Today’s Five Minute Friday prompt from Gypsy Mama is “If you met me….” I love how she described today what this five-minute writing exercise is all about: “Got five minutes? Let’s write. Let’s write in shades of real and true and unscripted. Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not.”
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If you met me…
I am one whole person, but I have many sides. To me, they all fit together seamlessly, but your understanding of me would undoubtedly be colored by where you met me.
If you met me at home, you’d see a person who loves to welcome people in and engage in conversation. We might be sitting on the sofa knitting or on the porch drinking coffee. Or maybe we’d be cooking together in the kitchen, or sitting around the table, sharing a meal. You would understand who I am not just by talking to me, but also by being in the space that over the years I’ve populated with art and books and music and furniture I love. My home would tell my story—a story of babies being welcomed into the world, and how they’ve grown into themselves; a story of love hoped for and lost in divorce; a story of redemption and grace in a new marriage, two lives and families coming together in complex wonderfulness. You would see my writing desk and the chairs around the dining room table, and understand all that I love most in this world.
If you met me in church, you would maybe think I am good and have my life all together, but as we talked and worshiped, you would see the brokenness and the ways I’m still journeying, still working to be the person I was created to be.
If you met me in a bar on a Saturday night, you might never imagine that I would be heading to church the next day. You would meet the me who loves to have fun—to have a cocktail and a lively political debate with friends, and then to drink and dance and laugh late into the night. You would see the me who loves to let loose.
To meet all of me, you would have to follow me to all of the places I live out my life.
