Mother Letter: To Melissa…A Letter from your wiser self

Posted on April 14, 2012 by melissafed

Dear Meliss,

Each afternoon when you pick O up from school you ask him about his day. You ask him what he did, sure, but mostly you wait to ask the central question “O, tell me, how did you bring light and love to school today?”. And inevitably he tells you how he shared something in the castle, helped a friend who got hurt, did his work when asked. You don’t ask for more than that, you don’t ask the world of him, only that he make the world a little brighter. We celebrate the small victories together

It is enough.

I wonder mamma…what if that was all you asked of yourself at the end of the day? Did you bring hope and peace to your home? A little bit of light? Make a memory? Did you notice something beautiful? Teach them how to see it? Did you show them grace? Teach them how to receive it?

Or did you only notice what you didn’t do?

I know you aren’t the mamma that you had hoped to be. But I gotta tell you, you probably aren’t as bad as you think you are either. And other mammas probably aren’t as great as you think they are. You need to ease up woman. Every time you let defeat win, you teach your children that you are a liar, that the ‘Overcomer’ is not living in you.

I know you are tired. It has been a week hasn’t it? This motherhood thing is so much more than you ever thought it would be. “More” in every. single. way. More energy than you thought you had. More taxing than you thought possible. More rewarding than anything else you have ever done..

You know those moments? When you suddenly feel like you are having an out-of-body experience? When the world slows in love and you sit back and watch your own life and it is MORE than you thought it could be. When Joel is in the midst with the kids. Or when they both crawl quietly in your lap. When you breathe deep of their hair and read books together and the world turns into a rose-coloured television ad? Those moments happen because you are moving slow enough to let it. They happen because you allow the children time to do it. They happen because your expectations are quiet. It happens because they are the moments of Love and Light, not pressure and expectation.

Take it easy will you?
With love from,

Your much wiser self

PS: Also, whatever you do…DO NOT forget that moment this week after you and the kids spent some time with the new beast on the deck and he shed his winter coat all over you. You said to the kids “we will have to change when we go in! Sam covered us in hair”. Your boy? Responded “YES…lets get naked just how I like it”. Or when the little girl, shouted from the basement in her ‘one of a kind accent’ that most cannot understand. But that YOU, YOU, understand every utterance she makes.

Marriage Letters: Serving Together

Posted on April 1, 2012 by melissafed

Participating in a letter writing challenge at “the Run A Muck”…”because we believe that when we bless our own marriages, we bless the marriages of others. When you go hard after your marriage, I’m encouraged to go after mine”. Hope this letter serves to inspire you to fight for yours.

This week the challenge is on the concept of ‘serving together’.

Dear Joel,

Mercy and marvel. It is a testament to the grace of God in a marriage, that we survived our first few years. And by survived, I don’t mean that we didn’t get a divorce (though I guess that could be considered miraculous too). No I mean actual survival…neither one of us died. Yeesh. What a ride. I knew what I was getting into when I married you. While I thought you were going to be a teacher I also knew you had visions. I vowed it, right there on our wedding day, I flat-out said that I would support your visions and dreams and do all I could to make them real. I just couldn’t have known how many you would have, how big they would be, that they would lead to SUCH challenging and interesting adventure. These steps have taken me so far out of my comfort zone, to the end of the rope.

Turns out that is where Jesus lives. The other side of the end of myself.

Serving with you has been the best and worst part of our marriage. We build well together. I am the nitty-gritty, the small and tiny, to your big and beautiful plans. It’s all I see. The small pieces. You meanwhile see the biggest picture, and don’t notice if the small are there or not. At least back in the beginning. Logistics are old hat to you now….nothing gets left out. But when we began, I was chasing after your vision with a one hundred point map. We drove each other wild.

We also fell wildly in love.

But not in the way the world falls in love. No not that. I saw your integrity lived out plain. You saw my jagged edges raw. You started calling me GI Jane for the way I kept throwing myself in harm’s way. It was an adventure to say the least. In our first six years of marriage, stress had shown every crack we bare. We learned that the truest love is looking out the same direction, not always just staring at each other. We learned that one vision keeps you going the same way, even if you don’t always arrive at the same time. Since then? It has been a struggle to maintain that tension. Some seasons you have stared off into the distance and I felt left behind. Other times I stared too intently at you and dared you to look away, wanting to be the whole of your vision and I found I didn’t like it…I lost interest in you. Sometimes we’ve struggled to keep one vision between us…neither one catching fire and going out alone. It looks different now, the way I had to pull back my reigns. To nestle quiet with the kids. It has been an extraordinary gift to both of us. The way God filled the gaps for us in ministry. The way serving together looks much more like making a home now. The way I was delighted to find I didn’t miss the other things too much. That serving in our home and when youth come over, living family and Jesus-chasing well before them is plenty for me. More than, some days. The vision though, OUR whole life for ONE single purpose remains just as true now.

