The Lingering We Wish Would End & How He Visits Us

{This post is part of the five minute friday with Kate MotaungA community of writers who write for five minutes on the word of choice. Today's word: Visit.}

The smell was potent.

Even after a good old soap scrubbing (as good as any wild kid can) the scent still lingered in his hair and on his skin. 

Hours later when I checked on him in the middle of the night on that Monday, I could smell the strongness clinging to his skin in its desperate attempt to stay there in the folds of his skin and on the softness of his hair.  

Two times a week sometimes three it reminds me of the depths from where it came from, the hint of blue, and the waves which came more pronounced with each stroke and stride from a boy whose love for it is endless.

The smell, it tapers off until the next time and the next time.

On that same Monday evening, in a city to the north of the beautiful Pennines mountains, lives were taken, hearts were broken, and souls were crushed.








Evil visited Manchester, England rearing its filth and ugliness towards the hearts of innocent children and men and women.

Evil is the devil's dagger and his desire for dominance and destruction on the earth will know no end.
His pursuit, to crush and devour every possible divine appointment of every boy and girl and woman and man under God. 

Even after a few days it still lingers, the sorrow and sadness felt for those lost and those grieving. 

In the Philippines, in the city of Malawi, a priest is beheaded and a city is under siege and marshall law has been enacted and lives are being lost.

And the stories and pages are endless. The scent of evil still lingering, always lurking, waiting to visit.

And where is God?  

Here. He is Here. We believe.

Hearing every prayer from every bent knee and every trembling tongue and we whisper, "Deliver us 
from Evil." Matthew 6:13
 
You visit us with Your glory, Your love, Your strength, Your wisdom, Your justice.

And we take up the shield of faith and the belt of truth that You have given us and we press on day after day and You visit us and we abide.



Like a Drop of Rain in a Parched Desert



{This post is part of the five minute friday with Kate MotaungA community of writers who write for five minutes on the word of choice. Today's word: Mom.}

It was always 7up or coke poured cold into a glass of heaping ice junks. And those straws, the ones with the stripes and the bendy necks? She'd place those in the cup as well.

Then, dead in the middle of the night, she'd quietly wake me and give me just a little sip, enough to moisten the mouth and put a sense of hope and relief into what felt like a desert that finally got a microscopic drop of saving rain.

I can't say how much that one sip meant especially when your down on your back and feel like the bones may never move and the eyes may never look life filled again.








That 7up it went all over the carpet in that brick house in Alabama with the blue shutters and fire pit in the front where we, girls, would sit and play in the musty heat of the sweltering south. I can still remember it and where.

It was the same carpet where my sister and I had tracked mud onto, trying to escape, after Dad discovered us hanging from the clothesline out back like a pair of misbehaving monkeys. You can say we got a whipping for that one and that one rightly deserved.

But she'd pat the back and hold your hand just so and I can still see it and she'd stay there right by the edge of the bed in the middle of the early morning night waiting a few minutes and probably thinking I had fallen asleep she'd shuffle out. 

I was awake when she'd left. I'd never want her to stop.

Mom's were like a drop of rain in a parched desert. 

So little can do so much.

And sometimes it takes all of our will just to give a drop, but it's remembered and felt forever. 

And that drop, it gives life to the lowest, meaning to the misery, and hope to the helpless.

Never see little as less than.

Little things can fill a heart big.