[Five Minute Friday] Relief

We just celebrated Easter, the fact that death does not have the last word. We rejoiced in resurrection and life. The triumph of light over darkness. The relief that the empty grave brought (and still brings) us.

The challenge we now face is to translate this Easter experience into our daily lives. 
To not let this experience remain a story on the pages, a once in a year event. 
So what actually happened that Sunday that we should allow to permeate our day-to-day routine?
Even before his death, Jesus said,

“In this world you will have trouble. But I have overcome this world.” (Matthew 16:33)

There it is. Once and for all, Jesus has done it. 
Death is dead, life has won. 
He has overcome, and calls us to do the same.
We tend to quote and rejoice in the second half of the verse, but there’s more to it. Jesus is not some obscure magician who just – Boom – finishes the work of the cross.
He promises trouble ahead. Why? Because he’s been through it before us. 
He walked this earth and spoke to people. 
He observed their struggles, helped their needs, shared their lives. 
He experienced the trouble this world is so full of and he relieved it. 
Not with magic, not from one moment to the next. 
But he settled it once and for all. 
He aligned himself with this world. 
Made himself one with our hopes, our struggles, our hearts, our lives.
In the midst of our darkness he speaks words of life: I am here. With you. For you. 

There’s still lots of trouble out there. 
Often I am overwhelmed when reading the news. Political conflicts in so many countries, hostility towards other people in my own country. 
But you don’t have to go that far to be troubled. Just listen to people, read emails from friends, meet up with them for coffee and just listen. 
We might not even have to go further than ourselves to experience the dreadfullness of what life throws at us. Too much too handle and seemingly no way out. 
Look into a stranger’s eyes and you’ll see it: trouble. 
Broken hopes. 
Despair. 
Leaning towards death rather than life.

We are called to bring Easter back into people’s and our lives. 
We are called to speak life into seemingly dead situations. 
To not let dread and hopelessness and despair have the last word. 
We are called to overcome.
Not with magic. 
Not all at once, from one moment to the next.
But with ourselves. 
We have time to spend and listen to others. 
We have open hands to lift someone up.
We have powerful stories to tell. 
We have scarred lives to share. 
We have our souls to align with those who suffer.  
We have words, simple words often: I am here. With you, for you. We are in this together. 
Stepping down into trouble, staying with the troubled, and waiting till the storm is passed might be some of the greatest relief we can give.

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As always, linking up with a wonderful writing crowd over at Kate Motaung‘s Five Minute Friday. There are some great news about a retreat over there, go check it out!

[Five Minute Friday] Good

It’s Friday and as always we gather and write.
 But today is also a special Friday.
Good Friday. What a name!
Doesn’t it sound preposterous, blasphemous?
Paradox?
Maybe even insulting?
A day full of tears, pain, suffering, desperation, death.
It’s over.
All wonders and miracles have come to an end right here.
Hope was in vain and now it has ceased.
Nothing is good about today.

I wonder if the people entertained such feelings as they walked up that hill so many thousand years ago. Following the cheering crowd.
Led by the man carrying the heavy cross and the sins of this world.
Seeing the savior, their Messiah, die.
The man, the God, they had laid all their hope on.
No, there’s nothing good about this day.

I wonder if we entertain such feelings as we walk through life with all its demands, struggles, desperations.
Suffering from disappointments, seeing hopes and dreams die.
As if there was nothing good about this day.

Good Friday. What a name!
The best name because there is so much good about this day.
There’s hope for a new, eternal life.
Death does not have the last word.
There’s encouragement for the hard-working, attention-seeking people. We do not have to do good, our savior has made us good long before we even began our day’s work.
There’s rest for the weary, exhausted soul.
His life wants to restore and renew yours. Every. Single. Day.

I’m so glad the story doesn’t end that Friday.
It is just the very good beginning of the world’s greatest redemption story.
Behind the shadows of the cross we can already see resurrection looming.
The beginning of new life, new hope.
May we see its coming light in our darkest hours, may we believe the good news it brings, even though it is so hard sometimes.

Happy Easter, friends! There’s good news ahead!

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As always, linking up with the fabulous crowd over at Kate Motaung‘s Five Minute Friday.

[Five Minute Friday] Break

On Wednesday, as I was sitting in the teacher training seminar, I took a look at my fellow teacher trainees. A colleague leaned over and whispered, “Is it just me or do we look more exhausted each week?”
He was right.
Dark small eyes glanced back at me. Bored and incredibly tired expressions on their faces, many of us worked really hard to not fall asleep during pedagogy class.
We’re exhausted and in desperate need of a break.

