Author Archives: melissafed

Thanksgiving Blessing

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May you be astounded anew by October sun on your back, the absurdity of being chased by your own shadow.

May you be wonder struck by the design and softness of a feather, astonished that your own breath can set it aloft.

May you stare into the stagnant parts and eventually see the living things there. Sometimes it takes a long time and maybe what you find will be strange, surprising.

That is ok. You only needed signs of life.

May you watch the horizon with the expectation that beauty will breach, leap from the depths and dark and surprise you with joy.

May you have faith like a child. Bound up in His wonders rather than chained to your cynicism. May you place your attention on the good, the best, where ever you can find it.

May you be thankful for this moment.

Linking with Ann and her grace chasers….

I write often about gratitude…here are some of my favorite posts

How to make fear bow in worship

When mammahood wears you down

When the grass looks greener somewhere else

Grateful for my grandpa and awesome legacies

And my dear friend Michelle is writing on Eucharisteo too…ENJOY her fine words.

Country Chronicles: What I Want to Remember of September 2012

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We played hide and seek with the moon tonight. We chased him all the way home and E shouted “surprise” to him whenever we found him. The clouds hid him sometimes and at other moments he covered himself completely with the mountains. Still we chased.

The two point buck ran in front of us for a while. We climbed Sun Valley road and he ran before us, the moon seemed just steps in front of the deer. For a moment we thought he might be able to leap right over it.
Hey diddle, diddle.

And these fantastically ordinary mamma moments are the ones I seek to create. To savour and remember. So…with that…the things I can’t forget, am so grateful for… about September 2012.

717) How our girl shouts “SURPRISE” every time we come around any corner ever.

718) Little girl, pirate swords, dress too short, patent leather boots 😉


718) This week we launched the research study I am co-coordinating. You can read about it here. It is going to be fun.

719) Launched a new church service last week. I really loved it.

720) Worlds. Best. Bird. Nest. The cutest birds ever.

721) Construction projects. The skating rink to be is in the background…the wood fired hot tub, made from a giant dumpster is burning some days. Yes. There is no doubt that Switchback Ranch is fast becoming a hick paradise. And I am in love with it.

722) The most glorious September days…Walks and talks.

723) His quiet dignity…

724) Her exuberance, zest for life…

Jesus. Thanks.

Linking with my friend Emily who launched her book this week! YAY EMILY!

Celebrating with you! 

Kick up the dust. Then wash each others feet.

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“When kids grow up they face a broken world;

we need to prepare them to contend for the kingdom without fear.” (@JenHatmaker)

They poured out of the bus. Near 60 of them. Junior high boys. High on life and testosterone and each other. I would like to tell you they sat in neat rows and recited scripture to me.

They didn’t.
Instead? There were twenty odd boys in my hot tub, belching the worlds largest, cracking jokes. There were still more playing paintball with the tire rubber slingshots we bought from the roadside vendor in Kenya. Others riding mini bikes or roasting meat around the campfire.

We will send them home to you with dust streaked faces, paintball stained shirts, they will smell like fire.

This ministry we do will never be clean. We serve a God who spits in the dirt to form balm for healing. Who scratches the soil with a stick when the others throw rocks. It was almost like he warned us. Kick up the dust. Then wash each others feet. Use your tears if you must. Get it done. 

I wish life were simple. Cleaner. I wish all the kids in our youth group came from homes like yours. That they didn’t walk in with 100 pound back packs of burdens and pain, wounds gaping wide open in their chests. Sometimes we see it from across the room, those wounds so deep they suck you in.

But. So do you. So do I. Sometimes we are the ones saddling them.

Later in the night I hear a yell from the hot tub, “MAN CHALLENGE”. And a young leader says “this is the year we learn what it means to be men of integrity”. They yell again, change, and start a fire. Start singing worship songs. It was beautiful and in that moment they sparkled.

But.

They are still going to treat you badly some days and still they are going to make big mistakes this year. We will learn about the grace of God together. We will learn that the Grace walk is measured by the forward momentum from two steps back and three forward.

