5 MINUTE FRIDAY - FALL

What is 5 Minute Friday? I'm glad you asked. Every Friday Lisa Jo Baker (you can find her here), gives everyone a word to write about for 5 minutes, and then you link up to share what you've written. It's free writing at it's finest - no editing, no agonizing over word choice, no going back and changing everything. Just write. This week our word is Fall. Are you ready?

Have you ever thought what if I just let go? What if, instead of worrying or fretting or anxiously looking ahead or behind, you just would allow yourself to fall - fall right into God's arms.

What if you were willing to just step off what you knew and know into the air without a safety net you could see? What would it be like to fall without a worry or thought into God's waiting arms, knowing without any doubts, that He would catch you, sustain you, lift you up?

Sometimes, I glimpse that sort of faith. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse what it would be like to live free of worries or fears or anxiety. But then it's gone, and I am back to my regular way of dealing with things, which usually involves wringing my hands and some sort of sweet.

When I was a kid, my parents spent a lot of time in church helping out. My friends and I often found creative ways to entertain ourselves while they were busy. In one side room, there was a staircase leading up - well, somewhere. I can't really remember where it led anymore, but the stairs were the kind that turned - you went up about 5 steps and there was a landing and then you went up more steps and there was another landing and a door. The "rail" of the stairs was a ledge about 10 inches wide. Down on the floor were a pile of gym mats, cushiony and inviting.

We all took turns leaping off the ledge to fall to the mats below. I loved that feeling of falling. I would stand on that ledge, my toes curled over the edge. The mats looked so far away, and I would leap. And fall. My stomach would flutter and it felt like a breeze had come up in that small room. It was like, for a moment in time, I was flying.

Sometimes, I would contort my body in strange shapes as I fell toward the mats. Sometimes, I'd just drop like a stone. But the excitement of the fall was what drew me and my friends to climb up those stairs over and over, to leap again and again.

God calls me to fall with Him, to take His hand and just leap off the ledge. When did I become overly cautious, afraid to fall? When did I lose my faith that I would be caught at the bottom?

~ Blessings, Bronte