This week Patricia has challenged us to write a piece from the following quote

“All have their frailties and whoever looks for a friend 
without imperfections will never find what he seeks.”
Cyrus the Great

My story is below but you can find how Patricia’s other contributors met the challenge by going to

Frailties and imperfections…

click on the little blue froggy.

Pavel’s Problem

by JE Lillie

We aren’t as young as we used to be. Her mother and father are gone seventeen and fifteen years now. My own folks were left behind in their graves in Poland so long ago their existence is like a dream. But as it is with most good dreams I still miss them.

Papa used to tell me, “Pavel you can do anything you set your mind to, you and God together.”

How I wish that were so. Like most good lies that one has bits of truth scattered inside it. Like Rosemary baked into bread there’s just enough of the stuff to create a taste, a longing. But it always leaves you wanting more and never quite able to find it.

Her mother and father always said I was not good for her. Maybe it’s so. After so many years neither of us have been able to be all for the other one. Her life before showed her great things and she has never quite been able to come down to the humility of who I am. Still that part of her always pushed me to be better. Until now.

I am so tired. I think the fight is almost gone out of me. I find myself wishing I had more strength for her sake. But this might be one of those things that God and I cannot do together even if I set my mind to it.  I suppose it’s not because He couldn’t give me the strength but I think He might have something else in mind. I am finding it’s not just what I set my mind to that’s important here.

I wish I could go back to that day I first met her. She was on that swing. The air was full of the scent of roses and willow. The world was light and I didn’t know the lie for what it was. I am going to miss this life because of what I found in her.

Take a stab at writing a story from this quote.

I am running far far far! behind this week in my writing. Two sermons put me a bit behind, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to write this story. Meet up with Patricia’s other words contributors at

Attention is generosity…

This week we are being asked to write a story based off of the quote,

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Simone Weil

Here is my story

Pay Me Some Mind

by JE Lillie

Mother hated him. She said he was beneath my station, dumb as a box of hair and ugly as a fencepost.

Papa affectionately called him “the leech.”

He was none of those things. Maybe Pavel wasn’t Robert Redford. Maybe he didn’t have a degree from Harvard. But he was a hard worker and he had a heart of gold. More important, he chose me.

I suppose I should not have expected Mother and Papa to understand. They were good people just busy…always busy. Mother had her charities, Papa had his work and clubs. I had my nannies, a new one every two years like clockwork to make sure I never got too attached. I don’t think Mother ever really chose Papa and maybe Papa never chose Mother. I always felt like neither of them chose me.

 I suppose it’s not a wonder, then, that my parents and I grew to value different things. I suppose it is a wonder I grew to value anything at all. But somewhere between nannies four and five I realized I desperately wanted someone who would stay by my side and never leave.

I still remember the day we first met. He was working in the garden alongside his father who had been hired by our groundskeeper to pull the weeds. I was on the rope swing under the weeping willow. He clipped two yellow roses from my mother’s garden and brought them to me. Mother had never let me touch her roses. It was scandalous and more generous than he could ever know. I was his from that moment.