Do you know this feeling? Your body is exhausted, your mind is tired.
You just need a break.

If we take a closer look at the word “break” we find it’s actually a very active verb.
Breaks don’t come upon us, we need to take them.
Break up the routine you’re in, the spinning wheel you can’t get out of.
The clusters and circles you’re stuck in.
Break with the thought patterns you entertain every day. The worries and questions tormenting your soul.
Break free from things and people holding you back.
Break through to rest. Peace of body, soul, and mind.
We need it desperately. Every day.

Often it doesn’t take much to have a break.
Give yourself time to get ready in the morning.
Enjoy your breakfast. Food in general is good. 🙂
Don’t work through your break time at work.
Take a walk.
Meet a friend for coffee and allow them to encourage you.
Read a book. No notes, just for you and for fun.
Listen to a piece of music, really listen. Let the instruments and the lyrics sink in and resonate with the strings of your soul.
Be still. Seek silence. Seek Him who promised to bind you wounds and refresh your empty soul.

It doesn’t take much to have a break.
But it does take your first step. Break is an active verb.
Where can you take a break today?

Want to make break a routine in your life? Then join me at Shelley Miller’s Sabbath Society – for all those who are all in for Sabbath, God’s desginated break for us.

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Taking a break from work and writing for fun – this is Five Minute Friday over at Kate Motaung‘s place. There’s also a great video interview with my friend Liz over there today! Why don’t you join us?

[Five Minute Friday] Real

I like to play jokes on people. 
Nothing really bad, just teasing. Telling little stories and seeing their unbelieving faces and their “really” expressions. 
Some fall for it, they believe the fake story I just told them. Others don’t, they go deeper and ask for the real thing, the truth.
 
In a world of fake IDs, fake relationships and fake products, the realty is hard to find. 
Many argue there isn’t actually a reality, everything is constructed. 
But what if realness is there – buried deep inside of us and often found in unexpected places.

A student struggling with depression is real.
People in Syria living in the rubble of what used to be their homes are real.
Christians all over the world fearing for their lives because of their faith are real.
A Christian couple in your church getting a divorce is real.
A spouse yelling at you and not understanding every single one of your problems is real.
A friend letting you down or telling you something unexpected is real.
An experience of failure making you aware of your own weaknesses is real.

Being real doesn’t mean being perfect. 
It often actually means real pain, struggles, breakups, failure, tough relationships.
 
What if being real meant being raw? 
Authentic? 
With all its edges and cliffs and struggles?
 
A real diamond is raw at first. 
It looks like a stone and nothing fancy. 
Only the chisel of a skilled master and life’s changes bring out the true beauty. 
A raw stone turns into a real diamond.

Being real means being raw stones, nothing fancy or glamorous. 
It means pain and struggles and disappointments. 
But through courage and honesty we discover a bit more of our rawness. 
And all along I hope we experience the chisel of our master to carve us more into diamonds. 
Real treasures he already sees in us. 

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Linking up with Kate Motaung for Five Minute Friday. Five Minutes of flat writing on one prompt. Sharing with other wonderful writers. Come and join us!

Growth

I fight.
I struggle with the new reality called my life.
I wrestle with the challenges thrown at me day after day that often seem overwhelming.
My mind knows I have to push through, towards the surface, towards the light.
But sometimes I’d rather not.

Sometimes I feel like a seed in the ground.
I’ve been planted for a reason.
I’m expected to gro.
Life has taken good care of me, watered and prodded me from time to time.
Now it’s time to grow.

Yet the soil is comfortable and familiar.
I know my way around, I know the people surrounding me.
I know how to behave.
I know I am me.

I just don’t want to change.
Don’t want to evolve.
Don’t want to go through the painful process of birthing seomthing new.
Why not stay a seed forever?

Because I would regret it.
I would miss out.
I would never see what’s above the ground.
I would never get to delight in the beautiful blowers around me.
I would never discover the strength and beatuy that’s been planted in me all along.
I would never get to discover new and surprising sides on me.

Only if I push through, only if I wait for roots to thicken, for seeds to break open, for some of the old things to die – I will also harvest the beautiful new life that comes from growth.
It’s time to grow.

And so I wait.
So I push.
So I focus on the light above that’s to come and the vision of new life ahead of me.

