On Fridays around these parts we like to write. Not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. For joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker.

We love to  just write without worrying if it’s just right or not. For five minutes flat.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat with no editing, tweaking or self critiquing.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in {you can grab the button code in my right side bar}.

3. Go and tell the person who linked up before you what their words meant to you. Every writer longs to feel heard.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes for the prompt:

Full…

GO:

There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t feel full. So much love poured into this body of mine that my lungs and heart and kidneys are just plain swimming in it. When I walk I must leave wet footprints, all that love splashing right out my toes and trailing a message of deep joy and acceptance along the sidewalk.

I didn’t know how dry my tank was when we arrived. Not until I began to feel it fill up.

They poured in themselves and their time and their plans and their memories and their real, true, unrelenting interest in us and our journey these last three years apart and I felt the fullness rising up to my chest. Sometimes it would spill out my eyes, but they just poured more in and never ran out.

My sons, I watched them absorb all that family, that history, that part of the story they hear from a distance and got to soak up in person. Their small selves were soaked in acceptance. And while it ached to leave, while Jackson held my hand and whispered over and over as we walked away from customs, “It hurts, ow ow ow ow, it hurts so much” we wouldn’t change it.

We wouldn’t trade it.

This lifecycle of pouring in and living out and then refueling again.

Because we are full of the love of family because we lived deliberately. We connected on purpose. We talked and did life together hard and for real and under showers of love.

So we arrive back at this shore dripping with the knowing that comes from being part of something. Being part of something bigger than ourselves.

I believe they call it family.

And we are full to the brim with the wonder of it.

STOP.

Thank you for being part of our homecoming trip to South Africa. It was a joy to share it with you. Feel free to keep doing life alongside us and this here blog – sign up to get my posts emailed to your doorstep right here Or delivered to your reader of choice. Or just like us on Facebook.