Five-Minute Friday: Truth

Five-Minute Friday is when we link up with Lisa-Jo Baker and hundreds of others, to write on the same prompt for five minutes. No backspacing. No editing.  I followed neither of those rules today!  I am not a complete rule breaker, though!  I did follow the absolute-must-follow rule and left an encouragement for the writer who posted ahead of me! 



Photo Credit

They sit across from one another at a table in Starbucks sipping their Pumpkin Spice lattes. 

It's been a while and they talk about what they have been up to and how busy life is and how crazy- fast time flies.  They have daughters and marvel at what young ladies those girls are becoming.  They reflect on how they are mothering differently than their own mothers did. 

Life is good sitting across the table from a friend at Starbucks.

They smile.  They talk about Jesus.  They wear cute jeans, scarves and knee-high boots. 

Time is up much too quickly and they hug and agree to do it again soon.  They part ways, smiling about the lovely time they had.

And although this scene is played out in cafes everywhere -

that picture is not always the whole truth. 

In fact, it rarely is.  There's usually more.

We look at those two women and it looks like they have it all together.  The friendship and the smiles and the cute clothes.  But the truth is that we all have some sort of messy going on in our lives.  We all have difficult seasons and marriage is hard and parenting is even harder and people disappoint us.  And then there's loneliness and depression and sickness.  Things that people just don't talk about at Starbucks.  And we look at them and we look at ourselves and we realize, we are the Starbucks ladies.  And thank You, Jesus, for Pumpkin Spice lattes and friends and scarves, but in-between smiles and sips of coffee, let's not forget to share the messy too.  Because we need to give each other permission to not have it all figured out.

I wish I had asked that day.  I wish I would have known to reach across the table to take her hand and pray with her.  But I was too busy having it all together.