My youngest daughter drew this cute and playful unicorn one afternoon on our driveway with her sidewalk chalk. Her artwork lasted several days before an afternoon rain washed it away.
But what fun it was for those few days to see the brightly colored unicorn galloping across the driveway each evening when I came home from work.
In response to the Daily Post’s Folly.
In response to the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge Fun!.
Maybe isn’t meant to be long-term. It’s a temporary place. You can hang out there for a little while, play around with the possibilities, wonder about the what ifs……..but then you have to decide and move on.
Maybe can be a time of rest and figuring out and gathering your thoughts but maybe won’t make things happen.
Sometimes maybe is necessary and can be a good thing. But if you stay there too long it weighs you down and takes up precious brain space.
Maybe you find yourself there……in a dreary place of maybe. 
The only way to get out is to make up your mind. Yes or no. Make a decision and follow through.
Less than an hour ago I made a decision. I stepped out of the tentativeness of maybe and into the boldness of decision. A decision either way, a yes or no, gives a clearer view.
A decision is about NOT staying in the maybe zone. Maybe will keep you stuck and makes you forget your dreams. Maybe is in between…..neither here nor there. It’s full of hesitation and drained of confidence.
Now that I’ve made my decision I am more focused and I know what I have to do.
Are you stuck? Need to make some decisions?
I dare you to make a decision within two days. Gather the information you need, figure it out, then decide.
Because what you decide matters. You being unstuck matters.
Live like it matters.
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:5-6 (NIV)
I don’t make the most of every opportunity. In fact I believe opportunities fly past me as I rush from place to place.
Jesus made the most of every opportunity. He noticed.
Everything.
Jesus would never avoid going down the cereal aisle when he saw your daughter’s friend’s mom coming from the other end.
Instead, Jesus would smile at her as he walked toward her. He would ask her how she was doing. Then Jesus would listen as he looked into her eyes. And he would be genuinely interested in what she was saying. Your daughter’s friend’s mom would leave knowing that she mattered. She would be so uplifted by that short but real conversation that she would go home and do the same for her family.
Then maybe her husband would do the same for his hurting co-worker the next day. And her teen aged daughter might reach out to a lonely classmate.
One conversation with Jesus can change everything.
What if I do the same? What if I take the time to notice? What would happen if I slowed down enough to see those around me. Not just see, but notice. Speak. Listen. Love.
It starts there. With the opportunities. At home. In the grocery store. At the salon. In your neighbor’s yard. At work or church.
Be salty. Not in the bitter, aggressive, sassy kind of way.
But in the way that brings out the best in others…..”seasoned with salt” as the verse says.
Someone needs you to see them.
Someone needs you to smile and say hello.
Someone needs you to listen.
Be salty and live like it matters.
This pecan tree makes everything around it seem small.
When I was a girl a picnic table sat to the right of the tree and we had a garden beyond the ridge of rocks.
Now, the garden and the table are gone.
But the tree still reaches into the sky and over the barn giving plenty of shade.
In response to the Daily Post’s prompt Vegetal.
My son is doing what I always wanted to do.
Yesterday he flew to Colorado with one bag, a backpack, and no job. Last year he drove from our home in Alabama to a little town in Texas. He had a job waiting there but that was all. After the job ran out, he came home long enough to work at a place making pallets. He saved a little money, bought a plane ticket, and flew to his next adventure.
He’s 19. He says college isn’t for him. Neither is a permanent job right now.
He wants to see places and do things. The kind of things you can do before you get the kind of things you have to do.
I had dreams of doing the same but I waited too long. College and jobs and marriage and little ones took the place of adventures in far off places.
I admire his courage.
One of the first places he explored is wherever this photo was taken. He hiked the mountains near Boulder a few hours after he landed.
He is seeing beauty he’s never seen before and climbing mountains and meeting new friends. He is learning and growing.
And it’s not too late for me to see beauty I’ve never seen before or swim in a different ocean or see a sunset on a new horizon.
In response to the Weekly Photo Challenge Pure and the Daily Prompt Daring.
Seven months after Daddy died, so did Mom.
