Peanut Butter on Toast

Posted on January 2, 2012 by melissafed

Giving is complicated. I know.

You hear about the abuse of funds, the bureaucracy, the way that charity sometimes does more harm than good (more on that tomorrow).

Its complicated.

Except when it’s not.

Pat and Kara made a friend here. M was living in Northern Uganda when the LRA was running rampant and full of terror.

She was a child bride at 13 married to an abusive man.

She was a mom at 14 and soon after that she was left single as well.

Somewhere a long the way, M came to work at the eMi office part-time where the Aylards came to love her. M had a dream to open a shop to sell peanut butter.

First batch of peanut butter M made

M had taken the initiative to rent a shop space and was getting her peanuts that she roasted ground by someone else. Pat thought he could find a better design for a grinder so he found something online and commissioned a local shop to make the machine.

Picking up the grinder from a metal shop

Pat contacted Joel to see if our youth ministry would partner on this to help fundraise to buy it.

We played a short video for the kids at our Christmas banquet. The kids came through with twice the amount needed to buy the machine. So yesterday we headed to Ms house for tea and roasted peanuts.

The children ran down the street to greet us and were intrigued by the mzungu who had come to visit. M showed us traditional dances from her tribe and we watched music videos.

Dance party in Ms house

Joel played soccer with the boys while I took pictures of the children who kept running by the door longing for me to ‘take a snap’ of them (they loved to look at themselves on my camera).

After our visit we headed up to Ms shop to have a look and unload the grinder. She was thrilled.

Our trek to Ms shop

Giving doesn’t have to be complicated. It is about loving the people around you and using the assets you’ve been blessed with the compliment those of another. It is about coming together in partnership to reach goals. None of us can go it alone.

The shop!

Through Pat and Karas mentorship and research.

Through some awesome Canadian youth who will go without a trip to the movies.

Through Ms determination and courage, progress towards a dream was made.

Sometimes giving is as simple as peanut butter on toast.

Learn about the communities we are visiting here. We will visit Garba Tulla (a new project just a year into development) as well as Masharu (a village that is 12 years into its World Vision development cycle).

You can follow our Flickr photo stream here.

Or sponsor a child from Garba Tulla here!

We will do our best to update this blog frequently as well! See all World Vision related posts here.

Preparations

Posted on December 22, 2011 by melissafed

“Thanks so much for breakfast mommy, that was so yummy”

I smirk, laugh a little. All I did today was throw some frozen blueberries in a bowl.

“Oh sorry. I don’t really know how to say that yet.”

He thinks I am laughing at him.

“Owen! No, I only laughed because it was so easy to make. That was the perfect thing to say. I’m sorry! Did I hurt your feelings?”

“No, its ok. I don’t mind if people laugh at me…”

And my heart breaks clean open in my chest.

It is just so easy to add to the broken parts of the world. To add onto heart aches.

This Christmas, we’ve been thinking a lot about how to build in this broken world. How to join in the great work of REDEEMING. Really believing that each and every moment is an opportunity to join in the act of building up, or to join in the activity of tearing down. A moment to heal or an opportunity to destroy. Jesus came to this place to restore…I want to join him in this…every opportunity I can. But no one knows better than I do that most moments I will not get it exactly right.

But that is ok.

We can only join in the work. We have never been called to do the whole of it.

It has been a strangle hold of meaning to prepare for our trip to Africa simultaneously as we prepare for Christmas and thinking about how to partner with the One who longs to use us for tiny acts of good. I have no illusions of grandeur when it comes to things like this. I can only, perhaps, find a friend far away who I can encourage in their work, find a way to help in tiny and small ways, to join in the bits of bringing redemption to the broken and the truth of it is that if I keep my heart right, I could do the very same thing here, in my own home.

But it is all messy this thing called life, the celebration of Christmas. It has never, ever been neat and tidy.

‘ – starting with Mary and Joseph. It doesn’t come with domestic tensions sorted, with worries filed neatly away, with sickness tamed, with grief healed, with pain relieved. But it does celebrate, not only a baby who came, but who grew to be the rescuer of humanity and the true model of what living looks like. He has come to our mess.

-Jeff Lucas (thanks Michelle!)

And how about you? Will you step into the mess this holiday too? Will you do everything you can to bring tiny bits of PEACE ON EARTH? In your home? Far away? Everywhere you can?

