Choose Wisely

I really wanted to get a blog post finished this week. Perhaps doing a quick Five Minute Friday post with Lisa-Jo Baker would help me get out of this horrible case of writer’s block. So here we go. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat. No editing. No overthinking. Just write. Then link up and encourage the blogger in front of you. Today’s word: Choose.

I’m setting my timer and …

HannahBasketball

Go!

Today I am choosing to do Five Minute Friday. I haven’t blogged in so long. This month was so busy and I chose to take my daughter every Friday to her basketball practice. Then I chose to attend her basketball games with the whole family. We loved watching her play. With a family of 8 you always have a large cheering section.

In basketball my daughter wanted her friends to choose to throw the ball to her. Sometimes she was chosen and sometimes they chose to throw it to someone else. No matter who was chosen she still got excited whenever they scored.

I want my children to make good choices in life. I want them to choose to follow God. Right now my husband and I make the decisions for them but one day they will be on their own and I hope they choose to do what is right even when we, their parents are no longer watching them. I need to teach them now so that they are prepared for that day. I want them to choose wisely.

Stop.

Ooh… This was good for me. This helped open my mind and unlock the writer’s block.

So if you will bear with me I’ll continue my above thought a little bit further. 🙂

I have been wanting to write about friendship. But every time I tried it seemed to just fall flat. Now I know what it is I’ve been wanting to say.

I want my children to choose their friends wisely.

How do you choose your friends? Friendship doesn’t just happen.

“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

                                             — Proverbs 18:24 KJV

You have a choice. Who will you lead? Who will you follow? Who will you defend? Whose team will you choose to be on?

“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

                                       –Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 KJV

Will your friends lift you up when you fall? Are you willing to help them up?

“Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not; neither go into thy brother’s house in the day of thy calamity: for better is a neighbour that is near than a brother far off.

                                                        –Proverbs 27:10 KJV

With whom will you choose to be friends?

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Five Minute Friday: Fight

I have a lot going on this month. Did I mention that I joined a 31 day challenge to write 500 words everyday? And today it was suggested that those of us doing the challenge try writing freestyle. That is no editing or correcting. I thought of how I used to do Five Minute Friday just for fun and decided I would go to Lisa Jo Baker’s site and give her Five Minute Friday a try. Since it is Friday and all.

The rules to Five Minute Friday is no over thinking and no editing. Today’s word is “Fight”.

christiansoldiers

Jonathan, Hannah, and Elijah dressed in their Christian Armor during our Vacation Bible School in 2013.

Set the timer and GO!

Fight. When you can think of anything else to do.

Fight. When the battle seems too hard.

Fight When you know you need to work on a task.

Fight. When you can’t see the end.

Fight. When you know you are right.

Fight. When you want to be heard.

Fight. When you can’t see the end.

Fight. When you can’t think of anything else to write about. Fight. This isn’t working for me.

 

What am I doing. I feel like I’m wasting time trying to think of something to say about Fight. Hmmm…

So I’m aimlessly typing to see how many words I can type in 5 minutes. I don’t think I’m doing to well.

 

I need to just forget Five Minute Friday and just write something that I was thinking about today. Like Childhood memories. That would be interesting.

 

I can’t think of anything fight related right now. I reckon I might could think of something if I really tried but we are suppose to be writing this without over thinking it or editing it. So I may not post this anyway..

 

I will not fight the words that are coming out of my finger tips right now. I will not fight the urge to just type aimlessly and I only have 47 seconds to go. I will fight and move on for all of the 29 seconds remaining.

I will never give up. I will not surrender. I will fight writers block. I will win! And…

STOP!

Yep, that was all I had. I tried it again and it only got worse. So I am giving you my first unedited complete with typos post. It’s better than nothing, right? However after I wrote this post I decided to go ahead and write on that childhood memory. I will share that story later after I have a chance to actually edit it. Today’s post was just a freebie. I thought I would lighten things up a bit and do something fun.

If you would like to read other Five Minute Friday posts you can check them out here.

Thanks for following my blog. What would you like to see from my blog in 2014? I will be writing 500 words everyday. Some of them will be blog posts and some will be towards books.

