Tag Archives: writing

The Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy Prompt

Posted on by under The Stories

Today the Daily Post has asked us… We cry for lots of reasons: sadness, pain, fear . . . and happiness. When was the last time you shed tears of joy?

You can find other answers at

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/happy-happy-joy-joy/

My answer….

I am not much of a weeper. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually wept outright. Heart of stone this one…really. But I do have to admit that I teared up walking my daughter down the ailse at her wedding rehearsal. By the wedding I had fully composed myself. I had to after all. I was singing and there is nothing worse than crying to ruin a good wedding song, but as I walked my little girl down to meet her groom on that rehearsal evening it suddenly struck me this was me walking with my baby girl on her last night as a single woman. I suppose some choose to look at that as sad but I think of it as a moment of poignance and wonder. She chose a good man. She chose a good future. Some day I may even be a grampa and they have suggested the name Bopa for me. I guess I could be a Bopa. What do you think?

I walk Melanie down the aisle.

I walk Melanie down the aisle.

The Daily Prompt and All Grown Up

Posted on by under The Stories

The Daily Post has asked us…”When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?”

I can actually remember this one quite clearly. I did not feel grown-up at eighteen when I registered for selective service or to vote. I did not feel grown-up when I married at nineteen just before my twentieth birthday. The grown up feeling did not arrive with the birth of my son or my daughters. I really expected to feel like an adult at these major junctions of life but somehow they just left me feeling more like a kid than ever. The sense of “am I ready for this?” And “Wow! I have no idea what I am doing.” really popped out big in each of those moments and made me feel decidedly un-grown up.

All those years I wanted to feel “grown-up”. I hungered for the feeling but no matter how hard I tried I just could not drum it up. I worked. I provided. I acted like a grown-up (mostly). I just never felt like one. Then on my thirty-fifth birthday it hit me. It came unbidden without fanfare or any kind of life-changing event. I blew the candles out on my cake and just knew. “I’m a grown-up” or maybe it is better to say I just knew, “I’m not a kid anymore.”

Strange to say, from that day forward I have wanted nothing more than to return to childhood. Funny how that works isn’t it?

Daily Writing Prompt: The Life In My Hand

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

Today the Daily Post has challenged us to:

 Tell us about the last time a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush for you.

See how others answered by going to:

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/clich%c3%a9/

The Life In My Hand

by JE Lillie

Another cliché jumps to mind as I consider what to write today, “If wishes were horses beggars would ride.”

I have spent so much time wishing things in my life had turned out differently. The life I am living is certainly not the life I considered when I was twenty. I had a certain picture in my head and it didn’t contain any of the pain I have lived through or any of the pain I have caused.

Mostly those wishes of mine are private things so I don’t suppose many people consider that I have even wished. Oh, but I have and in that I have had to hold myself tight sometimes to keep this life from spinning off the game board into a forfeit. The truth is this other little cliché, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, has been the counter curse I have muttered every time I have gotten to wishing what life I have away.

Things may not have turned out the way I thought or planned but y’know what? That’s OK. Maybe it’s even better than OK because I know God is not shocked by the way things have turned out. He knew the end from the beginning and He had a plan in mind for this life I am living now.

So a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush… or this life I am living is worth far more than any life I could have wished for because it is this life which has made who I am, who God wants me to be.

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge the Lord in all of your ways, and He will direct your paths.” Prov. 3:5,6

The Daily Post: Sweet Little Lies

Posted on by under The Stories

Today the Daily Post has asked us…

As kids, we’re told, time and again, that lying is wrong. Do you believe that’s always true? In your book, are there any exceptions?

Check out how others have responded to this question at

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/sweet-little-lies/

Santa’s Dead And Other Things Not To Tell A Six Year Old.

Well I guess you can tell where this one’s going. I always wanted Christmas to be about the Christ child for my children and one of the things that has always gone up my left nostril is the commercialism that comes with the season. The American version of Santa Claus as the guy who plasters the Christmas tree with expensive electronics, jewelry and the newest version of everything just kind of irks me. Don’t get me wrong I take pleasure in giving gifts as much as the next guy but when I have to worry about paying the credit card bills or rent something’s rotten in the good ole US OF A.