I am pretty sure there is no one else on earth who would have a vision big enough to capture my imagination. And for all my bluster and opposition I hope you always know that truth (you just scare me sometimes…and by now you must know that my fear is always dressed for the corner of a roof). I would follow your dream to the dark side of the moon if you asked me too…18 years later I believe more than ever that you are the man who could take us there.

Ever thankful to be serving with you;

Yours.

Meliss

Gift

Posted on March 29, 2012 by melissafed

I find myself clinging to them this week. Holding too close and trying to absorb them back into myself. They seem too big. They do things like go to school and have reasonable conversations and go on carnival rides unaccompanied. Yesterday as I watched them play at the school my breath caught in my throat and I had this urge to slow the earth and trap the moment. The grass seemed greener, from the days of rain, and the sky bluer than usual as it was the first we’ve seen in days, there was a breath of wind blowing that made it a perfect day. I didn’t have my camera but I still need to capture it.

I watched little Miss Cautious stand at the top of the hill and then measure her steps so that she didn’t get going too fast. I remembered how I didn’t ever need to gate my stairs because she would call for me and wait at the top until I would come to her. The day her feet were sure she took her first step…months later than her brother. I consider how time is flying and I think about who she will be and what this temperament might mean for her. I prepare myself already to help her be bold in relationship, to take risk, to let loose, to embrace adventure. Her blond ringlets glint in the March sun while her life stretches out before her in that grassy field and I think that once her feet are sure they will not turn right or left, she is a child of a single mind. Her cautious nature is rivaled only by her tenacity.

I watch little Mr. Headlong as he catapults himself down the hill, sure-footed and fleet. He runs far and farther and little sister who won’t let him be more than 10 feet from her these days gets nervous and calls to him across the field and her voice echoes back and they run into each others arms and fall in hysterics both laughing too hard to get back up. He brushes cheek, gentle. He tells killer jokes these days and he loves to makes us laugh. He tells his sister that he loves her and misses her when she isn’t ‘by his side’. I think about who he will be too and then suddenly stop…

Even daydreaming about tomorrow takes away something from today.

And today is good and I’m relishing every moment…it is Gift.

Dear Church: A love letter to the body and the bride (I couldn’t make one metaphor stick)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by melissafed

Beloved Bride,

I watched you tonight. I sat in the car with sleeping littles while you passed Hope Centre windows en route to family dinner.

There goes that girl I met after she attended camp for the first time. I remember hugging her the week after her mother died. I remember watching her grow into this beautiful servant hearted woman, amazing leader.

There goes one of our seniors. Her grandchildren brought her back for bigger and better once. She put a clown costume on and fearlessly came onto stage, winning the team prize for best trade.

When the kids wake up and I walk in and I am greeted by the children from two of my favorite families. I feel the warmth of community deep and strong.

Later I will stand in the back of sanctuary and listen to you sing. I feel so in love with you that I cannot breath. There are young men and women who I have watched grow from angry or troubled teens. I see the anorexics healed. The anxious soothed. The prideful humbled. There on stage the kids I watched grow into these marvelous, wise and gifted parts of our body. There are people who love on my kids. People who serve with my husband. People that bring us food when babies are born. The ones that pray for us. It is too much for my clumsy mind…this lame blog.

But. Its been a ride these last years hasn’t it? Sometimes I’ve felt we’ve been more like a battered woman than a spotless bride. The layoffs, departures, conflict, drama. We’ve lost some dear ones and we still feel those phantom limbs just below the knee cap. Sometimes it aches. There have been transplants too and we are waiting to see if we can weight bare on them or not. There has been healing but we still limp. We’ve donated our kidneys to other churches, sliced off a piece of our liver to grow somewhere else.

My brother-in-law calls his wife ‘the bride’; always. It was when I knew I was going to like him. He calls her that no matter what. 20 years later, after everything he knows of her, he chooses to think of her as spotless bride.

