KOMO Television’s Stories from the Heart Contest

Written by Braiden on April 16, 2012

Great minds think alike. With Sunday, May 13, being Mother’s Day, both Five More Minutes With and KOMO TV 4 are sponsoring contests soliciting your best Mom stories!

From the KOMO 4 website, here is Stories from the Heart information:

Share your thoughts about your mom, or a mom you admire or who inspired you. Her story could be profiled in a KOMO 4 special! The winner will win four tickets to a 2012 Mariners game.

Be sure to watch “Stories from the Heart: A Tribute to Mothers from Seattle Children’s Hospital” on Sunday, April 22, 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.  Molly Shen of KOMO 4 News is your host. Your story could be part of the program.

 

 

 

Inspiring Moment: Skinny Jeans Challenge

Written by Braiden

 

Announcing Our Second Annual Memory of Mom Contest!

Written by Braiden Rex-Johnson on April 12, 2012

Today is an exciting one on Five More Minutes With as we announce our second annual Memory of Mom contest.

As in the past, we are launching a Mother’s Day contest to find the most inspiring story about Mom. Big thanks to Fairytale Brownies, which has generously donated the prize for our winning writer.

For those remembrances shared between today and Thursday, May 10, 2012, you will automatically be entered to win a dozen assorted, fresh-baked Fairytale Brownies in a beautiful Mother’s Day keepsake tin shipped to your home.

As always on Five More Minutes With, you are encouraged to explore the site for inspiration, then submit your own story to share.

Answer the question: What would you say if you had Five More Minutes With. . .Mom?

And what better way to salute Mom than with her very own story just in time for her big day?

Not to mention the chance to win a dozen fresh-baked brownies in tantalizing flavors such as Original, Espresso Nib, Caramel, and Cream Cheese–enough to share with friends and family while you reminisce about Mom. Afterwards, use the keepsake tin to store letters from or photos of your mother.

It’s easy to Share Your Story here.

Inspiring Moment: Levitating Sablefish

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Inspiring Moment: Dreamy Red Church

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How Do You Balance Freedom and Constraint?

Written by John Paul Carter on April 9, 2012

In these days when mayhem is rampant all across the globe and civility is something we’ve almost totally lost in our lives, how do we balance liberation and constraint?

Our frequent guest columnist John Paul Carter, whose “Notes From the Journey” column appears on The Weatherford Democrat‘s Religion page on the second and fourth Fridays of each month, probes this question in the following essay. John Paul is an ordained minister who attends Central Christian Church. Thanks for your wise words, John Paul!

I remember as a teenager longing for more freedom and constantly pushing against the limits placed upon me.

Looking back, I realize that those resisted restrictions were as significant in shaping my life as the independence that I managed to gain.

In the years that have followed, my life has been enriched by the continuing interplay between liberation and constraint – both inwardly and outwardly imposed.

In my little red book in which I’ve recorded bits of truth that have guided my life, there’s a quote from the Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood: “Freedom is found only in the voluntary acceptance of discipline.”

This tension between freedom and regulation, liberty and restriction, self-determination and restraint, autonomy and limitation has been an issue in human affairs from the very beginning. Although the pendulum sometimes swings wildly from one extreme to the other, history seems to confirm that we humans function best when there is a good balance between freedom and constraint.

The stories from our faith history provide some perspective into this ongoing, paradoxical struggle.

In the Old Testament, the first thing God did after freeing the Israelites from Egyptian slavery was to lead them to Mount Sinai. There, before they entered the Promised Land, the Lord made a covenant with them based on the Ten Commandments. Ironically, Moses, the liberator, became the law giver.

When Jesus came centuries later, the law had been so expanded that the people were being crushed by its many rules and regulations. Although Jesus fought to free them from those excesses, he also adamantly maintained, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.” A faithful reading of the Gospels cannot deny the tension between freedom and discipline in the ministry and message of Jesus.

Indeed, the early church, as reflected in Paul’s letters, was often engaged in lively discourse about where to draw the line between free grace and required morality–between faith and works.

If we believe in humanity’s god-given potential and creativity, then we must champion freedom. On the other hand, if we believe in our sinfulness and selfishness, then we must affirm the necessity of communal-restrictions and self-discipline.

History, reason, and faith all witness to the need for both freedom and regulation in every facet of our lives, personal and corporate. The fullness of life that we seek as individuals, families, and a nation depend on our resisting the temptation to lapse into an “either/or” monologue. Our future welfare rests on improving the quality of our “both/and” dialogue between autonomy and constraint as we seek our common good.

