Five Minute Friday: Tree

Lisa-Jo Baker writes over at Five-Minute Friday,

"On Friday’s we silence the inner critic. The loudest of all naysayers. And on Fridays we remind ourselves that The Word is for us and loves us and welcomes us.
We write for five minutes flat. ...No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.
Unscripted. Unedited. Real.
It started because I’d been thinking about writing and how often our perfectionism gets in the way of our words. And I figured, why not take 5 minutes and see what comes out: not a perfect post, not a profound post, just five minutes of focused writing.
So now on Fridays a group of people who love to throw caution to the wind and just writewithout worrying if it’s just right gather to share what five minutes buys them. Just five minutes.
Your words. This shared feast.
Today the word is TREE."

GO.

Tree, Lisa-Jo?  As in leaves falling from trees?  As in family tree?  Ah!  And I'm smiling long as that resonates!  

That moment when I look around the farm table, friends-become-family squished together with elbows tucked in close, our dining room... well, we'll just call it cozy.  And I look around the room, into each face, in awe of the "church families" represented.  There are families from Life Center -- the spiritual family who raised us,  Summit Ridge, Grace Fellowship, Life Roads, Eastpoint, Valley Real Life, Starbucks.  Our spiritual family tree is expansive... and beautiful!  

The conversations are encouraging, invigorating, challenging, fun, discipling.  The children play long into the afternoon.  And this "assembling of [our]selves together," this thriving, loving community... 

STOP. 


Two friends recently penned brilliant prose on this topic:

Jenn at "The Body of Christ" and

Kurt at "Christians Are Weird". 

Linking today with Lisa-Jo over at Five-Minute Friday...