NaPoWriMo prompt: And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero, taking your inspiration from these four poems in which Lucille Clifton addresses Clark Kent/Superman.
Once upon a time, there was a shy little girl, who wasn’t in a fairy-tale, but felt that if only she had a fairy God-mother, she might become Cinderella.
She didn’t really like being at home much, there were too many chores to do – shopping, washing, cleaning, cooking and things like that, only without all the modern kitchen gadgets to do it all.
Her trusty tools were brush and pan, bucket, mangle and washing line – but she did have an oven. She was good with her tools and good at making tasty meals.
She complained about her chores though (it’s not fair!) and for fun she would escape from the house to enjoy writing, drawing and making things.
And she was a lucky girl, because she really loved school!
When the season of school – O and A Levels – was over, she felt a bit lost.
It was an exciting season of freedom though – of leaving home, leaving the UK and leaving childhood behind.
But she didn’t know what she wanted to do when she grew up!
So she lived abroad for 2 years.
It was a season of languages, travel, exploring her faith and looking after children.
Then she moved to London, back into a season of study – studying to be a teacher. Now she knew what she wanted to be and she eventually became a primary school teacher.
She loved that for a few years – back in school and able to bring joy and learning into young lives…
The season of teaching was also a season of motherhood. She loved that too, and though it was all hard work, it was her passion.
This 19 year season in London came to an end, as she moved into a season of marriage and a new home in Nottingham.
There she had an exhausting, but transforming season as a full-time carer of her mother (with early-onset Alzheimer’s).
She had a brief, disappointing season teaching again.
Another season saw her developing and making a business of her passion for photography – a life-long hobby.
After having to abandon a non-lucrative business, her next season was a painful season of ‘time-out’, of healing, writing and restoration, which resulted in a published book and a season of starting again.
(Of course she never stopped being a mother, and kept all her other passions simmering in her heart and life.)
She had a season of volunteering part-time and of working part-time, whilst beginning a courageous season of writing therapy and exploration which resulted in four unpublished books…
Then there was a restorative season of prayer-ministry training, grand-children and moving home.
For the last year she has been in a season of painting, decorating and building again. She is still writing, still taking photographs, still playing with children, still part-time working and volunteering…
Cinderella in a season of painting and decorating
So many exciting, natural and blessed seasons!
I’m so glad that it isn’t winter forever, and I’m also glad that it isn’t Spring, or Summer or Autumn forever too.
But she still doesn’t know what she wants to do when she grows up!
What will the next season bring, I wonder? More writing? Painting? Art-work? More in ministry?
I hope I can respond to whatever the Lord asks me to do next.
Isn’t life wonderfully full?
Our times are in His hands.
I’m so glad of that.
‘’Tis the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la, la-la,la-la’
Every Friday, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is SEASON
I do read through my script afterwards to correct my mistakes; to check scripture references and to find an appropriate image to illustrate the topic.
To read other FMF posts on this subject click HERE.
I have a card which reads, ‘Stressed spelled backwards reads Desserts – coincidence? I don’t think so!’
I am looking at the word ‘strive’ in its negative sense.
Strive in its sense of stressed, self-effort, born out of a lack of trust in the provision of God.
We live in a performance-oriented culture and society, which praises busy-ness, achievement and ‘progress’ for its own sake.
If we are not ‘busy’, many of us (including me) feel lazy, guilty and like we are undeserving.
We have become what some have called human-doings rather than human-beings.
In meeting strangers, we ask their name and what they do, as opening introductions, rather than who they are, what they enjoy etc. I made it a point several years ago, to not ask a person’s occupation, but to ask how they most enjoy spending their days.
Whilst performance, progress and achievement are good and necessary aspirations in their own right, when we make them the basis of our self-worth, or to impress others, or to earn approval, we end up striving uphill towards a burnout!
Many people – inside and outside of the church – are over busy, over worked, over stressed and have no time for rest and for relationships.
But if we look at Jesus, He did not go racing around from house-to-house and town-to-town striving to meet all the needs that He saw in all the people.
The crowds came around Him and He comforted, taught or healed the blind man, or the leper… ONLY as He saw His Father direct. He went to the pool of Bethesda and healed only one paralytic who had been there for many years.
John 5:1-8
Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
He could have healed all the ‘crowds’ of wounded and disabled there, but we are not told that He did. Jesus did not meet EVERY need in Judea, Jerusalem, Galilee and the places He went. He would walk through a crowd to the one to whom He was sent.
He said specifically that he only does and says what He sees the Father doing and saying. He only does the Father will. How much more should that be true of us?
Personally, my default has always been: if I see a need, or a job that needs doing (and it is within my power) I do it. If someone asks me to do something and there is no direct impediment, I always say yes. And I end up too busy. My to-do lists can become my master, as I strive to tick off the duties on the list and am driven to keep everybody happy.