So yes. Expect things to get messy this year.

 

I for one wouldn’t have it any other way.

(today as I prayed for Pursuit, I realized I was thinking more about where YOU are at with Jesus than where I am at with Jesus. Forgive me. Jesus…my life is yours….Make it sparkle if you want to… also? Make me ok with the mess…mine and theirs. I trust you to sculpt it into something that matters, I submit to the potters hands).

 

Tales of a Conflicted Introvert

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Flip.
I love to be with you. I love to talk with you, to pray with you, to sit beside fires with you, to go on adventures. I love to work with you and serve with you and go out on the town with you. Make no mistake. I LOVE to be with you.

ALSO.
Being with people too much makes me so tired I feel like I might die.

People are often astonished to learn that I am an introvert, because I can really work a room. I can meet and greet with the best of ’em.  I think of myself as a conflicted introvert. That means I get myself into exhaustion trouble a lot because I don’t make space for recovery time. Because I would rather be with you than miss out on fun. You see my dilemma? Complicating things further is the fact that my husband is “king of all extroverts”. He gets energy from you and after a party he is so wired he can’t sleep for hours and I can barely make it home conscious. From what I have been able to learn so far about myself is that for every hour of socializing I need at least two staring at a book, the tv, my journal, or a wall. If I don’t get that I turn into a dreadfully unpleasant person. It is like clock work.

I was very surprised to learn that 57% of people who access my blog from facebook are under 35. Surprised because I mostly write about being a wife, mamma and other grown up things. But anyways…now that I know you are here…please take this quiz, read this book, or this book. I lived huge chunks of my life living oppositional to my nature and it cost me big. I want you to know what you need to thrive, and it is going to look different from everyone else..maybe even your future spouse.

Is your lifestyle draining all your energy or giving you life? I really hope you find out before your thirtieth birthday.

So anyways…all this to tell you…I will not be answering the phone tomorrow. Not once. I will be in my garden picking winter squash. I will be in the forest listening to wind whistle. E and I might hit the books really hard…beautiful ones. We will likely paint and I might just stare at a wall.

Also? I can’t wait to see you this weekend.

You didn’t imagine it: Prompt Stairs

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Joining Amber Haines as we seek our written voices. Playing with fiction and the prompt “Stairs”. I know I’m not doing the abstraction exactly Amber…but…I’m having fun. Feeling a character forming…maybe a longer piece to come?

“False image of myself, I beg you: Kill“. She reads it aloud. Then over and over.

A prayer. A mantra.

Kill. Kill. Kill.

She turns around and he is there, watching her. It can’t possibly be chance.

“You didn’t imagine it” she breathes.

Her voice heavy almost hoarse with the weight of it.

“But you won’t imagine it again”.

Rattle passes through her chest as final breath. She climbs the stairs, cries herself to sleep.

Something smells like death.

Marriage: Knotted

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We weren’t finished yet, you or I, when we said those vows. You stood there, green before the crowd and I beside you quivering like a leaf in the breeze. We thought we knew what love was, but we didn’t.

And in this unfinished state, we grow up into love. We grow into each other and around each other and we are two tree trunks wrapping our bark right into the flesh. Sometimes we fight the pressure to bend or be shaped and yet most of the time, we do, ever so slightly, shift to the right or to the left. You grow up into me and I into you, grafted together producing a new varietal. I wonder…is it the sort of tree that will feed you? The children? This church? Our own souls? Can you (can they) gain sustenance by the way we mold into one another?

And still, even now, ever more, it is my job to put my own roots down deeper to find my joy in the Living Water beneath this ground. Both of us, unfurling branches towards the Sun, feeding ourselves on Pure Light. Suddenly, we are moving in the same direction as we grow out from the shadows. Somehow easier, when we are growing the same direction. We almost soften…though we both know, only the God of the trees could bend either of our hearts.

And you. How you grow each year, a ring around the sun, and where I thought I knew each notch, each scar, you prove me wrong and you somehow produce a fruit I’ve never seen. After all this time, I still don’t know you. It is the joy and the curse…this tree bears both.

