On Fridays around these parts we like to write. Not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. 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.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat with no editing, tweaking or self critiquing.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in {you can grab the button code in my blog’s footer}.

3. Go and tell the person who linked up before you what their words meant to you. Every writer longs to feel heard.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes for the prompt:

Beloved…

GO:

He’s nearly seven and a half and he’s sitting on the sofa next to his dad tonight. They’re sitting so close, Jackson may as well give in and scoot over onto Pete’s lap. I interrupt the reading to laugh and say to my oldest son, “So, was that you who petted my hair this morning?” He giggles as his dad raises eyebrows at him.

“Yea, yea, I did,” he grins.

He looks at me over top of his glasses and goes on, “And then I kissed you on your cheek.”

By now his dad is grinning too, and what takes it over the top is to hear him say, “Then I turned around and did back-to-back snuggles with you,” and his dad and I are both laughing so hard as he laughs along and pushes his glasses back up his nose with that index finger.

I’m holding all this love in both hands and it’s spilling over between my fingers.

The baby girl is snoring so loudly I can hear her. Micah cups a hand on my cheek as I kneel between the icicle lights that drape his lower bunk and pray protection over his bad dreams. Pete is waiting down the hallway and in the bed we’ve had since we got married. Fourteen years ago yesterday he knelt in the snow and asked me to marry him. Fourteen years ago I pushed glasses back up my nose just like the son we didn’t know then would be sitting on our sofa tonight and telling tales of how he loves his father’s wife.

I hadn’t been able to see Pete properly through my fogged up glasses at the time.

I hold yesterday and tomorrow in both hands today.

So much spilling over.

STOP.