Can we do the same? Can we look through the lens of what Jesus is doing in all of us, how He sees us? Can we trust that there is a method in this sometimes madness? Can we believe really deeply that devotion and dedication are hard; perhaps the hardest things. We are a terribly broken bunch, I have to tell you it is the whole point of the cross; of this church. Can we REALLY believe that it is what we do with our sins and missteps that shows how deep Grace has drilled? Do we believe that he is ABLE to be glorified in this? In spite of this? In spite all the ways we, the church, do the wrong things with right intentions or the right things with the wrong intentions. All the times we act without prayer or speak without grace. All the violations I’ve imposed on others by my self-righteousness and lack of love. All the times we’ve glossed over wounds in others rather than face them. All the times we’ve not pursued His peace with fervency. I know it goes so much deeper than all that…

We get things wrong. We are trying to get it right. It is the process of working out our faith and learning to walk in humility. No, we’ll likely never get it all right…but in the baby steps to righteousness may we make reverence, humility, love, grace and peace our footholds.

Still, I ask for your forgiveness in advance.

Even my baby steps have a tendency to step on toes.

But still. This love for you rages.

Melissa

Linking with: The Wellspring
and:

When Motherhood Leaves You Breathless

Posted on March 19, 2012 by melissafed

The two of you plant yourselves firmly on the mid-point of my chest. You sit there, each of you a mere forty odd pounds but sometimes I feel the weight of the whole world pressing on me, pushing the air from my lungs, the blood from my heart. Sometimes you feel so dreadfully heavy.

That night recently when you growled at dinner, pushed down babies, took a swing at your Sunday School teacher, threatened to kick that man in the shins?

I have visions of you and who you could be and it scares the breath and blood right out of me.

When you punch your sister in the Costco shopping cart? When you roar vicious? When I am certain I have failed you at every turn?

These are the reasons it took me so long to chase after having children. Married a solid six before we even discussed it. These are the easy things to articulate about the motherhood journey. These are the things my mamma friends found descriptions for easily.

But. Then.

I also had no idea what it might feel like when you whisper together, laugh out loud, act with compelling compassion. I couldn’t explain to you what happens to my heart when I overhear conversations when you make up nicknames for each other and Mr. Pickles tells Beakie that he loves her more than the moon and that his life would be like a ‘chicken’ without her. I didn’t know that everything about me would change slightly the first time you spoke the word ‘mommy’. All of who I once was, pressed by the weight, refined, emerging as something new entirely. Something better, truer, more honest, less driven by image; MUCH more humble.

It is the things impossible to say that make it worth everything. I’m left breathless for a different reason entirely.

We’ve moved into a lovely phase with the kids…so enjoying them right now. I know better than to take these sweet days for granted.

Thankful for:

677) Last sledding excursion of the year (hopefully)

678) New toys that make the afternoon of daddy’s ninth day away much more bearable

679) Sweet conversations overheard

680) Help from friends with childcare…Thank you Lisa & Karl, Rochelle, Sister Shells and Zoe!

681) Pappa Don coming to help too! Gummy sharing her man! Thanks again for everything!!!

682) Blue sky’s and bright sunshine. Sparkle.

683) Thaw? Oh please, oh please, oh please.

684) Little Chefs. Assessment from the boy child? “This pizza is exquisite”. Be still my heart.

685) That we didn’t get snowed in while J was away. Yay Moose!

686) Quiet moments of play in perfect streams of sunshine.

687) More gentleness, less tempers flaring

688) A gorgeous walk by the water in the sun this afternoon

689) Great lunch dates

690) I think I heard it? The first songbird back.

691) The man…almost home…with extraordinary tales to tell.

Country Chronicles: A Dance Studio

Posted on March 5, 2012 by melissafed

Miss E? She has been a handful lately. I spent three hours reading journals and blog posts about when Mr. O was 3.5. Turns out I was certain he might be a career criminal. Feddersen kids at three are tough, strong, feisty, stubborn…they shout a lot.

But today? Miss E? At her first Highland Dance class? Anything but…all sweetness and bright light. It was wondrous.

She was amazing, adorable, graceful.

I cried a little.

And…who would’ve guess? A Highland Dance studio in Joe Rich? Most excellent.

E is wearing the shoes that both her Auntie Shell and I wore for our Highland lessons. And of course a tutu; I couldn’t resist. She couldn’t stop looking at herself; though I must admit it was hard to look away.

