Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for her Five Minute Friday writing prompt.
Taking five minutes, without worrying about extreme editing, perfect grammar, font or punctuation and offering up something unscripted, unedited, real.
It is not perfect, nor probably is it profound. Just five minutes of focused writing.
Period.
Today's word prompt is Stretch.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I can't help but remember that time when I was eleven and I begged my mom to sign me up for a gymnastics class. I wanted to be one of those girls who bounced off mats and swung around bars and ended every jump with sparkly flair. But first, I had to learn how.
They had some of the equipment set up, some of the fancy stuff that I wanted to get right to the business of learning how to navigate but
first things first
we had to take all kinds of time to stretch.
Insert extreme moan.
It was hard to be patient and go through the slow, steady work of warming up our muscles. What did these boring, tedious exercises... that were beginning to get painful, by the way...what did these have to do with the fancy mat work that I longed to perfect? I wanted to be a gymnast, remember?
But as I leaned into the poses, feeling every fiber flex and eventually, give in, I slowly saw their purpose. There would be no high flying fantastical routines if I did not, first, do the daily, basic work of stretching.
For to stretch is to challenge, yes, but it is also to shape. To shape, more fully, into what is possible.
