Five Minute Friday

[Five Minute Friday] Laundry

Laundry. Making dirty things look shiny again. Water. Soap.
Open the flap, put in your clothes and soap, close the flap.
Press the button.
Come back an hour later and your clothes are clean.

I guess this is how most of us do laundry.
Maybe once a week, maybe heaps of it if you have a big family.
Maybe the result is not always pleasing because you have not figured out the “separate your colors” rule yet.
This is laundry in Europe, the US or any other Western country.

But I remember a cooler, social way of doing laundry.
My childhood/teenage memories are filled with images of big pots of hot water, boiling underwear on a charcoal stove, women bending down for several hours, washing heaps of clothes by hand.
This is laundry the Ugandan style.

I remember the girl who used to help us with laundry and other things. Whenever we had a break in our home school rhythm we would sit with her, see how she washes the clothes and gave her a hand. While we rubbed the dirty pieces of clothes against each other, we would chat, exchange the latest news, laugh about the German-African differences, but also share family troubles or just life problems.
Doing laundry was not only about cleaning clothes, but also washing your heart and soul, getting rid of the week’s dirt and baggage.

How come that we do laundry so often, but don’t really take stock of our “emotional laundry”? Might be refreshing, healing, cleansing once in a while.

————————————————————————
It’s Friday- over at Lisa Jo Baker you will find a lot more stories on Laundry today!

[Five Minute Friday] Ordinary

I guess none of us wants to be called ordinary. We all want to be special, super talented, beautiful, funny, strong, fast, extraordinary.

We are. You are more than ordinary.
There is a God out there saying ‘I have made you, I know every detail about you, inside and out- you are dear to my heart and there is no one like you.’

And yet, I am ordinary. And that is a good place to be in.
Out of my own strength there is nothing else I can be but ordinary. I have a limited amount of strength, I can only work for a certain amount of hours, I can only put a certain degree of make-up on my face each day, and most diet programs don’t work anyway. I can take music lessons, painting lessons, do exercises, work out…but this doesn’t make me less ordinary than other people. It just makes me human.
As a human being I am so glad I got someone in my life who makes me more than ordinary. Who takes everything I have to offer – my talents, my hours of practice, but also my incapabilities, my failures and my weaknesses – and turns them into something beautiful, something extraordinary.

The tasks ahead of me often are more than ordinary; everyday requires extraordinary patience, kindness, love for other people, strength and perseverance in the midst of storms – things an ordinary person could never accomplish.
Well, good to know that the one in me is greater than the storms around me; he fills the empty spaces within me with himself and turns me into so much more than ordinary – truly extraordinary.

————

It’s Friday, so I am linking up with Lisa Jo Baker to hear other extraordinary stories by ordinary people. See you there?!

[Five Minute Friday] True

True.

Speaking truly, acting truly, living truly. Being true.

I wonder how often we can say that about ourselves. Everyday we are forced to act a certain way, speak certain things, fit into certain expectations, believing certain things. But is it always true? Is it always who we really are?

Often it is very easy to just fit in, shape the image of yourself just a little more so people wouldn’t notice the real you. Ever since the beginning of Facebook you have like a thousand friends, just one click on “accept request” makes them your friends and they “get to know” you.

But do they really? Who can see the true you? Who do we allow to see to the inner parts of our soul, grant access to corners in our minds that even scare ourselves? Who are the people where we don’t care how we look, where we can be silent for a while, where we can laugh until our bellies hurt, where we can voice the weirdest, craziest and funniest thoughts, where we can cry and know there will be a comforting embrace waiting for us?

I don’t have many of such friends. And those I have did not come right away, it took a while. Some are family, some feel like family. How do I know? The moment I could be true –100% me without exclusion– was when I realized they are my friends. And with this I mean friends, not some icon on your facebook page.

And of course there is always the one who says of himself: I am the way, the TRUTH and the life….

It’s Friday – this means linking up with Lisa Jo Baker for a great community of TRUE stories, check it out!

[Five Minute Friday] She

She.
A pronoun refering to a female single person.
A simple world opening up a sphere of personhood, a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging, of being. She is part of an entire group of she’s- women being proud of being women, females, an essential part in the gender system.

Yet, there are beings that have forgotten to see themselves as “she”. There are some that have been denied the right to simply be “she”. They are still female, but that is all they are allowed to be. The woman in all her beauty is lost, denied behind it. “She” is reduced to the female body, the object of male lust, the slave of human desire.

She needs to hear again that she is so much more than this pronoun. That she is a person, a beautiful woman with a heart and soul and body that belongs to her. That she opens opens up this world of love, belonging and identity again.
She who stands on the outside seeing HER needs to say it, act it out, do it. Tell others that she is important, write it down, put it into gifts or actions. One way that many other beautiful women do that for many years now is the A21 campaign. They are women who recognize the need to preach these wonderful news and help other women in need to re-discover their beauty as women, human beings- she.

For more info, check: The A21 campaign

It’s almost midnight in Germany- but it’s still Friday. And this means linking up with Lisa Jo Baker and a whole bunch of writers. Come join us!

[Five Minute Friday] Mercy

There has been a lot going on lately and often I didn’t quite know how to put everything into words. Sometimes it might have been good to do that, since my heads seems to explode with all the thoughts racing through it…so this is a start!
It is important to not lose sight of the passions within you, but continually nurture them. Since I love writing I found this cool challenge a few friends of mine do: Five Minute Friday. A blogger puts up a challenge each Friday and you have five minutes to write about the prompt. No editing, no overthinking- simply write. Will start this week and I am excited to challenge myself in that perspective again!

Mercy

Even though this is a key concept in Christian faith I feel it’s either over-or understated. We talk about it so much in church and Christian everyday life slang, but do we live a life of mercy? Do we start everyday under the impression that today we’ve been given mercy?

Lately, the bible verse “His mercies are new every morning” has become more important to me. My life is crazy busy and often I feel I can’t meet people’s expectations. Or my own. And I listen to these voices in my head, saying “You’re not good enough”, “You didn’t do enough”, “It will never work”… And I lie in bed, fighting to fall asleep and sooooo exhausted by a day of doing too much and seemingly not enough.

“His mercies are new every morning”- what a mercy to find this verse in such circumstances! It is refreshing to get up early in the morning and know that today is a new day- because of God’s mercy. He already sees the entire day, what I will do or won’t do. This mercy sets the tone for the day, and hopefully for my life. It whispers “You do enough”, “What you do matters”, “You ARE enough because I am the fountain of love, joy, strenght and MERCY within you” into my ear and heart and soul. This keeps me going, keeps inspiring me to raise my hands in worship, lift my feet in dancing, raise my voice to praise him.

Thank God for your mercy!

[Five Minute Friday] is linked up with Lisa Jo Baker who puts out the prompt and connects a lot of lovely writers all over the globe. Why don’t you join in?