. The memories recently shared on vivid re-play, thinking of his family, his friends....I wanted to lie down on the bathroom floor and never get up again. 

Because I knew what funerals were. I knew how the dirt would tear from the grass, and the horrible sound as the dirt would cover up again the one you loved. It would fill that hole in the ground, but never make it to your heart. Your heart stands still in the moment they leave, and nothing is ever right again. 

"Let's don't say goodbye, I hate the way it sounds....."

I know what broken feels like. I live it every single day. It isn't a calling, isn't a gift. 

It is life after the Fall, and it is loving hard and losing hard and not letting go easily. 

It is coming home and finding no dog to greet you, it is the missing person in every photo. 

It is the way you hug someone so hard you try to put their life back together, 

and it is the way your voice sounds when life is shattered and your love has gone away across the waters.

It is every day in these Shadowlands, and it is every night you weep into your pillow. 

It is His hands torn by nails and His brow bloody from thorns. 

It is sin, laid upon, pierced crimson, on a tree to a holy God. 

It is us, unworthy and bleeding and begging and desperate and stunned and crying. 

But God. Became Broken. For me. 

and now my life is no longer the same, in the best, the sweetest way. 

~ Stop ~