For a little added fun, (I like to have fun.) is there something you would like me to write about? Tell me any subject you would like to see and I will do my best to write something for you. It may be serious or as silly as this Five Minute Friday. Go ahead leave a comment and give me a try. 

I’m just a little excited about this little experiment. 🙂 Happy New Year! 

~~ Anastacia ~~

Linking up at:

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When You Need Comfort the Most

The other day I had a blog idea in my mind and I was planning to write about today. I thought since I didn’t know what the Five Minute Friday‘s word would be today I’d write what was going on in my head and only link up if there word happened to go along with it.

Well, guess what… It did.

As soon as I saw today’s word I decided I was going to go ahead and write those thoughts down in Five Minutes today.

So here are my 5 minute thoughts on the word: Comfort

GOJonathan hug

Nobody likes pain. Life is not always comfortable though. It’s during those times that we hurt that we can feel comfort the most. If you fall down and skin your knee that is the time you want your mother’s hug the most. It’s amazing how just a simple thing can make a child feel all better.

It’s the same when we read our Bibles or hear a really gut wrenching sermon. Our lives may be messed up in an area. It hurts to hear we’ve been messing up. But that’s when we can feel our Savior’s love for us all the more. The comfort that He can give a fallen child is far above all the pain we endure having the medicine applied.

After the medicine is applied to our swollen knee all we need is a parent’s hug. After we allow God to apply the medicine of His word on our hearts, that’s when we can feel his arms wrapped around us.

Stop

Have you ever had a time where you felt comforted after you were hurt? Please share with me in the comments below.

If you are following me via email, I recently found out that there wasn’t a simple link to click on to leave comments.  But now there is you can click on the word “comments” and it will take you to the post.  Let me know if there is anything else that could use tweaking in my email updates by just simply replying to any email. Thanks for following my posts!
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A Brave Experiment

It’s that time again! I’m joining the Five Minute Friday link up again. This time I’ve been asked by my friends the Cash Cow Couple to try adding a new challenge to my 5 minutes. What if I wrote without any pause or backtracking at all in my writing?

Normally I have brain freeze while I’m trying to write. It is also hard to not back track while typing. So I’m going to try this time to meet the challenge.  I have absolutely no idea where this may lead as I will be completely free writing.

Here’s the rules from Lisa Jo’s site:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

 
Alright, I’m a little scared to start but today’s word is…

Brave.

Brave Jonathan

Timer is set… 

GO!

It is very fitting that today’s word is Brave. I have actually been having a lot of conversations this week with different people about fear. Okay… It’s hard to not erase).  I have had to face some fears this week in that I submitted three articles as possible book contributions. 

I was afraid… What if they don’t like it? What if I’m the only one not accepted. I wanted to hide and sometimes even wanted to quit trying. But then I was brave. There was nothing to lose and I submitted the articles anyway. 

Now I had a verse that I wanted to blog about and it just happened to be about fear as well. It tells how that if we do what God says then we have nothing to fear. We won’t have to be afraid of evil things that might happen to us. I like how comforting that is. God is here for us and will protect us every step of the way. There isn’t any reason to not be brave when we remember that.

I thought about how my own fears get in the way of doing what I know would be good things.

Stop

Hmm… I tried harder this time. I am either a slow typist or not doing very well at not stopping. And it’s almost impossible to not delete typos. How long is five minutes of writing suppose to be? I might try that again.

Do you mind waiting 5 more minutes while I experiment? Okay, I know it’s a bit cheating but I’m going to try again but this time I’m going to try not to stop at all for the 5 minutes. That may mean I type “Brave, Brave, Brave” over and over during the hesitating moments and there will be a lot of mispellings but here we go.

This is hard!

Timer Set…

GO!

