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. All on the same topic.
Not sure how to participate – the step-by-step directions are over here:
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 us your best five minutes for the prompt:
Beautiful…
GO:
Her pink cheeks. The text message from my dad in South Africa. His tan lines. Those stranded blue crocs. The way the curtains blow gently as the air vents puffs out cool breezes. The two sconces that a friend hung and the candles in strips of chocolate that Zoe helped me pick out. The bureau I inherited from a grandpa who inherited it from his great grandpa across the ocean. How she lisps. How her brothers hug her good night every night. How the car can be packed full of this family and a back pack of snacks for each kid and the six hours ahead. Rain on a summer afternoon. The pool when the sun comes out. Late nights with new library books. The sound of snap, crackle, pop fireworks outside the windows and the neighbor kids’ squeals echoing up in delight. The packing peanuts still stubbornly clinging to the side of the side walk. Old friends. New friends. Afternoons watching each others’ kids. Very gently sunburn over the tops of my shoulders. Flip flops. Cherry Garcia ice cream. Love songs and freedom and a benediction all exploding in the sky at once.
STOP.
Don’t have a blog? No worries, feel free to leave your five minutes in the comments. If you’re reading in an email just click here to come and join us.
Happy 4th of July, Lisa-Jo…sounds like you are surrounded by beautiful family and friends :)
So much beautiful. My beautiful is my wife, my cats, my dogs, having a day just to myself to do what I want, Lindt chocolate. Full moon. A starry sky out in the bushveld. Music. The ocean. Singing. Face time. And so much more.
Hello Lisa-Jo, tnx for the prompt “beautiful” on a day I am “celebrating beautiful” in my 5 years of marriage. All I see is beautiful now and for always!
Beautiful is a word that could not be more fitting then it is today. The beauty in life is what I have in my mind. My uncle is very sick with cancer and lives far away that I can not be with him in his last months… weeks… maybe even days of his beautiful life. Mainly I think about how unfair life is that distance prevents us from being together due to financial constraints. How sad. However after reading the word “beautiful” it does make me think how beautiful life is. How beautiful it can be when you have you health, love and your family. I think about beautiful moments I spent with him and my entire family when they came to visit last year and how long ago that feels even thought it has only be one beautiful year. I think about the beauty in laughing together, in telling tales of the past and in sharing hugs and kisses between the people that mean more to me then anyone else in the world, my family. The beauty in what they did for me 6 years ago when on a whim I decided to move half way across the world and stay with them. A family who I had been separated from my entire life by an ocean yet the love, the beautiful love of family was strong none the less. There was beauty in all my time there, beauty in the way they changed my life and made me realize far more then I could ever had expected. At a time where my time was not so beautiful and the world seemed a dark lonely place they shinned their beautiful love on me and I returned home a changed person with a renewed beautiful soul. I could never repay my uncle for all he did for me and only wish that I could at least be by his side as he nears the end of his beautiful life. But for now I sit, I wait and I will always remember his beautiful love.
Jen, I’m so sorry to hear that your uncle is not doing well. It seems though that you have some beautiful memories of your time with him! Thank you for sharing this with us.
Prayers for your family.
Thank you Victoria! It is much appreciated!
Absolutely… all that and then some.
Thanks so much for hosting this. I used to join up, but stopped for a while! It is so nice to just sit down and write without all of the over analyzing!!!! Love it!
Lisa Jo, I love how you just list these things in your mind with great description yet simplicity – thanks for sharing
Love this. Isn’t is easy to look around all only see the tough things. The late things. The costly things. The things we want but don’t have. But YOU, you, in five minutes, managed to capture so many areas of your life, your family, your history, your future. Love it! Thank you for showing us how easy it is to stop. look around. and see countless things of beauty. Love, love.
Such a sweet, sweet list of beautiful things. They are all a great picture of a joyful heart. Blessings to you and your family.
Bending the rules this week, but with the week I’ve had it’s hard to write much of anything, so I’m sharing an old post that happens to be on the same prompt. I hope you don’t mind and that you like it.
I don’t see your old post.
Five minute Friday from another blog
Write for five minutes about the word beautiful. God, my kids, my husband, my house, my life. The things that have gone wrong and haven’t been fixed. I have to see the beauty in it or I’d be very depressed. God has His reasons for everything and it usually turns out beautifully if we let Him take charge. Summer, watermelon, steak, hot dogs, brats, the smell of a fresh mown lawn, the smell of rain after a kind of scary (for my son) thunderstorm. Lightning and thunder, the way if cools down the air, when it’s hot, the way the plants and everything looks afterwards. My phone which has a Bible app on it that I absolutely love and couldn’t do without. This exercise, actually thinking of something to write about for five minutes.
There times up. Now to figure out how to link back to the site, that’s gonna take a lot longer than five minutes for me. If anyone can see this, then I did it right. :)
Five Minute Friday with Lisa Jo Baker
Yaaay! It worked :) I can see my post. :)
I think that it is sweet that her brothers hug her every night. I bet she’s their little princess. :)
Have a wonderful weekend!
Nice, ending for this post. I’am so, happy that I rejoined you all for F.M.F :) I’m reading some good things here and I’am following some inspiring work !
Loved the word this week. Really made me stop and think and I had a few days away from a computer to think on it.
writing ah yes for fun and i love words too,the other day i thought i love redbush tea so i had some fun to praise god with it, here goes
R Rejoice
E Eternal, Everlasting arms of love round us
D Delight, our heavenly Father delights in you and me, yay
B We are Blessed to be a blessing, Brave in Jesus
U United in Christ
S Saviour
H Hosannah
If tea is not your thing, try anything, like your fave coffee, i had such fun and it’s great to share with friends or write it up on your kitchen wall, blessings, enjoy words, Vicki bx
Tonight will we be hearing a lot of other people out there who say ‘hey I didn’t know
about that’ so that’s something we want to present our music.
It surprises a lot of other people out there who say ‘hey I didn’t
know about that’ so that’s something we want to present our
music. Join your local DC Music Events Examiner on Thursday at jiffy lube live bristow to find out!
Here’s mine. http://bellesbazaar-heather.blogspot.com/2013/10/beautiful.html