Tag: Half prose/half poetry(a hybrid)

When Writing Feels Like Breathing

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 20 Comments

I thought I wouldn’t write today.

But it felt like I was holding my breath.

And then my writer me wanted to pop my holding my breath me like I was a big balloon.

So I stuck the sharp pin in and let out all the air. It felt like there was something there that needed to be released. And it came gushing out, like the whoopie cushions we used in grammar school.

Like walking without seeing the all along the way, was moving through the day without breathing — that writing part of me.

The words became little oxygen holders, like place the mask on yourself before you help your children, or the passenger seated beside you. Like miniature oxygen tanks on wheels for the sick.

Like an asthmatic needs an inhaler the words became vital, life-giving.

Maybe when He lights the passion He doesn’t intend for you to hold your breath. Maybe if you were meant to encourage and give and serve and love, that if you stopped you might pop too. Or feel like you’d explode.

Maybe you get your breath back when you are obedient. The steady breathing resumes and the heart finds a peaceful rhythm when the artist gets on with making art or the servant gets back to serving. Or the doctor keeps on healing.

If doing the passion thing He gave gives life,then stopping may diminish it in some way.

Like the film went from color to black and white silent in a flash.

I thought I wouldn’t write today. I worry readers tire of the black marching words like ants at a picnic. They tread where they’re not wanted.

But then I recall the One for whom I write. And the one who called me to.

And I trust that He both steadies the hand and the heart. And the one lone traveller on the journey would stumble here if they were meant to come. And He could say you popped, you breathed, you are no longer blue from holding it in.

That the details rest with Him and the marching words bring back to Him a worship from an uncertain hand. The writer.

Who found that writing felt like breathing. And that not was not an option.

Just for today.

Until we cross back into tomorrow and He leads me back–to the page. And breathes words and thoughts and the what to write. To honor Him.

Or until He says, stop, wait, rest, no.

Joining Kris at Always Alleluia dot com

Summer Gives Her Window Seat to Fall

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments


{Photograph courtesy of H.M. Miller, my friend, her art, a gift. I receive with humility and gratitude.}

Sitting at the edge of change. And a racing heart competes with a flood of salty wet.

Soaking in on the edge of change. And the Beautiful now wrestles with the pregnant possibilities of tomorrow’s new.

Teetering on the edge of change. And the Uncertain and the Unknowing play rock, paper, scissors with the potential outcome.

Dreaming on the edge of change. And Hope and Trust dance together… a beautiful pas de deux of love.

Anchoring the soul on the edge of change. And Faith rests knowing that the days are numbered and the battles are won.

Abiding on the edge of change. And relationship with Him secures the fretting heart and fixes the soul eyes squarely on the One who knows.

Embracing change on the edge. Surrendering to change on the edge. Loving change while tip-toeing around and on the edge.

Sleeping soundly on the edge with Change. While Summer gives her window seat to Autumn. And the window is rolled all the way down.

Linking today with Joy here and here.

A Wild Ride

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 16 Comments

She jumps on her keyboard like a kid on his flexible flyer in new white snow and uses what she has, her imperfect hybrid of prose and poetry, a blend of mix of words to communicate her heart, her soul in a five minute race through a life, like the space ship racing back from Mars, with all the stories all the discovery to tell of in a short news blast or bleep or headline, and she realizes that there is a reason she never liked cliff notes, spark notes, condensed telling of long very long beautiful stories.  Stories that tell of chapter after chapter after chapter of the beautiful, the God gifts. She wonders how she could ever, would ever race against a timepiece in her telling of what unimaginable transformation has taken place. She rushes and stumbles and hurries her heart where she knows it would be better to slow and stop and pray and ponder. But she has a short amount of time to tell. So she slows and breaks the chains that tie her like a prisoner to the moving hands of the clock to say that in this place of God created union between the man she knows as husband, the changes…every single last one of them have been the thing, just the thing she needed all along. Each move, each child, each kiss, each hurt. Every sadness, every joy, and every trial. The stress, the loss, the strain, the gain. He knew, the One that brought them out of the sea of humanity into the arms of the other….He knew that she would change Him and He would change Her and that the wild ride down the hill on their flexible flyer would fill them with Joy and a rich rich life of the Beautiful. And they wouldn’t change one thing.

{In full disclosure, I had to CHANGE a letter or two so this piece on Change would not sound like chump change 🙂 I couldn’t let One go uncapitalized when I was talking to well, the One who is Lord. So with one or two minor Changes, this is my five minute Friday writing. Sorry too, that my clock had no hands as it is a computer and that I find it hard to do math in my head while I am racing the clock. GOT GRACE??}

This post is part of a Five-Minute Friday link-up. Today’s word prompt is  CHANGE.

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for 5-Minute Fridays at Lisa Jo Baker dot com.