And in the growing sap will bleed. And in the pruning whole branches will fall, rot. We trust the one who tosses them into the fire. 

And still.

For you, I will seek to provide shade to rest in. Food to sustain you. And perhaps? I might even bend some days. But only for you. And only by His Grace.

Aching for marriage these days…Yours & mine. You can read some of my other posts about marriage below…I hope they encourage you to keep on keepin’ on. Or to start right. Either way…

The sexiest thing on earth…

The best love stories..

Patience

Opposites Attract

Trust

Serving Together

Your Job, My job

Being Parents

How to keep going the same direction

She wears silver: Prompt Necklace

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Joining Amber Haines as we seek our written voices. Playing with fiction and the prompt “Necklace”

1.

She wears pearls and platinum and is the sort of woman who folds her towel mid way through washing her face. She knows the thread count on each set of sheets and irons them before she makes the bed, miters the corners.

Her children go to bed on time and her husband knows where the table linens are kept, what her ring size is.

She likes to walk into the room and know what is expected, what you have planned. She has advice for you, she will email it to you unsolicited.

She is afraid most nights, that the pearls are going to suffocate her while she sleeps.

2.

She wears silver. Big costume jewelery with fake stones and twisted metal. Her dresser is a suitcase, her home a plane. She rolls her eyes when you talk about invitations for children’s birthday parties, what sort of weed killer to use, how to clean the gutters.

She laughs at your religiosity whilst telling you how the points of light guided her home, how all the stars aligned to help her find herself.

She wouldn’t dare tell you that she is afraid she might float away into space, lose her whole spirit, if she took off  that silver medallion, hung it up in an ensuite bathroom.

3.

She hangs her amber stone next to the tear drop pearl. She doesn’t know any better than you do which is more ‘her’. But she will wear them both with authority and she will make you believe. She shapeshifts to fit your fantasy; make you fall in love with her. She has always been empty enough, that you could fill her with what you believed to be the best fit, she would always believe you were right.

She is passionate in her sway to the left and then to the right but plants her feet one after the other on the solid yellow lines.

She has stopped believing in heroes and villains, but still…if you will rescue her she will clasp that necklace on tight, whisper sweetly what she thinks you want to hear.

Dear Me: A Letter to my Teenage Self

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A letter to myself…I’m imagining she is 17. Mercy. You might know too much about me after you read this.

 

 

Yup. I sure am wearing brown corduroy shorter-alls…

Dear Melissa,

Oh honey. The world thinks you are winning these days, but the truth of the matter is, you’ve lost yourself completely. This is the year several boys confess love for you; that you are valedictorian; captain of the basketball team, the year that you stop eating. This is the year you pass out from the acid of your body eating itself and vomit on the floor of your first job while helping a customer. This is the year you sacrifice all your passions on a church altar that has nothing to do with Jesus. You learn the gospel of SHOULD NOT; soon you will learn you’ve never heard the true Gospel of Jesus. That he came to doctor the sick. To restore justice. To bind the broken with love. Somehow you missed that part of the story…all you heard was TRY HARDER. BE GOOD.

I want to tell you (and the girls who will follow you) not to take yourself so seriously. Relax. Laugh more. Go on some dates. Tell some people about the broken-up-to-bits inside…people think you got your crap together and it is really sending them for a loop. They think you are a Christian because you are too good for them. You know the truth that Jesus is the only glue that holds heart and head together in one place and sometimes the only safe place is hold up together with Him…alone.

You need to know NOW that you are an introvert. You forget that for most of your twenties and you wake up one day, with a gaping hole where once dwelt passion. Some babies die in your tummy. You blame yourself. You treat everyone badly. Mostly yourself. You stop writing. Really you do…Imagine? I know…it is how lost you get in your pursuit of that which you are not.

And then.

