I so desperately long to write – but when? My three-year-old natives becomes so restless in the schedule-less summer, as do I. The days find me trying to entertain all of us through outings to the pool, or the air-conditioned mall, or the splash pad at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, or simply the sprinkler out front. By naptime, we are all exhausted and I sleep right alongside them. Instead of writing in my few stolen moments.

But for Five Minute Friday? Well, it’s *only* five minutes, and so here is a place I can always return. To keep my rusty writing skills a little less rusty. To keep practicing matching words to life, and placing words together to draw our souls upward to worship Beauty.

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photo credit: statesymbolsusa.org

Bloom. I think of wandering through fields of bring periwinkle blue blossoms, Texas bluebonnets, while visiting our Houston aunt and uncle and cousins. There is nothing quite so beautiful as a field in bloom. Sunflowers especially grab my imagination this time of year. Their bright, happy yellow faces greeting the day like eager children.

Something in bloom is evidently full of life. There is life coursing through its stems and its roots and it explodes in colorful blossoms. Oh, to bloom like this in life! To be a vehicle for the Life that is in me – the abundant, vibrant, never-giving-up, never-running-out Spirit. This is the hope of glory hidden within – of me hidden within this glory. Christ in you, the hope of [blooming] glory.

To spill over into my relationships with the hallmarks of this life – with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. To imagine such a “field” of flowers – oh, how our churches and families and neighborhoods would change! Oh, how my heart would be at rest, reveling in the bloom of this glorious Life spilling over in a thousand beautiful ways.