Originally published Friday, 08 August 2014.
Welcome to Five Minute Friday! Two weeks ago, Lisa-Jo Baker announced that she would be handing over this community, after she founded Five Minute Friday and hosted every week for the past four years! Last week, I shared a bit of an introduction leading up to this week, and now here we are! My first time hosting the amazing writers of Five Minute Friday.
If you haven’t participated before, here’s how it works:
Every Thursday a one-word prompt will be announced on my blog (katemotaung.com) at 10pm EST (and continuing through Friday).
Oh, and before the prompt is revealed, many of us like to connect on Thursday evenings on Twitter at the hashtag #fmfparty. Come join us and chat all things writing, chocolate and cupcakes!
Those who’d like to participate in Five Minute Friday will write for five minutes on the topic of the week, post it on their own blog and link up the post here (via the InLinkz button at the bottom of the post). Make sure you add the actual permalink to your specific post, and not your blog’s homepage (e.g. http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ and not just katemotaung.com).
If you don’t have a blog, you’re welcome to post your five minutes of writing in the comments here each week, or on the Five Minute Friday Facebook page.
This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.
Just write.
Also, the most important rule is that you visit the blog of the person who linked up before you and leave some encouragement. That’s the most fun of all, and the heart of this community.
Also, feel free to grab the new button in the sidebar to use on your own sites so others will come write with us, too!
One more thing: I’ll be choosing one post each week to feature in the sidebar of my blog the following week, as our Featured Five Minute Friday. Be sure to check it out!
Okay … let’s get writing!
This week’s prompt is:
Ready?
GO.
***
She left her shoes behind.
I tried them on, and I felt small.
Something didn’t feel quite right. I was afraid someone might see me wearing them and say, “Hey, those aren’t yours!” and ask, “Why are you wearing her shoes?”
And besides, she left the imprint of her soul on the insoles, so I slip them off, and decide rather to set them reverently next to the door.
The door she left open on purpose so I could follow. So you could follow.
And it feels right to stand barefoot, for this is holy ground.
And I know she’s running barefoot and carefree now, sand under her feet, daring the waves to crash hard enough to lick her toes, and she laughs and rests easy. She’s glancing behind to see if we’re going to follow, but her heart already knows that we will.
Maybe not wearing her shoes, but we look at them as we pass through the threshold of the open door, and we remember how she taught us to walk. How she taught us to run with abandon, to cast off the chains bound around our swollen ankles, to skip through the orchards of cherry blossoms and spin on this hallowed patch of earth.
So we step through and see the gap ahead, the crevice between here and there, and we kneel. Together. And plank by plank, word by word, we build the bridge.
STOP.
***
These are the words that came to me as I thought long and hard about the fact that I’ll never be able to fill Lisa-Jo’s shoes. And maybe I’m not supposed to. To be honest, nobody can. She’s one of a kind, and through her dedication to Five Minute Friday these past four years, she has impacted more lives than any of us will ever know.
So it’s not my intention to try to fill her shoes, for they’re not mine to fill. And really, we’re not here to talk about who is or isn’t trying to fill whose shoes — we’re here to remind each other of the feet of Him whose sandals we’re not worthy to untie. May He be the One to fill this place with His presence, where two or three are gathered in His name.
Lisa-Jo has laid the foundation for the bridge, labored underwater for 200 weeks making sure the pillars were dug deep and firm, ready for us to finish the job.
So I invite you to join the construction, because we need you. We need the bricks of your story to build the bridge all the way across to the other side.
***
To join us, visit katemotaung.com to add your link!
Photo credit: donaldmctim, Flickr Creative Commons
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