One More Marriage Letter: On Patience

Posted on February 16, 2012 by melissafed

Participating in a letter writing challenge at “the Run A Muck”…encouraging others about marriage. It ain’t easy. This week for the challenge I wanted you to know, that we know, how hard marriage can be, that there is seasons. If you are in a dry one now? You just might come through the other side. This week? Writing on patience…

Dear Joel,

Patience isn’t my strong suit is it? I am prone to bluster and slam when I get overwhelmed. And you. There are few things you love less that errands. Especially while you wait to go shopping for pirate ships (this really happened…just yesterday) and I insist on car washes and hair cuts. We have never been two of a kind.

These children of ours, push me way beyond and over myself and I fall off the edge of the 1 Corinthian 13 love. It is easy to believe that verse when you don’t have to look at yourself in your spouses eyes after you quote it, reminded that you are not all that you once thought you were cracked up to be. Love is patient? And I know for the 1000 time that I still have so much to learn about love.

I am expectant of perfection in the here and today, and it turns out? Life isn’t. I wasted years of our marriage waiting for us to find it. I expected this thing to be a certain way. It isn’t.

You say ‘it is, what it is’ and you turn broken to beautiful over and over. And turns out? That is so much better.

Over and over, in all the paths of life, we learn the hard days make the easy ones sweetest. How the best things in life cost the most, and that is true in relationship, in education, in ministry, in parenting, in Jesus chasing and letting the dross get refined. All of it. Escaping to soon means that you didn’t make it to the sun rise comin’.

We learn what is important too, and what romance really is. I remember how that one time, I was 18 years old and had gone to the movies with a bunch of friends. As we are sometimes prone to, I went with the girls to a romantic era film (Emma perhaps?), I returned all weepy eyed and weak in the knees and you picked me up and carried me to my front door kissed me on the forehead and turned and left. As romantic as that was, we both know that it the simplicity of the everyday that sparks more than anything like that. I’ve never loved you more than when you let me make mad messes in the kitchen, which you clean without comment. That is love.

I don’t want our marriage to be complicated. Life is hard its true.

You are my team. Thats it.

I know people who put all sorts of pressure on each other, they tie weight onto each word and onto their spouses foot. It makes them sink. They try to make their marriage a perfect model; make the family present well. Lets never go there ok? Perfect fails. And you won’t find anything like that around here. Lets be perfect only in our pursuit of selfless…others can keep their posed photos and coordinated outfits (though…does blogging marriage mean I am trying to create illusion? I hope not. I catch the irony though).

Patience. It has cost plenty to bring us here hasn’t it? I don’t think we are done learning it yet.

But.

There is no one else on earth I would want to learn it for.

Yours.

Meliss

PS….We will miss you this weekend. We are praying for you and waiting patiently…dreadfully proud to be yours.

Also linking with:

Country Chronicles: Perspective.

Posted on February 9, 2012 by melissafed

The valley has been deep in fog these days. Every tree and leaf is edged in hoarfrost. The fog so dense it feels like it is following you. It is oppressive, heavy, creepy and sensationally beautiful.

And in one sense, it also isn’t real.

If you drive up the road just five minutes in any direction from valley bottom you will find blue skies, no clouds. The fog distorts, tricks, lies. Sometimes you just can’t trust your own perception. Sometimes it isn’t the truth. From our home the skies have been clear and blue and we have been sitting atop a marshmallow stuffed tightly into the lake bottom.

Yes I am sorry to tell you Kelowna, the skies have been blue for days. Clear. Not a cloud.

I’ve been tricked this week too though. I’ve been fooled in the dark of night. Though the sky is clear, and the moon reflects blue; still I find myself watching the shadows. Though I have walked every inch of this place this winter and not seen a foot print of any beast, still I watch the shadows for one to come and devour. That is what happens to my focus then fear starts to invade it.

(some day I will learn to take photos of the moon)

This girl of mine? The one that growls sometimes? The one who has a temper that explodes? She is scaring me. She makes me nervous. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, raising a daughter might be the scariest thing I have ever done.I am terrified that I will go all Tina Fey on her when she turns 13. I will say “heels are really uncomfortable, and other things women say to each other”; clumsy, awkward, keeping communication rolling isn’t my strong suit. I am not good at asking questions. So when my eyes peel open at 2 am and all I can think is all the ways I will go wrong. All the things she will need to walk though, all the pain she will face, my heart near stops.