Our year is a little different and you can join us on our Kenyan adventure here:

You can follow our Flickr photo stream here.

Or sponsor a child from Garba Tulla here!

We will do our best to update this blog frequently as well! See all World Vision related posts here.

Advent

Posted on December 8, 2011 by melissafed

It was the whole point wasn’t it?

His coming? To restore, redeem, mend all that is so very broken in us; in this old world.

Christmas, if we cut everything else away isn’t it only about REDEMPTION?

I am wondering, what does it mean to join in this work? How do we settle into the plan He has for this family, the good He intends for our lives to bring to the world?

Last week I looked at my calendar, then promptly went to the corner where I huddled in the fetal position and wept. Introverts like me get overwhelmed by the very thought of too many people, too many expectations. I will tell you in advance, I am not going to meet them for you. Then, as I cuddled and cried I remembered that this, this busy? This burden? This is the opposite of what HE has for me this season as I wait for him.

This month? Is only about redemption.

If it doesn’t mend or heal or join His great work, I am turning it down. If it is more about busy than being a blessing? I am walking away.

For me, this month will be about weak relationships pulled back together to strong.

It will be about a tired husband inspired to rest.

It will be about a little family in the woods that needs stronger bonds, slower days.

It will be about memories, but not pressure.

I will bake when my kids want to bake with me,

and when I don’t feel like cleaning the kitchen for the 20th time? I will buy things, instead of thinking I am letting someone down by not making it from scratch. My husband? Will cheer.

I am not going to plan our two weeks off as an opportunity to ‘catch up on things around here’. The only thing that needs to be ‘caught’ is life well spent.

I am not going to get stressed out when you come over. I am going to enjoy the gift of your company and look forward to contemplating what God has in store for us as he draws us together.

I will sit quiet and not rush into the next ‘big thing’. Even as I prepare for our trip to Kenya with World Vision I will spend more time contemplating how He can use us for redemptive purposes then making to do lists.

I will ask Him, where is your heart for these days? How can I join you in it?

I will rediscover Wonder, because that is how I want my children to remember mom at Christmas. Wonder-bound and doing everything I can to bring tiny bits of Peace on Earth. That tree that sits crooked (and huge) in my living room, with bottom heavy ornaments? I’m leaving it just as it is and each day when my boy runs in gasping, asking to add more? I will let him and we will lay down under it and look up and think about all the beauty we can find, even in the broken.

Every Moment

Posted on November 22, 2011 by melissafed

“Lets go make tracks” she whispers and how can one say no to a request like that?

And we wander in winters first and finest and its easy to feel breath of God on our necks, to sigh spiritual, to whisper praises.

It isn’t the big drama that gets to me. Some of that can reinvigorate me, keeps my perspective real and right.

It is the little annoyances that grate me down to the nub.

The messy kitchen, unfolded laundry, work not all done. It’s the late for school, sleep through alarm, ill-behaved children that make me feel like a failure, make me roar like a lion. It would be nice to separate the spiritual from the mundane, the regular, the ‘today’ that feels entirely too ‘physical’ to be of any ‘spiritual’ value.

But can I tell you a secret?
Its today that are making tracks in the brains of our kids, our friends. Its how we deal with the everyday frustrations that are creating the responses they will burst forth with the rest of their lives. Its how our we react and respond NOW that will define their memories of us, their description of us. It isn’t what they read in our journal someday that will define our character…it is how we love them today.

It is the true test of our maturity. How deep is your trust in Him today? How sure are you that he ordained your everyday ordinaries? How secure is your identity in Him? How deep your peace? Do they transcend and deepen the act of the everyday? Or can I still separate the two, thinking the only spiritual act is to sit with a bible and a journal?

SO today? Even as we feel frustrated at every turn, let us find hope and peace in our spirits where defeat would dwell if we were only flesh.

“We are so abominably serious, so desperately interested in our own characters, that we refuse to behave like Christians in the shallow concerns of life. Determinedly take no one seriously but God, and the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself”

-Oswald Chambers

Makin’ Peace: 11:11:11

Posted on November 11, 2011 by melissafed

Sometimes the world just feels so sharp. Blade to flesh. Sword to heart.

I watch one soul slay another with a word, or by withholding them.