Photo by Braiden Rex-Johnson 

 

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Written by Braiden

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A Jar Full of Bullets

Written by Braiden Rex-Johnson on April 5, 2012

Sue and Colon Johnson

 

My darling father-in-law, Arthur Colon Johnson (known as A.C. to most; Colon to me), and I hit it off from the moment we met more than 30 years ago.

Like my wonderful husband Spencer, he was a tall drink of water (as they say in Texas, where he was born, raised, lived most of his life, and died)–6′ 4″ and 160 pounds soaking wet.

Perhaps it was the fact that we were both writers–me professionally and him a never-published, but still-believed-he-might-one-day-be sort of writer whose work included a fair amount of Louis L’Amour-inspired western ramblings, a smattering of mysteries, and a bunch of plain, ol’ tall tales.

Colon could spin a yarn longer than almost anybody I ever knew. Half the time you knew he was lying through his teeth, but just in case he wasn’t, you had to keep listening.

Colon and his wife, (known as Bobbie Sue to most; Sue to me), spent the last three years of their lives in a nursing home just a few blocks from their small, dark, 1980s-era trailer home that seemed to grow backyard sheds and storage areas as quickly as Colon could construct them.

Toward the end of their lives, Sue suffered a series of mini-strokes, broke her hip, and eventually lost her memory completely. She knew Colon was in the bed beside her, but often referred to him as “her.”

During those final long, sad years of her life, Sue never recognized us when we’d come to visit.

On the other hand, Colon always came alive whenever he knew we were on the way from Seattle. In fact, on four occasions when we visited, he was supposedly on death’s door. Once we got there, he made miraculous recoveries, much to our (and his selfless caregivers’) relief.

The fifth time he was at death’s door, he had broken his hip after falling in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom.

“Take care of Sue,” he said to the nursing-home staff before he got into the ambulance.

After being examined at the hospital, his doctor encouraged mending the joint, even though  his heart was weak.

He was on his way to the operating room, in the elevator with his baby sister, Mary Ruth. He squeezed her hand, told her he loved her, and died with a smile on his face.

We always thought he just didn’t want to undergo another operation and months of rehabilitation. Strong man that he was, he’d simply decided it was his time to go. . .

***

After Sue and Colon went into the nursing home, Spencer and I had to clean out the trailer and all the storage sheds, something that was a true labor of love as the mercury was sitting near 90 degrees that weekend in the “big, little town” known as Itasca, Texas, and we both hate to be out of doors on grass.

Spencer’s cousin, John Paul Carter (who is a frequent guest columnist on Five More Minutes With), and wife, Carole, came down from their home in Weatherford, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, to help us clear out a lifetime of “treasures.”

When the four of us told Colon we were going to be cleaning out the trailer, he got very serious and said we had to look for the jar full of “treasure” he’d hidden in a very secure place.

He described a cement tube he’d sawed in half and topped with a wooden wagon wheel to make a “table” he used for additional storage in the trailer’s carport. He said the wagon wheel was very heavy–it would probably take two people to lift it–so we were glad we had Spencer and John Paul to handle that job.

Once the top was off, Colon promised we’d find all sorts of “good stuff” within. I hate to admit it, but I think that dollar signs of what the treasure might be danced in all of our heads.

After the four of us had spent an appropriate amount of time visiting with Colon, we headed back to the trailer to look for the hidden treasure.

As mentioned before, the temperature that day hovered around 90. Under the carport’s metal roof, with nary a breeze blowing, it seemed closer to 100.

As Spencer and John Paul found the hand-made table and cleared off spent containers of motor oil and antifreeze and dried up cans of paint, Carole and I looked on, full of hope.

It was not an easy task to remove the wooden wagon wheel. . .lots of bad words ensued from both men. . .Carole and I laughed at the display of profanity and frustration. . .

Finally, we held our collective breath. . .Spencer reached into the depths of the cement cylinder. . .and pulled out. . .a jar full of bullets!

We broke into a fit of laughter. The discovery was so like Colon!

Tall tales, bullets he’d undoubtedly collected in the military during several tours of duty in the Marines and Merchant Marines during World War II, a grimy jar to protect his “treasure.”

It was so perfect.

Epilogue

Years later, John Paul and I were e-mailing back and forth and I asked him if he still had the jar full of bullets. His reply?

“I still have the jar of bullets sitting on the table in my shop. It makes me smile when I see them. If Colon is watching, he probably wonders why I haven’t put them in my safe-deposit box!”

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