There are two ways to live this journey and I have chosen to walk both at different stages. I have watched the shadows, waiting for something to come and get us. At times I have also chose TRUST the better path. A path where I look for the joy, the best, the blessing in each moment. I choose to look at each moment with this firecracker of a girl as glimpses of her power, her strength, her tenacity. I will choose to take the lid off the pressure cooker, to take each moment as it comes. To let her be, to find herself, to keep modeling gentleness despite the fact that at this moment she is (in her words) “EXTRA, EXTRA, TOUGH”.

How about you? Do you find yourself watching the shadows or basking in the sun’s light? Sometimes it is a matter of moving just a few feet to the left, the view might completely change.

When it wasn’t all Valentines and Love Letters: When Opposites Attract

Posted on February 6, 2012 by melissafed

Dear Joel,

I know you think it is weird. That quirk I have of reading obituaries almost every day. It started when I worked palliative care and I wanted to see if my patients had died or not. Now I can’t stop.

It isn’t the only weird thing you know about me. You know the weird ambitions I have, the cliché’ ones.

I like how you call me out on my fears now. You say “tell me…what do you really think is going to happen here?” I pause, and that feeling in my gut diminishes, usually there isn’t much reason in it.

I love, how we know when the other is going to laugh at something. Those quirky things that drive us nuts. Like how you glance at me sideways when someone says ‘just sayin’ you think I might go for the jugular. I don’t, but often my claws do show. Sometimes, when I am out with others, I look at them, waiting to laugh at our jokes. They don’t get it. I miss you then.

It wasn’t always like this. There were those few years, right around our seven-year mark where I got burnt out. It wasn’t you exactly. It was life in general. I thought about heading for the hills. I wanted to hide from the world in a cabin in the woods. I told you I was running away from home, that you could come with me if you wanted, but make no mistake; I was going. It was all a little much.

It was mostly the babies lost. We grieved those miscarriages differently. You dug in deeper with the kids we had been given already; Those in the youth group. I got angry with them, perhaps I blamed them for the loss. I thought maybe you were right; that God was calling us to have those kids alone. I blamed you too.

But. You were patient with me, all the same. You waited while I turned back into myself. It took forever.

You and me? Next time the ‘big uglies’ of life face us? I think, I know, we will do it better. I will know you need different things and that doesn’t mean you are any less distraught. We are different. One of us is not better.

I’m so happy I waited to head for the hills with you. That together and today is so much better than all our yesterdays. We will forever tell those who follow us down this crazy marriage path: There will be a phase where marriage seems harder than it is worth. It is a lie. You will come out the other side with a complexity and understanding of each other that wasn’t there before. You will laugh again. You will dream again. Fight for it friends it just takes time for the team to come together as one. Time and trial and a whole lotta prayer and understanding.

Thanks for sticking around J-Fed. I wasn’t my favorite person those years either.

But you? You are the only one I would ever want on my team. The only one I would fight to keep.

Yours.

Meliss

Being Parents

Posted on January 23, 2012 by melissafed

Participating in a letter writing challenge at “the Run A Muck”…encouraging others about marriage in the stage of young children. It ain’t easy. This week the challenge is on the concept of ‘nightly routine’.

Dear Joel,

There is a whirl and sudden stop each night at our house. The children spin like tops from five until seven…tops with teeth and sharp nails. Tops that swirl right into our temples. You deal with it better. You let me hide in the kitchen and feign the need to make everything from scratch.

Sometimes its better, the children make a giant fort and invite the two of us inside. We make jokes that they can’t understand, steal a kiss, you try to remind me that I am not just someones mommy. I love hearing you tell stories to the boy, while I whisper with the girl. You talk about his day and I always learn something new. There is something about the way you listen that makes us all want to talk.

This night I am folding laundry and your gym socks are still red from the Kenyan soil. Again it reminds me how thankful I am for the life we are building together, for the ordinary and extraordinary moments that pull together to make up a life. It is amazing when you think about it isn’t it? We’ve been together nearly 20 years now, it seems absurd to say it. It can’t be possible. But then. There is this story we’ve got. I’m going to keep telling it till I die.

The nights you are out are different. The rhythm and goodness of this household rests squarely on your shoulders, it is always too much for me, but we get there eventually. Bedtime is my least favorite thing on earth. Ok. Perhaps I hate poverty and hunger more than bedtime…but not much. Still. I sure am thankful that you are my team as we try to capture the tops and turn them into bed. In fact? I’m glad you are on my team in everything we do. I’m so dreadfully thankful that all the ordinaries and extra-ordinaries have not spun us totally out of control, but instead have woven us deeper into One.

You are the best routine I ever fell into, the only one that ever stuck.

Yours.

Melissa