I watch a man speak icy to wife, she feels the frost and pulls herself away… bit.

I see a mother chop down child…right at the knees. I watched him crumple before her.

All of them clinging to the hand that will inevitably slam hard against the cheek.

And there were the others. Those that shopped alone. Lonely. They sought to make eye contact with me and we did and I smiled warm and I felt frost melt and I felt soul draw near and I knew soul deep loneliness from across the meat cooler. I tried to tell them I loved them with eyes alone. Say we’re in this together you and I. When I lifted bran muffin mix she requested from the top shelf and I brushed her hand as we parted and she smiled long and slow as if I had embraced her.

And we all ache together. The deep ache that remind us that this world is not enough. The Spirit twinges that remind us what we are here for…the love bringer who wants to use us to bring love to a loveless world. And the least of us is in all of us, and some of us are just better at disguise. And some of the poorest are the richest and so we watch and wait and we love all because we never know what disguise He will come in.

And this is the way we become peacemakers to a world in desperate need of peace.

At our house? We are trying to tame our ‘wild things’. Teaching them how to calm tensions without flying off the handle on little sisters/big brothers. How about you? How can you make more peace this year? This day?

When Skin Gets Thin

Posted on November 3, 2011 by melissafed

When the clock ticks and the IV beeps and the hip through the blanket feels like it is bare bone laying on the bed, its easy for mamma heart to flee to the scary place. The place where deepest fear resides. The one that reminds us how this skin is the only thing holding soul to terra firma. When you remember how thin that veneer, how poor a capture, how soul is always trying to fight its way free of it, to shake skin into dust, to fly off into space. When you remember how precious lives are; how short. You find yourself clinging to skin. I hugged people I don’t usually hug…my boss, my colleagues. Realizing flesh as slippery fish, I held on tight.

We all need to remember that somedays don’t we?

When you children make you want to climb walls?

When you friend steps heavy on your toes?

When your spouse forgets you for a moment?

When you are cut off in traffic? Pushed aside? Left behind?

Life in the flesh is tricky business, easy to misstep or take for granted. If we remember the shortness of the breath, how difficult the struggle; might it help us to keep the main things, the main things?

I will remember. You might need to remind me again next week.

And to all of you who have worried…our boy is finally, healing nicely. Thanks for your amazing support…you’ve made life in our flesh so much better!

Hard Work

Posted on October 20, 2011 by melissafed

I’ve been more heat than Light lately. Isn’t that what always happens when one spins too fast? I’ve felt myself slipping into patterns I thought I abandoned long ago. Feeling my sarcasm bite harder, my impatience roar more often, my passion dwindle.

So I’ve been getting back to the hard work of soul tending, of Jesus chasing. When the work is deep? Right down in the base of my heart? The words don’t find their way here. They stay in the leather bound.

Its about Ezekial and Hosea…betrayal and first love…and I have needed to step back from public words for a awhile.

Today I needed only this:

Stand in awe,
and sin not….

and be still.

Selah.

Psalm 4:4

I thought maybe you did too.

Hoping to catch up with Emily and some friends I haven’t read in ages…

How to Keep Going the Same Direction

Posted on October 10, 2011 by melissafed

I’ve been wondering: How do you ensure you keep going the same direction when you feel like two ships passing in the night?

I’m back at work a little and the man and I? Well, we are playing a bit of tag team. So when we brush lips at the door (resist the urge to high five, tag each other into the parenting ring), how do we ensure that our courses don’t drift us miles a part?

We’ve found we need to remind each other where we are headed. Even if our ships tend to sail out in different waters: my boat leaving harbour only for calm waters, his heading out for the craziest, waviest seas. Knowing now what we didn’t twelve years ago, that our family, our ministry, could not function any other way.

OUR family.

OUR ministry.

We are two parts of one whole. Sometimes opposites, needing different paces to thrive, but always, ALWAYS, ONE.

So we toss our selves into Living Water, knowing that the undercurrents and tides will keep us together even when we sail at different times. Making efforts even at the end of long days at sea to lift each other up, to be the quiet whisper of encouragement, trusting one another with a future full of uncertainty and risk. Even more we trust Light of only truest beacon, to keep the hull from rocky bluffs. We remember to choose gratitude for the life you are building together, for the extraordinary we see in each other. We remember things that drew one to the other, we make space for adventure together, for fun. We fumble over the mythology whispered in tired ears, of greener grass. We hold fast to Thankful, and we remind ourselves to trust that He that bound us into ONE has a plan.

