Your Fear Makes Me Wonder…

Posted on November 19, 2013 by melissafed

On Tuesday morning I prayed, “God, make me light in dark places. Make me a vessel of hope. Help me understand what love is”. Turns out, God doesn’t waste an opportunity like that. Perhaps that is his very favourite prayer.

This weekend was strange. On Saturday, Joel spent the morning as a pall bearer at a funeral. In the evening, I spoke at candle light vigil I organized for a student of mine that died this week. We were deep in the hearts of broken people. People praying freedom prayers, people grieving, people standing up to injustice, people watching sadness and joy kiss.

Saturday afternoon, our family went sledding, had a tea party with fresh muffins and took our Christmas card photos. Life is such a striking contrast sometimes, the mundane and ordinary going in and out, mixed up with all the soul stretching horror that sometimes defines life on earth. I wanted to wrap my kids in bubble wrap, hide them away from all of it, cozy down in our cabin in the woods. I am never so tempted to give into fear as when I stare darkness in the eye, when my life stands in opposition.

I wrote this letter to myself in my journal, it is a declaration of hope. I am sharing it, because every conversation I have is leading me back here, the choice of hope over fear. Maybe it is for you too?

Oh Melissa.

You have me wondering. You who is afraid of this world.

Your insecurity, don’t you see it? The way it looks like a lack of faith.

Don’t you believe the faith you profess? Do you not believe He that is in you is greater?

Don’t you see that protecting your kids automatically alienates the others?

Don’t you see the way exclusivity and protection is the opposite of a Christ-Chasing life?

Don’t you see how your feigned righteousness makes everyone run from you?

Don’t you see how life shrinks? How your fear grows?

Don’t you see?

I’m not saying close your eyes, I’m saying see the dark, look it in the eyes and be hopeful anyways.

Cause my God? He didn’t give you a spirit of timidity

My God is not afraid of the dark. Or the day. Or the Grave.

My God is big enough to redeem every evil this world can throw.

And IN HIM:

There is no intellectual who could trip you.

No freedom song sweeter then the one you sing.

No thing that you are missing.

No knowledge you need to fear that will strip your children of their faith.

No sin that cannot be redeemed.

No person that we cannot love.

No condemnation for you in Christ.

No ideology that cannot be moved.

No kingdom that cannot be upended by the counter cultural ways of Christ.

There, is no power greater than the Spirit living in me.

No wound He cannot heal.

Nothing that could separate us from the love of Christ.

There is NO guilt in this life and there is NO fear in even death.

I am not saying close your eyes. I am saying OPEN THEM WIDE and choose HOPE anyways.

Don’t you see?

The whole of humanity begging for the light you have?

The hope you should possess?

The LIFE you should be LIVING….

You are the light of the world. The salt that keeps away decay.

How can you hold back the dark, the death, if you are hiding in your ivory tower?

We claim hope. Despite all else. We claim it and we walk in it.

Let us be known as a people of HOPE.

(And just because…I have tickets to opening night…thanks YAYA!)

Linking with Emily,and Heather the Tell His Story Community

When I am a Mountain

Aside

Oh God. You know it in me don’t you? The way I ache to be the kind of woman who tells the mountain to move and it does. But so often, don’t you see me? Apologizing for the inconvenience I caused the mountain. Did I ask too much of you? You…Mountain…you were just so comfortable there.

I don’t think it has ever been faith that has been my problem. It is so much larger than that mustard seed you talked about, the truth is it has always seemed to fill the whole space in my heart. The size of a kidney bean at the very least. And yet? These mountains keep filling my whole vision.

You see, I am desperate for the mountains to move, the ones in my heart that eclipse you, the ones that have names and the ones that have been there for so long they feel like they belong to the landscape. They can move though…can’t they? Take a stick of dynamite to me if you must. Explode me from the inside out, as long as this heart beats pure and true.

You can split me open like an egg if you want to. Shatter all these shells I wear. You can stir me up and serve me out as long as they shout about Your Glory when we are done.

You can wear me out like small boys jeans. Wear me weak in the knees where I bowed low to lift you high if that is what it takes for me to fall into the shadows. Spent to the end on your behalf as long as when it’s over the threads are bare in all the right places.

