Tripping Over Typeset

I’m late to the game today…distracted by really nothing and yet everything all at the same time…if you can relate at all.

We are linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker and the girls from Five-Minute Friday.  Lisa-Jo gives us all a word prompt and we write for 5 minutes…no real over thinking, over-editing, or over-doing…just write…bravely writing!  Then we link back up and encourage one other with words and high-fives for being brave.

Our word-prompt today:  Bloom

GO:

Nestled in the yard of my childhood home, a row of bright pink peonies grew between our house and our neighbors.

I was never really sure if they belonged to us or our neighbor since both households enjoyed their beauty and bounty.

The peony is one of my favorite flowers, not only for the way their large blossoms fill a bouquet quickly but also how their fragrance fills the room with the smell of summer.

If you’ve ever watched a peony grow and bloom, one cannot help but notice ants crawling all over the bud of the flower.  They scurry about moving quickly…almost like an invasion.

I was always told that peonies needed the ants to bloom…they somehow helped the peony open.  The science community now says, this is an old wives tale and the ants really do nothing to help the flower bloom.  The ants are just there for the sweet nectar produced by the flower bud scale.

Life scurries around me.  Situations, appointments and interruptions invade my life pretty effectively…just like ants on the bud. They’re not really helpful to the cause just something else to do.

Right on the edge of opening up and blooming into the fullness Christ has for me, I feel the pull.  The pull of time stealers…those things that don’t really help me accomplish the goals of the day but instead become one more thing distracting and pulling me off course.

It takes my own choosing and focus to put my energies into what matters instead of the time stealers and distractions all around me.

I would like to think those ants help in some way in opening up the peony and helping it bloom…it makes a pretty story and we like useful things…but instead they are serving their own purpose of gathering the sweet things and satisfying their own desires…just as time stealers for us.

Yet I can learn from the peony…that beautiful one in bloom.  It is not distracted by the scurry around, about and through…instead it is focused on its purpose…its purpose in blooming.

I don’t have this whole focus thing down perfectly.  I get distracted and am pulled off course yet I keep pressing on…pressing on toward His purpose for me.

One thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me… Philippians 3:13-14

STOP