Now we didn’t want to destroy the “magic” of Christmas for our children, just maybe dent it a little. We found this book called ‘The True Story of Santa Claus” And during the holiday season we began to read this story to our children and answer their questions about Santa. It was at this time that I learned about sharing only as much of the truth as a person can handle. I am not an advocate of lying in any way, shape or form but before a person is delivered the truth they have to be prepared to be responsible with truth. We told our kids the truth and I still think that was right. Where we fell off the wisdom wagon  was in not instructing them what to do with the truth.

So, picture this. We are on our way Christmas shopping at the mall. My six-year-old, very truthful daughter is sitting in the back with her five-year-old very sensitive cousin. And the conversation goes something like this.

Tyler: Oh I can’t wait to get to the store so we can see all the toys. I’m going to look and see and then I am going to write my letter to Santa and he is going to bring me…

Melanie: Tyler your parents buy your Christmas gifts. Santa’s dead.

End of story. If you want a peaceful Christmas season with your extended family let the lie about Santa live long enough for your children to learn to keep the secret…Santa is dead!

Friday Fictioneers: The Unwashed

Posted on by under The Stories

Every week at Friday Fictioneers Rochelle challenges us to write a 100 word story from a photo prompt. This week’s prompt along with her contributors stories can be found here

http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/12-december-2014/

Below is the photo prompt and my attempt at the story

PHOTO PROMPT - Copyright - Sandra Crook

The Unwashed

by JE Lillie

I walk along the shore and sort through the baubles. Papa has sent me to collect what I can for trading at the market. He’s not really my Pa just all I have left since that day.

I find a bar of soap partially dissolved in the goo. I wonder to myself how long it’s been since I took a bath. I bend to pick up the cleaner remembering what a hot shower feels like. I pull hard because the soap sticks and as it comes away from the ground the last finger that held the bar comes with it. Now I recall why I hate the water.

My Safer Extremities

Posted on by under For Family & Fun, Uncategorized

The Daily Post has asked us to describe the last time our lives mimicked the quote, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens

If you would like to see how others have answered that question go to:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/an-extreme-tale/

It is amazing to me that I can think of the worst times of my life so easily and it seems more than a little bit odd that I have a hard time remembering the best times. I am not sure what that says about me and perhaps it cues a desire to change my inner thought processes.

The mixing of those moments though is indeed hard to whittle out of the block of wood that has become my past.Maybe I am still too stunned by some of my recent worst times to see much good in them, though God knows I have tried. Maybe too, it seems almost inappropriate to say that certain of my worst moments could have any redeeming qualities at all; So maybe the difficulty is not so much in finding a moment that holds the best and the worst but in finding one that feels safe enough to speak openly about.

I am reaching for a moment in my distant past now (25 years or better). I was a newlywed. How could it get any better? We had married and moved in with my parents for a two month stint before our apartment opened up in Phoenixville PA.

It was the weekend before the New Year, 1988. The Uhaul was rented and loaded with all of our earthly belongings. My Father-in-law drove the van and Tina and I drove our car. What should have been a six-hour drive turned into twelve hours when we got lost on the NJ Turnpike and overshot our exit.

I noticed as we came down the I76 out of Philadelphia that the lock had come undone to the moving van and the back doors were threatening to spill open. Anybody who has ever tried to pull over on that particular road heading out of Philly will understand my pain; But pull over we did. We managed to fix the door only to become separated from each other as we made our way past the Allen Town Extension. These were the days before Mapquest or GPS systems.My father-in-law had never been to the campus. But we serve a God of miracles. We somehow found each other at the light before the turnoff to the college and upon arrival my father-in-law did not insist his daughter get back in the van to take her away from her new whackadoo husband.

We walked into our new apartment. The walls were a neon blue. The rug was a thick shag in the brightest of oranges. Someone else’s couch lined our wall. A window pane had been knocked out of the bedroom and someone had stolen the shower head right out of the shower. Then my wife noticed we had no oven and what amounted to a hot plate to cook off of.

My mother-in-law gripped her daughter’s hand as she looked up dubiously at the walls and said, “It’s amazing what soap and water can do Honey.”

By the following day we had a new shower head and the window had been fixed. The tenant who had stored his couch in our apartment came to get it and we were completely settled into our new place (well as settled as you can get when your walls are blue and your carpet is orange). My in-laws had said a tearful good-bye and Tina and I had begun the first chapter of our lives together. The best of times and the worst of times.