You can burn me down, plunder me bankrupt as long as You make the ash a Phoenix and the mountains are nothing but the place from which the spirit wind blows and lifts me high.

Create in me a clean heart Oh God.

(Missing this space, the few who gather here…so I will be hitting publish more often. Hoping if I just turn the tap back on the water will start flowing? Linking with Emily and the sisterhood over at She Loves)

These Days…

Posted on May 28, 2013 by melissafed

These days are dishes and cooking and laundry. These days are dusting and toy sorting and clothes with holes and clothes too short. These days are sibling conflict and home reading and barf buckets. These days are permission slips and parent advisory council fundraisers, soccer practice and birthday parties. These days are full. Full of limbs growing too long, not fitting in my lap like they should.

These days are flower beds planted and lawns mowed and decks swept. These days are repairs made, walls washed (no really I did), and ovens scrubbed.

These days are events planned and articles written and research to do.

Oh. These days.

These days feel like failure and triumph all in the very same moment. These days I am praying the psalms with the passion of the afflicted and the joy of the overcomer…because aren’t we, in Christ, always both?

These days are the longest I have ever gone without contributing to this blog. I don’t know why exactly. At first I was writing furiously in my journal, processing some things. And then I stopped.

These days, sometimes you just keep your head above water.

These days are going fast; a spectacle across the sky, meteoric speed. That is the thing about these days you know, you can completely ignore the extraordinary splendor in them. you can spin so fast you can’t notice the rainbow in the blur of it.

Because you know what? These days are also campfire smoke and sunsets dripping glory. These days are lives turned upside down and right side up for the Kingdom come. These days are lives merged into one and babies touching down on planet earth. These days are relationships restored and relationships built and mercy and goodness and Oh…So much love.

He makes all things new you know. Even when you you feel like you have broken up, broken down, deconstructed to the point you are not sure all the Kings men could patch you up? He can. Even when you are not at all who you hoped to be? He reminds us that the journey is the destination if we face it with the Grace He gives. Face it with humility. Cling to Good with all you’ve still got.

So these days? I miss you blog-o-world. I hope to be back soon.

How to be a Clanging Symbol: In 3 Acts

Posted on April 17, 2013 by melissafed

I hung up the rain coats, straightened the gum boots on the rug. The 100th time today…but this time I wept. How is it that the smallest size listed on those coats is a 5? How did these years fly so fast? Today I have huffed and puffed as I picked up her markers ‘again’, the 700 strings he cut in zip line maintenance, the socks in the middle of the floor from the rush to the hot tub. I missed out on the trip outside. Cleaning up the things that will be back on the ground in ten minutes. I lectured, I stormed, I ranted. I crashed the symbols in their little ears, drowned the sound of all the whispered “I love yous”.

Once upon a time I saw a family at church. The husband and wife were desperate to praise. We don’t offer a kids program yet at this service and so the little girl was beside them with a Barbie doll. The two grown ups would throw their hands in the air reaching for heaven with all their strength, their faces desperate in the act of worship. Or perhaps they were trying to get God down? Kingdom come, NOW. But then. The little girl would make too much noise, kick the seat, jump around and their eyes would fly open they would aggressively tell her to tone it down, march her out of the sanctuary.

The passion of the worship was eclipsed and I thought about that little girl and the symbols going off in her head right now. God is a God of what?

Once upon a time I had a friend. I was envious of her dynamic relationship with God. She was always deep into scripture, going through SOMETHING. God was always teaching her. It was beautiful. Sometimes though, she was so deep in the ‘furnace’ that she could not see out, could not even see those of us in the room with her. Sometimes Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego we were, together in the blazing coals, but she could not see me. She had the capacity to look through me, around me, not even notice I was there.

We watched the figure of God in the furnace there with us but we could not hear the clanging on the metal furnace door, the people left on the outside, asking to join us, despite the risk of burns.

The other night my son crept up the stairs to the pulpit as my husband prayed for someone on stage. He crept up in sweat pants 4 inches too short and my husband wrapped his arm around him as the boy arrived at his leg. There are times in my life when I would have panicked, run, grabbed him. But we’ve made the conscious choice to invite our children into ministry with us. It will not ever be something that takes daddy away from them, it will be what our family does together. We will enjoy it, together. It will be messy. But it will be real.

