NaPoWriMo// week 2

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Week 2!  I should have posted this yesterday, but I was out of the house for almost 11 hours with work and a birthday party….  I actually wrote a couple of rhyming ones this week, which I wasn’t planning — bonus!  Do you prefer rhyme or free verse?

//day 8//

a bud is something different–
beyond a leaf,
not a fruit,
not a flower–
just a tight
–         pale
–         promise

of a heart
of a root
of a being.

a whisper of beauty
–     knotted within.

Yet if there is something inside,
it
cannot
but
unfold
into glory.

//day 11//

sitting on the edge of my bed
as the morning rain falls,
wondering
about so many things,
feeling like I’m
sitting on the edge of my future
as the predictable comes to a close,
and I’m left to glimpse and greet from afar,
excited, thrilled,
but almost scared of hoping too much.
will it be what I’m wanting
–               or more?
will the story unfold like I might hope?
what do I hope for something so distant?
so many doors swung open,
and I’m standing on the threshold
as the morning rain falls
wondering
what the day will bring.

//day 12//

Some days my mind is full
– of stars and swirls and lights;
Some nights I lie awake
– with castles and heather and sprites;
Sometimes my soul is dancing
– with stories and heroes in ink;
And then my head will go blank
– like a pen that ran out of think.

//day 13//

What is it about music
That dances through your ear
And makes your heart sing back
Because of what you hear?

What is it about the notes
Flowing through the scales —
Dripping, rushing, tumbling,
Like water in the vales?

How does one array of sound
Make moods and hearts to swell
At the delight of things unfolding
Beyond what words can tell?

For who can explain the feeling,
The surge inside one’s veins,
That makes a prince arise
And men forget their pains?

— A precious gift, a power,
A broadsword’s strength to wield
In that sweet-strong spell
On an invisible battlefield.

Future Dare

Right

Left

In front

Behind

Doors.

–

Open

Closed

Half-way shut

Doors.

–

Come here

Go there

Do they mock me, swinging wide,

pleading,

begging me,

only to swing again

and slam?

–

When I reach to touch the knob–

locked.

–

When I want to step inside,

I know another will close behind me.

Soft clicks-

Heavy slams-

Ten thousand all behind me.

–

Why do I fear this adventure?

Is it an adventure, a quest?

Is it a maze imposed?

–

Right

Left

In front

Behind

Which one do I dare?

J5~ All the World’s a Stage

Have you ever been in a difficult situation that you didn’t know how you would get out of?  This was our journal prompt for this week.  My response is not so much about one particular instance, but about a mental breakthrough I had on a ‘crisis’ I had been wrestling with for a while.  My ‘difficult situation’ was  more of a mental hurdle rather than a tangible complication.  

---

As a senior in high school, the question I toyed with as child – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” – becomes no longer a prospective fancy, but an imminent reality.  And as ‘when I grow up’ is becoming ‘now’, that can be just a little intimidating and stressful.  There are so many things to consider – What do I want to do?  How does this translate to secondary education and choosing a major?  If I want to be a stay-at-home mom, I don’t want to get too wrapped up in a career.  But I can’t exactly determine when or if I will marry or have children.  Whatever I choose now will alter the course of my life.  If I choose this, I’m not choosing anything else… 

This question, the big “What am I going to do next?!”, is something I have been struggling with more or less since high school began, but especially now that I am graduating in May.  I remember one day in particular over the summer that this was really bothering me, a day that I actually recorded in my personal journal.

I had been getting frustrated with other people for asking me what I was thinking about for next year and all that, particularly with Mom and Dad whose questions – and rightly so – were not so easily brushed aside by my ‘I don’t really know yet…’ answers, and frustrated with myself for not knowing, especially when so many of the others my age seemed to know what they wanted.

A few days before, my two youngest brothers were watching Prince Caspian, and I watched four confident young people come running to Trumpkin’s rescue with triumphant music playing in the background.  People in movies and books always seem to know what to do, to know their destiny, I thought longingly, if a bit romantically.  If only!

Then the thought struck me that they really often don’t.  Maybe I, as the audience, watching the piecing together of the selected scenes that tell you the key information of the whole, completed story know, but the individual characters themselves usually don’t know what will happen next or how the battle will turn out.

But the story writers do know.

This is when a quote from another movie, Love’s Enduring Promise, came to mind, when the mother tells the daughter regarding suitors, “God is writing His own story for you.”  God is the story Writer in my life.  He knows how it ends, and because He is good and in control, I know that I can trust Him with ‘what comes next’ in my life.  Now this doesn’t mean I lay back and simply wait for God to bring the next twist of plot along, but it frees me to move forward.  I don’t have to stay frozen in fear and indecision – What if I pick the wrong major and ruin my life forever?!.  I can step forward in faith, as Peter did upon the waves, keeping my eyes fixed upon the Object of my trust.

He is the Author and Screenwriter Who works all the perplexing and complicated and seemingly contradictory elements of the plot together for good, just as He did in the life of Joseph.