The Roots in Rocky Soil

Posted on by under The Stories

This post is written in response to:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_writing_challenge/digging-for-roots/

Ireland 275

Roots in Rocky Soil

by JE Lillie

I stood by the western wall of Blarney Castle staring at the twisted roots, remnants of the growth that had once encased the castle in its strength. The image took me back to my own family whose roots were not in Ireland but in a place just as rocky, some would say barren.

I grew up just South of the New Hampshire border smack dab in the middle of Massachusetts. I was third generation conservative Republican in one of the most liberal states in the union. My father was a small business man and civically minded citizen in the seventies, fully ensconced in the small business world, strongly favoring the free market economy while standing firmly against every philosophy of the “liberal pinko commies”, as he called them. Both Dad and Gramps served in town leadership throughout their lives choosing to ply their minority political stance wherever they could.

Dad was a hard man and I was his soft son. We were as different in manner as two men could be. He spent his days practicing his shot on ants in the back yard. I collected the little critters in jars trying to save them from my dad’s quick draw.

I began my spiritual journey early in life. At first I was fascinated by witchcraft. As a young teen I studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and then followed the bread crumbs God left me into the Pentecostal church my Uncle attended. My father an avowed agnostic (which really just means he refused to make any decision at all) instantly declared me crazy.

Maybe it was just teenage rebellion but I ran rather than walked deep into the church. Dad and I had many arguments over that and over my subsequent decision to become a minister. But when Dad became sick in the early nineties I left Bible College and came home to help in the business. After he died suddenly I launched into an eight year stint in the business world working newspapers and other management positions before finding my way back into the church.

I have served as an assistant pastor in the town I grew up in since 1996 and recently I was appointed to a town board in that same town. Somewhere along the way I seem to have captured my father’s sense of humor (something I didn’t even know he possessed when I was growing up) at least that’s what people tell me. I also captured his politics though I am sure he would probably think I have some “pinko commie” leanings were he still around. Somewhere in my journey I got a little tougher which tells me that maybe somewhere in his journey my father was a little bit softer and maybe he and I weren’t so different after all. Maybe we were just at different points of growth in this rocky New England soil.

Friday Fictioneers: The Potato Farmer

Posted on by under The Stories

Here we are for another week of Friday Fictioneers! Every week Rochelle gives us a photo prompt and asks us to write a 100 word story, beginning to end. Check out how the whole crew has responded to this week’s prompt at

http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/21-november-2014/

And here is this week’s photo prompt

Claire Fuller (7)

photo credit: Claire Fuller

Potato Farmer

by JE Lillie

When Gramps  left me the shop and four hundred acres of rocky ground I thought I was dreaming. I should’ve known better. Gramps did look a bit like Freddy Krueger sans finger nails.

Five  hundred foreclosures later and I am left in a ghost town with nothing but a bunch of old rotten tires (everyone bought new ones on the way out) …Oh, and that four-hundred acres of  God-crete.

Last night I read how you can plant potatoes inside tires.

It was like Gramps was sending me a message, ” Lemons and lemonade. Tires and potato farming.”

I always hated that old man.

 

Friday Fictioneers: Grandmother’s Promise

Posted on by under The Stories

©Tales_From_the_Motherland

 

It has been a while since I participated in Friday Fictioneers. Time has not allowed me the pleasure but this photo stirred something deep inside me that just had to come out.

GRANDMOTHER’S PROMISE

by JE Lillie

Alliara passed in grandmother’s arms. Liquid rage followed the creases of the old woman’s face carrying the promise  made down to the ocean of her heart.

Grandmother’s  loyalty had been beaten away with each stroke to Alliara’s body. The elders had been deaf to every plea for mercy. Now grandmother was deaf to any reason  for living.

She marched solemnly across the salt flats torch in hand. She came to the edge of the final rise, lit the torch and held it aloft signaling the tribe’s location to their enemy.

“Kill them all.” Grandmother softly prayed.

 

Check out stories from other author’s perspectives on this photo by going to:

http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/19-september-2014/

Prophetical-Priestly Quotes 2

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

UU 1For me literature must have ethical dimension. the aim of literature…is to disturb. I disturb the reader because I dare to put questions to God, the source of all faith. I disturb the miscreant because despite my doubts and questions, I refuse to break with the religious and mystical universe that has shaped my own. Most of all, I disturb those who are comfortably settled within a system-be it political, psychological, or theological. If I have learned anything in my life, it is to distrust in intellectual comfort.” Elie Weisel