Our God, He hasn’t called us to a cloistered life, hold up in that cabin all alone. He hasn’t called us to worship Him ONLY when the music is playing. He has not called us to worship at the expense of others. Your life of worship and devotion needs to exist even when the days are busy…more so. Your life of Loving God and man needs to be active ESPECIALLY when we are overwhelmed .

Are there times when you will need to carve out spaces for intimacy with Him alone…YES. But.

Often there are others here too. These kids. This man. These are my primary ministries and the circles of influence as they expand around us. And I cannot honour HIM if I do not honour THEM.

I am a bit of a mystic if I may be so bold. I expect relationship with God, a back and forth. I am prone to the passions, the highest heights the deepest depths…I feel them. And I love to worship too, eyes closed, furnace blazing. But. The clanging symbols in my life can completely eclipse my devotion.

Oh God. Don’t let me add to the noise.

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

²If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

^3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.Love cares more for others than for self.Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.Love doesn’t strut,Doesn’t have a swelled head,Doesn’t force itself on others,Isn’t always “me first,”Doesn’t fly off the handle,Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,Doesn’t revel when others grovel,Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,Puts up with anything,Trusts God always,Always looks for the best,Never looks back,But keeps going to the end.

-1 Corinthians 13:

Linking with:

Emily, Jen, Laura, & Jennifer

There You Are

Posted on March 26, 2013 by melissafed

There I am,

Throwing palm fronds like a ticker tape parade.

I like the party Jesus, when the going is easy, when the church celebrates.

I will throw down my cloak with the best of them. Let me plan the event, invite the guests.

There I am,

Kissing your cheek, though the swords are drawn and I know it.

Still though, I exchange all your promises for a bag of gold, treasure in this day.

I like the excesses Jesus. Seems there is a lot I will do to satisfy this flesh.

There I am,

Among the religious elite.

Staking claims, calling out the weak, neglecting mercy.

Tell me then who struck you down Christ? Who spit in Your face?

There I am,

Listening to the rooster squawking in the distance.

It sings a song I recognize, for all my words, still I can turn my back on You.

I’m all yours when the road is smooth, just don’t ask me to suffer, to join in your sacrifice.

There I am,

My damp hair on Your feet.

This unfaithful heart, so prone to wander,

To forget and neglect all Your most reckless blessings.

There I am,

The doubter demanding proof.

Give me the three-month recidivism rates on your miracles,

Watch me jab my filthy fingers into the gaping holes in Your hands.

There I am,

Standing with the mockers,

Those who claim the empire and protect her against all odds.

I let their voice ring loudest, above your pained cry, I wash my hands of it.

There YOU are.

The garden is growing up around You,

The cup heavy in Your hand, You drink it to the last drop.

You watch me the whole time. I have to look away.

Despite my magnificent failures.

Despite my betrayals and weakness.

Despite all of the ways I try to claim both kingdom come and empire now.

Still.

There

You

Are.

Linking with friends this Holy Week.

Emily, Ann, Jen, Laura & Jennifer

Moments

Posted on March 20, 2013 by melissafed

The lights are low and I sling my four-year old around my hip like an infant. It might be the last time you know, that she nestles that softest cheek into mine, that I can rock her to the drum beat. She closes her eyes when I do, peeks about when she gets bored.

They watch the sun turn pink on the horizon. My four-year old calls me, she knows when the sun is slipping, when we lose it completely. We all come. There is a space between heaven and earth just there on the horizon. It is the shape of an eye. We see God in it.

I pop my head back, all I see are pine trees high, star streaked sky.

I breathe deep. Could it be that it is the first time I breathed all day? Of course not. You couldn’t live like that and yet….

I smell the gasoline, feel the speed, the tress whip past, I trust you more than I trust myself, and I hold on.

We set a fire, the dog attacks the flame, the flying spark. We sit.

We tuck the kids in. I think about what parts of this will feel like home for them. The stellar jays? The woodpecker? The way camp fires smell a day later?

They are fighting again.

