The Women (A Five Minute Post)

Lisa-Jo challenged me to write about "the women" in just five minutes!

I'm new amongst them, my blogger dashboard filled with new faces and names, new links to stories of marriage, children, the crazy challenge of gratitude and hands open and life. I don't know all of them well yet, splashing in this new pond like a duck whose feet are still a little big for her body.

But they read and they listen and from the midst of all their noisy joyful chaos they find time to tell me that I am a writer. And I want to say back, "I am learning from you!"

These women, from their hair to their toes, are never through puzzling out the joy of living, never through gazing in frustration and awe at the leaves translucent in spring and the bare tree branches of winter. They seem to soak in the smells of fresh coffee and the quick silence of sleeping faces scrubbed clean of a day's hard play in the dirt.

You all remind me to take long drinks of water, to smile at strangers when they pass me on the sidewalk, to eat a popsicle some afternoons just because. You all, in your many colors and sounds and spinning laughing worlds tell me that all of this? This is all about God.

And thank you - your words in your office, tea cups and big sighs and hugs when the day is long and we both know it. Thank you - praying an extra minute of thankfulness into my day when I might have forgotten and left it behind. Thank you - for the questions I keep asking eyes wide and smile ready - and for hearing in those questions something real to answer.

Thank you.