Okay, writing for 5 minutes and not hitting the back botton is realy hard. Here is an example of beign brave. I am sharing every typo and mispelling while writing for five grueling minutes. Even though it is hard and I won’t stop I’m doing it anyway. That is being brave. I could easily give excuses to not write today. I’m on vacation. I could say. But I’m not backspacing and I’m not quitting for five minutes. My spelling is atrocious but I’m bravely moving onward anyway. Oops. I backed spaced fo fix the word anyway. That’s okay. I won’t do it again. I just want ot know what it loos kike to write witout stopping at all for Five minutes. How many words shoutld that be if I’m just wriing and not correcting. This is looking really ugly now. Everyone might laugh. You mihgt wonder how I could possibly write with that many terrible spelling. Wow! She can’t type at all. No wonder her words are so short when she types on here. But I don’t care. This is an experiment. My firends will understand that this wis what it will look like if I didn’t ocrreccct or edit at all. For a very very very long five minutes. Thies is a very brave moment for me. I am wondering if the time is up. Normally the time is up much faster than this. Normally it goes off as I’m typing my thoughts and I wonder if I’ll ever get a complete thought out there. Now I’m wondering will 4 minutes ever end.. Yes that was suppose to say 5. I am doing an aamazing job not overhtingk.

STOP

Ha ha! Okay, see what I mean?  LOL It wasn’t much longer than my first try where I hesitated and corrected things. 

I’m not exactly sure what that means. 

Alright, what do you think? Do you like my free write without corrections? Or the more thought out hesitating one where I tried to keep my free flowing thoughts somewhat neatly arranged? Let me know in the comments. Your answers could affect my future Five Minute Friday posts for better or worse. 😉

Now are you brave enough to try Five Minute Friday? Let me know if you participate and I’ll check out your post. Thanks!

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Five Minute Friday: Friend

I bet you were wondering if I was going to join in at Lisa Jo’s for another Five Minute Friday today. I know I had two other posts this week but there isn’t much that will stop me from taking at least 5 minutes on Fridays to write.

Here’s the rules from Lisa Jo’s sight:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

Today’s prompt is “Friend“.

My timer is set.

And GO!

All the bride's maids in our wedding were my best friends.

My Best Friends

When I was a child, I met my first friend in Kindergarten. We didn’t become best friends until Second Grade. I don’t even remember how we started playing together. We would play on the playground and started visiting at each other’s houses. She was very popular and seemed so outgoing. I was shy. A lot of the kids in our grade at school wanted to be her friend but not mine. That was very hard. Especially as we would play on the playground and the kids would start arguing with us over my needing to share my friend. I would cry. My friend would take my hand and we would run away.

As we got older our friendship changed. We both found new friends. Then we would meet again and it was like we had never been apart. We could carry on a conversation as if we hadn’t missed a beat.

Stop

Ha! I need to get faster with my thoughts. I did delete the last half a sentence because it didn’t make sense to leave the sentence hanging. 🙂

I was about to talk about how we lost track of each other but then met again in college and then we were in each other’s weddings.

I don’t talk with her much anymore. But I think the friendships we have in our childhood prepare us for how we will be in adulthood. Now my husband is my best friend that I can talk with whenever I want. He knows more about me and my life than any of my friends in school ever did.

He actually encourages me to write. That’s how I found Five Minute Fridays. Through my writing friendships I have found in the past few months. And now I have Five Minute Friday friends. 🙂

Okay. I’ll stop now. I think I might have tacked on a couple of extra minutes worth to the end there. LOL It took me Five minutes just to get the thoughts flowing.

Did you have a childhood friend growing up? Are you still friends? Who do you consider your best friend now?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the word “Friend”. Please share with me in the comments. Let me know if you are writing in Five Minute Friday and I’ll check out your post.

 
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Here For My Children

photo (1)I am linking up again at Lisa-Jo’s for another Five Minute Friday.

The rules are

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

Today’s word prompt is “Here”. 

My timer is set.

GO!

Here I am with a baby in my lap. Wondering if I can have a few extra minutes for typing a little encumbered. But I won’t I’m sitting here thinking about why I am here.

I am here for a reason. There is a reason I choose to type. God gave me my beautiful family. I have many friends online and in real life.

I am happy here. I have my baby here sleeping in my arms. I like having my children here with me. Even when they try to distract or draw my attention from what I am doing here. I know they are the reason I am doing this. I remind myself of that and I stop and listen. If I am doing this for them then I can stop typing for them too.

But here in this moment I have five minutes of quiet granted to me by 5 of my 6 children and I type.

Stop

This is my second time to do Five Minute Friday. I did it in one take this time.

Now your turn. What are you doing “here”? 

Please share with us in the comments. If you participated in today’s Five Minute Friday, let me know and I’d love to check out your post.
Five Minute Friday

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