{five-minute-friday}

A collaboration of writers. A collage of pieces focused on one weekly prompt. A five-minute challenge to write raw and exposed. Completely unedited. Magnificently honest. 

This Week’s Prompt:  Celebrate

He comes home and I can hardly muster a “Hello.” He told me once that one of his favorite things is coming home to a warm welcoming– a smile and a hug.

I can hardly look up, hunched over a nursing babe with the two boys transfixed on the television.

It has been an arduously long day. I can hardly even believe it has only been one day. I feel as though I have been awake for days on end, really.

“I’m just exhausted.” I assure him when he asks if I’m alright. I’m reluctantly heading out the door to run an errand I had planned on making hours ago. Everything in me wants to stay, collapse into the couch, be done with this day.

My hair is thrown back in a disheveled messy bun. I’m sporting an oversized T-shirt and athletic shorts, hardly attire I would normally go out in public wearing, but tonight I don’t care.

On my way back I stop by the store, I hum and haw over which flavor, then toss it into my shopping cart. It’s not a even two minutes after I arrive back home that I crack the lid open and dig into my pint of creamy goodness. A twinge of guilt nags at me. Is this not the epitome of stress eating? Spooning ice cream straight from the pint?

But then I stop and realize—wait. This is not failure, right here. And I begin to celebrate. This is a day done well. A tired, weary, long, trying, demanding day, in which I loved hard and well. Another day for the books, trials and tribulations and exhaustion and all. We did it. By the grace of God we are doing it. So tonight, I’m not wallowing—I am celebrating!