There will be a time, you birth a near ten pound baby. You will grow him inside that body you hate, with his big brown eyes, his strong heart, his stubborn nature (showing even then the way he just flat-out refused to be born…sorry to scare you but it really is awful). Then the way you will wake with him, fed him, clothe him. The way you will keep going no matter how tired you get. Then a baby girl will come along. She will scare you to death (mostly because you are the type of person who writes letters of regret to your 17-year-old self and know that she will too). And yet, you know she was meant for you, and you for her. And this little girl of ours? She has no time for a mother who hates her body…that kind of thinking is a fierce contagion. So get over that will you? I’m telling you…you are strong (TEN POUND BABY !*$#!#@).

You found Jesus there too…the other side of the end of yourself. He lives there still and I try to not leave that place very often.  Tonight, I ate fresh-baked cookies on the deck with the kids while the sun set. They told me they loved me “MORE THAN THE PLANET JUPITER” “MORE THAN CARS 2” “MORE THAN THE SUNSETS”. You are married to a man who chases Jesus with a fire in his belly and he makes you want to. You live in a cabin in the woods. Life is good.

 

 

I would like to tell you to do things differently; To not waste so much time trying to be someone, prove something, get somewhere. But the truth is I think that God used those times to make you who you are and you might even like her when you grow up.

 

 

With love, regret, and a whole lot of hope,

Yourself, Melissa, age 34

This post is dedicated to the release of a book (I’ve ordered but not yet read) by another ‘youth pastors wife’ down south.                          I read her blog and it is rich in Jesus, grace, compassion. Pick one up for a ‘young woman’ in your life that suffers from the           ‘try harder’ complex I suffered from…

He made all this for us to play with…

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Swiss Family Feddersen in our orange amphibious vehicle, rolling over the tree stumps and broken up trails. We emerge into the open where the whole of the valley opens up to us in glorious and generous splendor. We see the smoke from the forest fire, burning up the end of summer heat. Our dog is running ahead of us, on the prowl for anything that threatens, he protecting us while the children yell for him when he slips from view, protecting him in return. The sun is setting through the trees, fall light casting long shadows and she says what my heart is crying:

“Oh mamma…I think God is playing with us in this night”. I ask her to repeat it because she is three and could she have possibly have really just said that? A smile plays across her lips as she curls into my side, her pirate sword raised high, her hair wild in the winds. And she says it again “God…he made this for us to play with. He is playing with us”. My eyes well with tears and again I wonder how much I’ve missed? How many evenings have I blustered and rushed and missed the God of the universe in her heart? In mine? Longing to bring peace where there has been strife? Whisper love over all the bumps in our family life. How many times have I let the annoyances, that seem so frequent, rule in our household when I could submit to a much more gentle truth?

The truth that gratitude in the moment, for the moment turns ordinary moments into extraordinary ones. That there is beauty to be found even in the most difficult of days. That God, wants to play with us, wants to be our joy, wants us to relish this extravagant world he gave us, wants to speak to us, love on us. Wants all of our worship, all of our praise.

Praising today for:

712) Cousin Love

713) Church Love

714) Home…Sunsets

715) Harvest…bringing it in green…temperature is dropping fast

716) That slow poke moon last week…

Linking with:

The Wellspring & A Holy Experience (you should REALLY follow her today…so amazing) and Emily Wierenga.

Prompt…’The Cup’

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These cups have stories to tell. We sip them, full of espresso, and we speak of life, love, loss. They have heard us whisper our dreams and scream our disenchantment. We have wrapped our hands around them as we make Christmas mornings memories. We have warmed ourselves with them, after sledding and outdoor fun, full of chocolate warm and sweet. We have tried to revive burned out bodies with caffeine; it never worked but sitting side by side and sipping never hurt any couple I knew. These cups join me on my window seat, rest on my journal, peak over my notes…know more about me than they should.

These cups are part of what home looks like to us. We fill them up, wash them out, repeat. It is part of the rhythm of family. They break sometimes; we knock them asunder. Still, we pick up the pieces, put things back together, try not to slice each other open. We bring each other steaming cups titrated with the right amount of sugar…he knows I don’t like things that are too sweet. We lean into thirteen years of knowledge of each other, we sit long with the little people who join us now, my cup overflows.

A prompt by Amber Haines & linking with  LL Barkat