The Running Dahlia

It was pitch black in the very early hours of the morning. Hours when some of the teenage kids would finally be finding their way to bed. Skelly felt a pinch that came out of the middle of nowhere, followed by a sudden surge of itchiness. The type of surge where that itch was felt like fire and wasn’t planning on going away anytime soon. As she shone light on the injured area, she saw the smallest bump starting to burst forth. Then PINCH… it all happened again. “Seriously,” yelled Skelly. The enemy was back but Skelly wasn't going to back down from this fight. Furious, she reached for her racket. Skelly hadn’t been looking for this magic weapon, when it basically found its way to her just appearing on her doorstep one day, days before she would ever need to use it. It took a while to get used too, but after a little practice and lesson or two from her teacher, she found a technique that worked. Her teacher usually just swooshed the dreadful enemy away, but Skelly knew this wouldn’...

      This past month many of us have been forced to stay home. Not in the manner of physically forced, but in the sense that to stop the pandemic, for public safety, we voluntarily stay home. It’s like we’ve all of a sudden been forced to take a break, take a timeout, forced to let go of certain distractions (although we can always create more for ourselves)...we’ve been forced to rest. At the beginning of this quarantine, it came to my mind to “Reclaim” this time. What does this mean? To me it means space, using this space wisely. Have I done this successfully in the past three weeks? NOT. AT. ALL. but always thankful for God’s patience, this phrase hasn’t left my mind. Instead, I’ve been filling this space with the distractions of the unnecessary. It seems my list never ends, but just keeps filling my time..anyone else with me??      Sometimes we're checking the news updates constantly or keeping ourselves entertained by Netflix, Youtube or any other ...