It is snowing today. You heard me. Spring break, the man is away and it is snowing… again. The kids have gone rabid and are about one more house day away from someone loosing a hand. And yet, there is beauty here too, when I ignore them long enough, once in a while they compromise, practice empathy, create fantastic adventures. It sounds like Love is growing in their hearts. I see the silhouettes of heroes peeking over their horizons, even when they act more like villans.

The kitchen tap drips into the unwashed pot. I scrub the toilets. Match the socks. Revel in these ordinaries.

The man is on a service trip with 137 young people this week. My niece is among them, she is gentle and quiet and so sensitive. I am so proud of her bravery, stepping beyond her usual fences, trying new things. When I see her, love glints in her eyes. Courage is rising. I see it, I get it. We are the same in some ways, I want to shout “There are worse things than failing, trust me, and you are making progress in all the right directions. Keep stepping out…that is where LIFE is. Perfectionism is a vice that keeps you from it”.

I have been writing. A lot. Not here but elsewhere and I feel flesh on dry bones. I am making sense of senseless things. It might never do anything but fill up a journal with understanding. That is enough.

I have a new nephew, born yesterday. Pearl Jam ‘Free’ played on the radio the moment scalpel finished, child emerged. There are some things you just cannot plan.

There is no new thing we are living my friends. Just the old with a new bow on it. Just us, swiftly spinning, holding onto life, to faith, hearing birds sing like it is for the first time. Just life, all its mundane and profound wound tightly into one package, longing to be lived to the FULL.

Tell me then, what ordinary moment turned Holy on you today?

Linking with Emily and friends…

Tell me of your HOPE: A Link Up

Posted on February 19, 2013 by melissafed

Tell me about the forest you see, all the pine standing tall; from here all I’ve seen is her broken limbs and I can’t seem to look past.

Just for today lets talk more like saints than saved cynics. Tell me how YOU hope?

Tell me then what lights your dark? What makes you keep walking when you really want to lay down? Tell me of that moment of beauty that reminded you of God?

Tell me about your FAITH, the unsullied theology of your children, how the sun glints in their hair. Lets talk about where you watched the sunset last night and the colour of Sky Writer. Lets talk about the kingdom coming, how you feel it in your bones. Today I don’t want to hear the rocks crying out, I need you to say it too.

Tell me about your BRAVERY, how you do the difficult things, love the hard people, draw the firm lines. Lets talk about the steadfast ones, the everyday heroes, the women breathing justice, the men standing up for the underdog. These are things I need to learn.

Tell me about your LOVE so pure, it keeps your heart in check. Lets talk about the marriages standing strong or being restored, the parents sacrificing greatly, the churches living as one. These are the tales we need to tell.

Tell me about your MIRACLES, the prophesy fulfilled, the promise kept. Give me news of the sick healed, the broken bound, the depraved purified. I want no more of the scar tissue and torment, I’ve had my share of that.

Tell me about the STEADFAST ones, standing up to all the quitters. Lets talk more about the everyday heroes who keep getting back up, keep living their call, keep seeing the forest despite all the broken trees. I want a vision like that.

Tell me about your PEACE, your hope beyond the grave. Lets talk about the angels in human skin that help you believe it still. Lets talk about your deep drawn breath the way you aren’t afraid. Teach me how to breathe like that and to turn from fear that binds.

Tell me of the friends so good, the hearts so pure, a love so genuine. Lets tell of hope together today.

No really…TELL ME! Leave a comment, write a blog and link it back! I even made my first little linky-thingy!

Lets tell each other truth today shall we? A little bit of extra hope never hurt anyone.

Linking this post with the Wellspring, The Beauty In His Grip, Finding Heaven, Mercy Ink

Motherhood…the thinnest place

Posted on January 24, 2013 by melissafed

I am not the same person I was seven years ago.

It isn’t that I have changed exactly, it is just that weight of motherhood resting on my very core, pushed most of me to the edges, to the extremes.

I am a polarized version of what I once was.

Life seems somehow heavier, sadder, worse. Simultaneously I feel lighter, happier, like the world is full of only beautiful things.

I laugh more than I ever did before but I cry more too. For my babies, for yours, for the babies without a mamma to cry for them.

I did not know I had a temper before they arrived, I couldn’t imagine being capable of child abuse before and now…I can. At the same time, it is even more unfathomable than ever. I am much more gentle than I thought I was, less calloused, less caustic.

