Friday, January 17, 2014

encouragement - 5 minute Friday

Sloan is participating in 5 minute Fridays, hosted by Lisa-Jo Baker, so I decided to join her today. Can I just say that 5 minutes is a heck of a lot shorter than I realized it was? Today's word was *encouragement*.

Go.

I'm scrolling through facebook and a sign catches my eye.
"You. Yeah, you. You're beautiful..."
And the sentiment makes me giggle cause someone wants to make everyone feel special - but to me, encouragement that isn't sifted serves no other purpose than to fill empty spaces with empty words.
The ones who encourage me are the soft speakers who live their encouragement. They wear their humility like a gown, and their lifework speaks to the value of the time I've spent in living this dream, bearing these babies, sowing countless seeds into these precious lives.
The ones who encourage me are the ones who open their mouths and Jesus comes out. They take the steps forward when their legs wanna trembling stop, turn and run. The encouragement comes from actions that live out truth rather than words that spill out unchecked, unmeasured, full of undeserved praise and oft spouted generalized platitudes.
You want to encourage me?
Live it.

5 comments:

Karmen M. said...

wow. Quite the challenge. Thank you for joining up! Stopping in from FMF.

Karmen M. said...

PS you have a beautiful family and congrats on Number 8. My hubby wants more, but 7 is my stopping point.

Richelle Wright said...

laughed at your comment of how 5 minutes is so short when writing...

and absolutely loved how you pointed out that encouragement must be sifted... meaningless cliches or words said without true sentiment behind them are just empty words. great write!

and beautiful family!

Joy said...

Agree with this reflection and interestingly I find Lisa Jo's to be one of the most encouraging blogs to mom's in the trenches,

Heather said...

Love it. This is so true. I just discussed this very thing with my daughter as we drove under a bride with graffiti that read, "Smile" and "Have a great day" Really? I'm more bothered that the bridge is now vandalized than I am encouraged by the intention of the words. Living it out is everything.

Thanks for sharing :)

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