Five Minute Friday: Choose -

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: Choose:

~ Go ~

Photo taken Feb. 27, New Smyrna Beach, FL

Choosing. 

I had to think about it all day for my brain to actually sort out what it even means for me. Such a silly thing, trying to define a word in your brain when it already tells you the meaning. But it's not until I am in the car, exhausted after a long day, watching the cold breeze blow the sunlight through the Spanish moss that I realize what the whole day and this whole week have been teaching me about choosing. 

It's been a hard, wonderful, crazy, emotional, prayerful week. And I wouldn't have missed any of it for the world. 

But it's not always your choosing that hits you hardest. It's those things God gave that you didn't choose. 

It's the heartache you feel when a day goes horribly wrong for a friend and your prayers weren't answered as you would have chosen.
 It's the tears that threaten to spill over at the incredible confusion of pain.

It's the sin you would never have chosen, because it's your own that is hardest to fight. 

It's the praying for healing from cancer and knowing our choosing isn't always His heavenly will for us. 

And it's in this that my choosing always comes down to a very fine line. He is or He isn't. He is fully God, or He is not. He is fully trustworthy, or He is not at all. In the end, it's not even a choosing, it's a full blown knowing. Always. 

And this week it was about choosing the moments that will matter for a long time in my heart. 

It was choosing to walk the beach in the cold to spend a long time in prayer for needy friends. 

It was accepting the offer to spend an evening with Tricia & Cody and their sweet littles. 

It was staying up late at night (s) to listen and enter into many a conversation, hard or hysterical. 

It was spending time helping out whoever needed to be helped out...no matter the hours. 

Because in this choosing, I was serving. I was living. I was accepting.
 I was making the memories sweet for the days ahead to look back on and be ever so thankful that I chose to abide. 

I chose to abide and to stay and to love. 
And even though I'm exhausted, I also feel as though I'm completely spent and yet overflowing on love and joy. 

Full in all this choosing and in all this grace. 

~ Stop ~ 

With love always,

~ Jean Marie ~