{Five Minute Friday}: Connect

(Today I’m participating in Five Minute Friday with Lisa-Jo Baker. It’s a flash mob of writers writing for five minutes without stopping to edit, over-think, or re-do. If you’d like to join in, just head over to 
Gypsy Mama.  This Friday’s prompt is connect.)

I've decided that I can no longer stand the grit on the floor so I get out the vacuum, determined to eradicate all that rubs my feet the wrong way as I try to go about my business.  I haul the loud machine all over the kitchen, sucking up the crumbs from a hundred breakfasts of toast and the dirt from a week of dog.  I am a woman on a mission.  I keep pushing the boundaries of how far I can drag the blasted machine before I have to stop and find a different outlet.  But my singular focus--a clean floor--clouds my awareness and, suddenly, everything goes quiet.  I've stretched the cord too far and suddenly, my power source is gone.

How many times have I done this?  And how many times, in that moment, have I turned on my vacuum? How many times have I cursed the blasted machine, blaming it for why I can no longer vacuum?

But the real problem is not the vacuum.

It's the disconnection.

Only by reconnecting the cord can the machine work.

When I am plodding through my everyday life, am I the kind of woman who looks for ways to make connections, rather than breaking them?  Or am I the the kind of woman who curses the very thing from which I've become disconnected?

I forget, a lot of the time, that my connection with those whom I spend most of my time is

the most important thing.

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me 

you can do nothing.

If this is the reality in my relationship with God, if the result of not seeking out connection with God is that I can really do nothing, doesn't it follow that the same would apply in my relationship with those who mean the most to me?

When will I see that to seek out the connection is to begin the hard work of binding to another, just as a knot joins two strands together?