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Linking up with Karen Beth and her writing group today. Thankful for prompt words that keep my mind spinning, my words coming together, and my fingers on the keyboard dancing!

[Five Minute Friday] Plan

I try. I try really hard.
I think and plan and think and evaluate some more.
I neglect old plans and come up with new ones.
I rethink every idea I have and I am careful to not miss anything.

And yet, nothing goes as planned.
Time is too short, material is missing, students come up with their own, unique ideas.
I have not taught a single lesson the way I had planned it.

And that is totally fine.

Working with people is never a full-proof thing.
You can’t choose to invest in people without taking a risk.
You can’t program others like you would program a computer.
You can give a certain input, but you can never be sure about the outcome.
Everyone working outside an office might be familiar with that.

We’re all little planners.
We plan our day. When to get up, when to do what, when to meet friends.
We plan our months and years. When to visit relatives, when to go on vacation.
We ultimately plan our lives. When to get married. When to have kids. Where to live and how to pay off mortgages.

We experience success, happiness, and fulfilled plans.
But I guess I’ve never met a person who hasn’t also experienced defeat, disappointment, and loss.
Plans fail. Every day, in every life.

And that is fine as well.
Because at the end of the day it’s not about the plan.
It’s about the interruptions and my attitude towards them.
They might change my plans, give them a different direction, bring something or someone to life we’d have never expected.
That’s what makes life rich and beautiful.

So how interruptible are your plans today?

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On Fridays I plan to link up with Kate Motaung and a fabulous group of writers for Five Minute Friday. One prompt. Five minutes of writing. No editing. Come and join us!

I feel like I’m not myself anymore

I feel like I’m not myself anymore.
My life has been taken over by someone, something else.
The way I eat, work, and interact is dictated by the outside.
I don’t know when I last got enough sleep.
When I didn’t have to worry about the loads of work in front of me. Emails in my inbox pile up – messages from dear friends waiting for an update, and all I can give them is a “I’ll get back to you as soon as things calm down.”
But when is that?

My kitchen looks like a battlefield, I stumble through it in the morning to make a cup of coffee and hope there’s still some food left in the fridge.
I don’t even want to get started on the rest of the apartment.
Piles and piles of paper, clothes, pens.
The air smells of heavy thinking.
I look at this mess everyday and think, “I really need to get some order into this.”
And yet, time runs by far too quickly and I have no energy left to pick up a single sheet of paper.
I want to meet up with friends and share my struggles, but often I feel like I have no ounce of emotional strength left in me to carry a conversation.

© B. Mahler, Fotograf, Berlin

I feel like a grandma when I see my roommate go to a party at 9.30 pm and I start getting ready for bed.

What happened?
Well, I started working.
Welcome to the life of a new teacher.

I haven’t moved, I still speak German, I still surrounded by many familiar things and faces.
And yet, I feel as if I had entered a new culture.
The land of adulthood and working.
The land where clocks ring early and demand full-on responsibility.
A whole new world of terms, people, schedules.
And it takes time to learn them.
There are courses to prepare you for birth, marriage, driving…but why does no one ever


prepare you for work and all the changes it brings to your life?

Another transition.
Not geographically, but mentally, cognitively, and emotionally.
My sense of time, sleep, work, and social life has been uprooted and replanted into a new environment.

There’s the honeymoon phase.
I do enjoy new experiences, like meeting friendly colleagues, entertaining students, teaching epiphanies, and earning some money along the way.
There’s the depression phase I wrestle with at the moment.
The overwhelming feeling of defeat, exhaustion, and hopelessness.
The impression of being lost in your day’s schedule, tasks, and identity that no longer seem to be your own.
The inability to manage my life around this new omnipresent force called school.

© positivepressagency.com

And eventually, hopefully, there will be the readjustment phase.
When my roots are firmly replanted on this new soil of adult work life.
When I find the right balance between work and social life.
When I learn to say no to things so that I have time to enjoy the things and people I have said yes to. When life has found a new routine and I can carve out space to let in joy, peace, and people again. When I discover a new sense of anticipation for what will come next.
When I listen into myself and find that I am still there. I might have been lost for a while, but my identity – my self – has always been there after all.