Dad’s sickness then death was sudden but Mom had been ready for a while. Mom was tired of fighting for breath and she wanted to die. She wasn’t scared of dying, only of suffocating.
We surrounded her as she lay on her bed at home when she ran out of breath. And that’s what it was like. No gasping. No struggling. No fear. Her breathing slowed…..a gradual peaceful stilling of her chest……….then her breath was no more.
Mom was gone. Mom and Dad were gone.
We sat in the same room at the same funeral home with the same young funeral director as we had 7 months earlier and I thought about how nothing was how I thought it would be.
Nothing.
But I thought about it as if I was looking on, separated from all of it somehow. Everything was muted……..kind of dulled………what I heard, what I said, what I saw, what I felt.
In between the deaths of my parents my marriage took another hit. We had been struggling for a while. It was already so fragile and I was really scared this time. A real kind of scared.
Maybe that was the last time I’d felt anything full-strength. Maybe a part of my heart shut down. Maybe the Zoloft was doing what it was supposed to do.
As I sat there with my sisters around that table choosing the hymns to be played at Mom’s funeral service I remembered comments Mom and Dad made. Some of them to me. Some to others about me.
Mom and Dad had noticed my fading. My distance. I wasn’t myself and they were worried. I told them over and over that I was fine. I think I thought I was fine. I think I thought everything would be fine. But they saw what I couldn’t see.
The thing about fading is that it happens slowly. So slowly you don’t feel it or see it. It goes unnoticed at first. Then the heaviness gets heavier. The darkness gets a little darker. And you get used to walking around in the dark.
And I kept doing what I knew to do. What I had to do. Because the world doesn’t stop when your marriage is crumbling or when your Dad gets sick and when you just need time to think about things and feel things and mourn things. The world doesn’t stop.
Then it was heavier and darker and I was tired. The kind of tired that goes into my bones. I woke up ready for each day to be over.
As we reviewed the order of the funeral service, the words of one of the hymns came to mind:
O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed
And I wanted my soul to sing again. I wanted to wonder again at all that God has made.
I’d not lost all hope. There was still some in there.
Because I knew……I know that abundant life is truly possible even in the darkest of places.
How great you are God, my Savior God to Thee, How great you are!
In response to the Daily Post’s Faded.
Someday I’ll write that book.
I’ll travel when I have more money.
Next year I’ll learn a new language.
I’ll go back to school when I have more time.
I’ll reconnect with my friend soon.
Monday I’ll start eating healthier and exercising.
Someday I’ll patch things up with my dad.
Tomorrow I’ll apologize to my brother.
Someday won’t just happen. You have to make it happen.
Stop making excuses. Stop waiting for more time or more money or better circumstances. Don’t wait until you’re not scared anymore.
Someday can be today. Step into the fear. Make the call. Book the trip. Enroll in that class. Skip the McDonald’s value meal and go for a walk instead.
Make today the someday you’ve talked about for years. Move toward what you’ve always wanted to do and see what happens.
You have nothing to lose!
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 NIV
This is a close up of a bud on the fig tree in the backyard. You can see the “velvetiness” on the young newly opened leaf. Soon, more buds will sprout……more leaves will fill the branches. Then the fruit will come and grow and ripen. That’s the expectation.
That’s what’s supposed to happen. 
But what if it doesn’t.
Even so………..
17 Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 NIV
This photo was taken on an extraordinarily beautiful day in September. Septembers are normally hot and humid here in North Alabama but this day was more like a mild Spring day.
I noticed a tiny feather stuck on a long blade of grass. A baby bird probably lost it when he took flight from the nest in the nearby bushes along the fence line. The wind tried to blow the feather loose but the feather held on until, at last, a stronger gust caused the feather to lose its grip and it was free. It flew upward then floated softly back down, then up again and down again, up then down.
I’ve dreamed of flying or floating since I was young. I don’t have wings when I fly in my dreams, but sometimes I have a colorful inner tube around my waist.
One of my favorite dreams I have often is when I can jump high and stay suspended in the air, like I’m floating almost. Like the feather. Up quickly then softly floating back down. Up then down again.
I love that dream.
In response to The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge Transient.
mariegriffith.me 