I thought I was a patient person before they helped me to find the end of it. And now? They’ve drilled me and my patience runs to wells and depths I wouldn’t have imagined I needed.

I’ve never felt like I’ve failed at anything like I’ve failed these children. Also? I’ve never been so proud of anything I’ve done in my whole life.

Things seemed more complex before my little people arrived. Now loving God and man seems like PLENTY.

My tongue seemed to sharpen equally but paradoxically to the softness of their skin. My heart seemed to grow to accommodate the whole of them.

And then the sweetest part…there in the middle where they weigh on me the heaviest, where I feel like I am near worn through to nothing? That place where things get thin? I’ve seen Jesus there more than I thought would be possible this side of heaven.

And that has been the greatest gift.

Ecdysis (A great word I learned today)

Posted on January 21, 2013 by melissafed

(Joining with Amber Haines (who I am THRILLED to have back on the interweb) as she poses writing challenges ‘abstractions of the concrete’.

Today? SCALES…

(image credit)

My son found a snake on the road this summer. It had been crushed by a car. For all his scales, it still didn’t make him invincible. Turns out scales are not armor. Snakes too can bleed.

We find them sometimes. Once strong, protective skin reduced to a moulted crumbling shell. Even the thickened skin can rarely protect completely, much to our dismay. When the bellies rub in the dirt, sneak around the underbrush, hide amongst the thistles and cacti one has to toughen up a bit. Sometimes even Purest Light feels like it is burning pale pink skin.

Life is sharp isn’t it? We find ourselves gauged and prodded, trapped in boxes too small. We think the only way to stay safe is to batten down the hatches. Call upon every defense.

And then don’t you feel it? When your mouth turns to mock? When your brain jumps to the bad report? When your jokes choose the lowest common denominator? Saliva turns to venom and fangs poke through. We bite our brothers and sisters and melt their bones with our tongues of death.

Don’t you feel that skin thicken? The very cells elongate, turn into designs that look like diamonds on our backs, a place to carry our heavy loads. I join the serpent in the grass, slithering and whispering lies seeking to glorify this moulting flesh.

But it cracks. We wiggle out, we feel vulnerable and sometimes we hide but the only way to grow is to shake off that out-of-size skin.

This morning I tried to open my eyes but the night felt like scales. HE shook them off, I looked at the world fresh and new. This spirit sees things the slithering can’t. I stepped into the winter sun, turned my face upward, noticed the light not the heat. I’ll keep my pale pink skin, the burns I feel sometimes. Turns out, there is more for me than what a thick skin can produce. Turns out I want more for you than creating a puddle at my feet. Turns out…I want more from this life than rotten apples and safety.

Keep it Simple

Posted on January 16, 2013 by melissafed

“Mom, it feels so good when you help someone”

“Of course it does O, that is what you were made for”

And there it was, suspended in the air between us.

“O…Everything in you was created to love God and the people around you. It is your job in the world”

The truth of all of our lives, when all else is stripped away, should boil down to this.

Theology can be crippling in its application. Life can be challenging with all its frustrations. Church politics and our own preferences can make us sharp and selfish. And even love can often be more complicated than sharing your extra fruit leather; first grade kind of simplicity won’t last forever even though it should. Love at its most generous can be misconstrued as lust at its most selfish… But still how do we keep our lives spinning on the axis of LOVE alone? When we live a world that complicates, over analyzes, thinks the worst of others, seeks to feed our own fulfillment, what then do we do? How do we live that out?

Later, when I take my little girl to bed, there is an envelope on her pillow. Her face near lights up the dark room and she opens it to find a drawing by her brother. The two of them, stick figures beneath the most basic of sunshine, and she is near shaking with the joy of the discovery. She runs to her big brothers room wraps herself around him. I sit on her bed, a bit shook by the sweetness of it. I hear down the hall:

“I did that cause I love you so much E. Did you know that is what we are supposed to do? Love each other and God too.”

As simple as that. Create a space in your heart for the person that is before you right now, let them know that the space they are treading belongs to them alone. Make space there for God too. When our minds spin on this? Somehow all the rest of it makes so much more sense.