Sometimes I am overwhelmed and worn-out.
This is not what God wants of me or for me.
This is not what Father God wants of you.
He wants us to listen to Him, to use the talents and strengths He gave us and to DO the things He specifically gives you or I to do.
Many of us are too busy and worn-out. We carry the weight of the whole community and the whole world on our own little shoulders. Some end up burned-out – we collapse!
cartoon image of a business man carrying a ‘world’ on his shoulders
Many of us are desperately in need of rest – of true Sabbath-rest – rest for our body, soul and spirit.
God longs for us to take this rest. He designed us to be in balance. He designed us to BE ourselves, to BE in relationship with Him and with those He has given us, and then out of that fullness, to overflow and serve others in our wider sphere – to serve those to whom He sends us.
He does not NEED me to do everything in the church or in my community. He does not want me to be a one-man-band, striving to fulfill all the duties and responsibilities that belong corporately to the whole community.
He wants me to do ONLY those things to which He has called me.
The irony is that sometimes I am so busy saying yes to and serving everybody else’s demands of me, that I have no time and energy left and miss what God Himself has specifically called me to BE or to DO.
Jesus said, Come to me ALL who are weary and carrying heavy burdens; lay your burdens down and take MY yoke upon You. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Matthew 11: 28 to 30
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Ask yourself: How busy am I? Am I rested? Do I have time for prayer, time for refreshment, time for relationships, time to listen? Am I too busy?
If we give Him our concerns and only DO what He asks us to, we will live in harmony, in peace and will fulfill the destiny for which we were called.
You do not have because you do not ask God. James 4:3
Who are you?
If we were born into a loving, nurturing family, we naturally build a strong sense of identity, validated and encouraged by our parents, and out of that identity flow our talents, strengths and purpose.
Our destiny is encouraged by and flows out of a solid identity.
It flows from a secure, peaceful heart and a strong foundation.
When this does not happen, when we are not nurtured as children, and our needs are not validated and met, we fail to develop a strong sense of our God-given identity and so we try to please others and take on whatever shape we think that others around us demand or expect of us.
In this deficient scenario, when our sense of identity is weak, our destiny tends to become dependent on what others expect us to have or what they expect us to do.
We become a ‘human-doing’, or a ‘human-having’, instead of a human-being.
We rely on our having and doing to become our status, our esteem, the value by which we measure ourselves.
We measure our importance by how many possessions and latest gadgets we have, or measure by what we do for a living and how hard we work, or how ‘successful’ we are.
We become performance oriented, workaholics, or materialistic seekers of wealth and fortune.
If we did not get a secure foundation as children, we are not lost. There is always abundant hope. Our Father God, who designed us for a purpose, will still work in and through us if we let Him.
Ask Him.
He can and will heal our broken hearts, demolish the lies we have believed about ourselves and will transform our identity and our destiny. He will create in us a new heart – a heart of flesh – and dismantle our heart of stone.
We will learn to measure our value and true success by having a secure heart – a strong identity in who we are in Christ Jesus.
We are children of the living God and we belong to Him.
We are loved, protected, provided for and cherished by our heavenly Father.
When we spend time in the presence of Him who created and designed us, we become who we were created to be and we can nurture the gifts and talents He purposed for us since the beginning of time.
We can truly reach and be fulfilled in our God-given, purpose-made identity.
‘All or nothing’ was another description spoken over me.
Some of this was extreme (but natural) reactions to childhood pain – my way of coping with the experienced I faced, and my responses to those hurts and disappointments.
When we experience painful situations, over which we have no control, we often take extreme measures to protect our hearts from further pain.
I praise God that, over many years, the Lord has been softening my heart, breaking down my walls, healing me of old pain, and setting me free from my sinful judgments and responses I made.
Little by little, I am coming out of agreement with lies that have held me captive, and with vows that have bound and limited me.
Addictions have been broken, thanks be to God, and new desires and paths are opened up, but I can’t yet say that I am moderate! It may be a personality thing.
What comes to mind (optimistically perhaps), is the Lord exhorting us to be hot or cold, for He wants to spew out our lukewarm-ness. (Forgive my paraphrase, whilst I find the reference).
Revelation 3:15-16
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!
So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
God is passionate in His love and His compassion and He wants us to be passionate and generous in our compassion and love too – for Him and for one another.
If we are a bit lukewarm, we can inadvertently fall into compromise and into building a house of own choosing.
We may miss the exciting destiny to which God has called us and for which He made us.
What are you passionate about?
(Fan into flame image)
2 Timothy 1:6
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
Talk to God about it and see if Hewants to fan that passion back into flame!
Every Friday, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is EXTREME.
dawnfanshawe 