634) Driving home, sky all purple, moon all full, road all drenched. Beauty.

635) Sharing it with the man, while the littles crack all kinds of hilarity in the back seat.

635) Fog. Lights. Beauty.

636) His love.

637) Relaxing with dear ones….so…so dear.

638) New music.

639) Ms. Hass

640) Vacation time. Reflecting on this thing we are building. This man. Most thankful for this Thanksgiving…

On Saying “Yes” to the things I can’t Un-see…

Posted on September 21, 2011 by melissafed

I’ve been hesitant.

These thoughts ravaging my brain?

The ones sneaking into my dreams, habituating my thought life, taking over my reading time?

I wondered, ‘what could happen to my heart if I saw them in thin flesh and only bone?’

Could I keep my head and heart together with the things I can’t unsee?

I’m still not sure.

But when a burden lands square and sure on the middle of your chest, you can only do one thing.

Say “YES”.

Yes to the things you can’t unsee, the ones which might very well turn your world upside down and inside out and rip your narcissism out at the seams. Yes to even these things.

I am learning to trust the things I can’t unsee to the one who is Unseen, because isn’t He big enough? I sure hope so.

We said yes to Africa today. And not just Africa, but yes to her Horn. To the land where the soil blows on the wind. To the place where the land is as thirsty as her people. We will be just hours from one of the largest refugee camps in the world today. We will be in the village we’ve made it our dream to support.

We are going. I can hardly believe we are going.

Please join me on our journey with World Vision Canada as we seek to bear witness to the atrocity that is occurring. As we seek to use this burden so heavy on both of us, to bring awareness, hope and help to a hurting region. We leave January 2, 2012. Feel free to get your prayer on starting now…

Also…if you feel so inclined…

Forgiving

Posted on August 11, 2011 by melissafed

OH NO! Random flower shot! BRACE YOURSELF!

A business man broke down and cried in my husbands arms last summer, in an amusement park. His son just dead.

A woman showed up in our drive way one night because her mother had just suicided.

We had a service man confess abuse.

If I can make you no other guarantee on this earth I can make you this: Someone will hurt you. Cut you deep and make you want to hate them. You will want to write them off, abandon and wave the wand of forgive, think the job is done.

It isn’t.

The moment you think of them with dread, intimidation, anger. The moment you wish them unwell in the future. The moment you imagine something dreadful…guess what? The wand failed, and you my friend have some hard work to do…again.

Your job my friend, to love them as we love ourselves, is the most important one. And me? Thinking those thoughts, those feelings, well I’m afraid…I can’t yet call myself a ‘forgiver’. I got work to do.

But really what does that mean? I thought I knew. Be nice. Be sweet. Don’t make waves.

It isn’t that.

It’s so much harder than that.

Its ‘I hope you feel better after this confrontation, its I hope you leave this feeling more loved no matter what it costs me. Its I won’t defend my rights, I’ll become an advocate for yours. Its I will fight for you as much as I fight for myself. Its introspection and seeing yourself for who you really are, your scarred and clumsy self. Its admitting your fault and asking forgiveness and starting fresh.

Its I’ll LOVE YOU AS MYSELF. Its I’LL FORGIVE AS I’VE BEEN FORGIVEN.

Sometimes loving someone as yourself says:

Where is this coming from? How have I hurt you? What has our life together meant to you? How have I fallen short? How could I have loved you better? Heard your words? Felt your motives? Defended you? Fought for you?

How can I now LOVE YOU AS I LOVE MYSELF?

Its hard. Most days I fail.

Sometimes you just want to defend yourself and say ‘that isn’t what I said, or meant, or acted’. Sometimes you want to win.

Sometimes its hard to turn the cheek.

Sometimes its easier to be snide, hurtful, superior.

Sometimes its easier to ignore issues, hide behind pretense, wait for the storm to pass.

Loving each other in truth is hard. It’s the very hardest thing. It wraps up all the other living for God traits into one neat package. You must be brave and humble. Strong and compassionate. Loving as yourself means that I’m not trying to win. It means the ideal end result is a tie…a photo finish.

(an edited post from the archives because sometimes you need a reminder. You know?)

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