[Five Minute Friday] Visit

Teaching isn’t always easy. 
Passing on content you’re not really interested yourself can be challenge.
Speaking about things you’re really passionate about can be a real struggle.
I enter the room and 25 more or less interested students look at me. 
Expectantly, hoping I don’t do grammar with them.
No, no grammar today.
A question instead: How many slaves work for you? 
Blank faces.
Surprise.
Question marks.
A joke about mom doing their laundry quickly dies when I ask them to do research.
They get onto the computers, visit the first websites. 
They read stories about child labor in Bangladesh to produce clothes the students are wearing everyday.
They look at pictures of Chinese production lines and people working day and night so that people over here can get a new phone every year. 
They encounter the term human trafficking for the first time and are shocked that prostitution and organized crime exists right in front of their eyes.
Ninth grader cockyness turns into surprise, horror, shock. 
I can hear quiet murmurs, people exchanging facts and questions.
Slavery is real. 
It happens right in front of you. 

In this globalized world this is our burden. 
Today is “Shine a Light on Slavery” day. 
The 27th of February – speaking up for the more than 27 million people in slavery. 
And I hope that my students don’t just visit these websites. 
That they don’t stop at talking about it. 
That their shock and surprise turn into action. 
And that I may join them.
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As always I am linking up with Kate Motaung and other fabulous writers. 
If you want to know more about this topic, start with Slavery Footprint.

[Five Minute Friday] Open

My life is like a prison sometimes. I feel trapped in my day-to-day routine. I just function, but true life has left me. 
My mind is like a prison sometimes. I mull the same thoughts and questions over and over, but there’s no answer that makes the spinning stop. 
My soul is like a prison sometimes. Worries and fear of the unknown creep up and won’t let me sleep. The more I worry the bigger these forces become and tear me apart.

It’s so easy to become closed off. 
Stuck in my own doings and pereceptions and worries. 
Hidden from the world and other people. 

How can you be a door opener
for other people?

But there is a door. 
Only recently when I reflected upon this busy, busy year I had with final exams and studying 24-7, without any time for friends but a lot to worry about – only then did I realize I had a few doors along the way.
Or rather, door openers. 

People like J.
Whenever I felt overwhelmed with questions and deadlines and my own emotions, there was J. 
We would cook together or have coffee and she would listen. 
And then speak firm and encouraging words. 
She listened to my questions and pointed me towards answers.
She opened my perspective for more. 
She restored a bit of hope where I had lost it.

J is a door opener. 

Interesting enough, this year roles are reversed. 
She’s stuck with exams and drowning in books. 
She is overwhelmed with questions about the future. 
She might also feel like in prison sometimes. 
The other day we had lunch and talked a bit how much I appreciated her role in my life. And then she said, “but don’t you know that you’re my J?”

This touched something inside of me because that’s who I want to be.
I want to be someone’s J. 
A friend who shares life with you. 
A listener. 
An encourager. 
A thinker. 
A “sit still and wait” person. 
A perspective changer. 
A hope restorer. 
A door opener. 

*Yes, there were other people in the last year, too, and I can’t thank them enough for being Js in my life! If you’re reading this, please know how much I appreciate you!

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Friday is writing time!Kate Motaung‘s Five Minute Friday party! 
Five minutes to give it a go at

[Five Minute Friday] When

No matter how much you plan a lesson, a day, or a life – something will always go wrong.
Isn’t this the attitude we often have towards life? 
Well, what if things interrupt our plans, but in a very positive, surprising way?
Especially when you least expect it.

Today is my first day of the holidays. 
It was quite a delight walking out of the school yesterday and feel the knowledge flood me: You’re off for an entire week. You can sleep and rest. 
With these high spirits I walked downtown. 
At a traffic light I ran into a friend I had met in my first semester and hadn’t seen in quite a few years. 
I thought I would just say hello and then move on. 

I was wrong.

We started talking about what we’ve been up to for the last few years and a superficial chat quickly turned into a time of sharing about challenges and faith questions. 
We ended up going for coffee and a few minutes turned into a few hours. 
We left the café, smiling and incredibly blessed. 

I didn’t expect to run into that friend yesterday. 
I hadn’t planned to spend hours in a coffee shop hearing his life story. 
And yet I am so glad I did. 

What if life isn’t about perfect plans and anticipating all the negative possibilities? 
I guess life is more about our willingness to be interruptible. 
To be open for the people and things that come across our way each day. 
Because when we least expect it we will meet blessings in disguise. 
These kinds of interruptions won’t destroy our timetables – they’ll enrich our souls in ways no planned event ever could. 

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Friday means writing party over at Kate Motaung‘s place! One prompt. Five minutes of flat writing. No editing. But loads of encouragement from fellow writers!