Dear Bella,

9.08.2016 11:09 AM 11 2009 Melanie 2 comments
You turned seven a couple of weeks ago. Seven Bella. How? How is that possible? I just finish writing you a letter and I have to write another. You're growing up too quickly. It feels like it's taking forever and a moment all at the same time.

 This has been a crazy year for us. So many things about the last few years have been so hard. Daddy was working a job he hated, I was working a job I was apathetic about, and we felt like we were losing our family, not to mention my sanity. We talked about stopping, about living differently. What would that look like, not just for us, but for you and your sister? 

 Do you want to know the hardest thing about being a parent? I'll tell you. Making decisions for you. We changed the course of our lives completely four months ago, and I don't know yet if you'll thank us for it one day. I don't know what the implications of our actions are on you yet, and I won't know for many years. I want a time machine, I want to zip ahead to you being thirty and we will have coffee together and talk. You can tell me if you hate me or not, or think that we were completely irresponsible to get rid of all our stuff, take you away from the people you love (twice) and move you into two little dorm rooms so we can try something completely different. You can tell me the parts of this time that you love so I can focus on that, and the parts of it that you hate and I could walk into this next chapter of our lives knowing how to protect you and honor who you are growing up to be. I could explain our motivation to you in a way that you would understand then, that you can't understand now, and maybe you'd know that I'm trying to show you how to be you, by attempting for the first time in my life to be me.

I've never felt like I fit. I've always felt like I don't want the right things, that the things that are supposed to matter to me don't and the things that don't bother anyone else are the things that keep me awake at night with longing, wondering what could be if I was brave enough to just TRY. And at the point in my life when I felt the least brave, when I felt the most tired, when I felt the least capable, the most like a fraud, I did it. I quit my job. I said the words that made me feel like an ungrateful brat, like someone who just couldn't grow up, "I don't want this." I don't want a job that pays well but does nothing to inspire me. I don't want to be the kind of mom who is frazzled and stressed, who yells too much and is constantly in a hurry, trying to be everything to everyone and not leaving enough for you. We just had to try Bella. Do you see that? It had been ten years and Daddy and I were so unhappy. We were so scared at what another ten years of us being unhappy would do to us, and to you. We missed you so much. I wish you knew all the times that I kissed you goodbye and left for work and cried the whole way there, only to fix my makeup in the parking lot and turn my heart off so I could walk through the door to earn a paycheque to afford a life I didn't want. I wish I could explain to you what that felt like, the way I felt like it was crushing me, like it was killing the only parts of me that I liked, and promoting the parts of me that I didn't. And I'd look at you, innocent and smart and beautiful and young and I'd tell you that you could be anything you wanted to be and I would believe it for you, but not for me. I felt like a liar and a hypocrite. 

 In one week we are leaving for the Youth With a Mission base in Montana. Daddy is going to school there for the next year. I'm going to keep homeschooling you and spend more time with you than I've ever had in your life. But we are going to live in two dorm rooms. We are going to share a bathroom with a bunch of kids who are the correct age to be in YWAM. We are going to eat in the cafeteria. For the first time in our married life, we will not live near either of our parents. It's a crazy way to live. Lots of people think we are nuts to try it with kids. But I need you to know something, I need to model something for you that I hope this will teach you. I will have failed you as a mother, as a friend, as a woman, if you don't learn this one thing from me that I've always been afraid to believe for myself:

 You should try what you love, what you really love. You should find what you're excited about and become someone you'd admire. You should trust in a God that makes some people passionate about color and light and some people passionate about spreadsheets and numbers. That a God like that has made you the way you are for a reason and that the world you live in needs you to be who you were created to be. You should stop comparing your loves and your desires and your body and your mind to anyone else, and you should do it before your early thirties. You should trust the part of you that keeps you awake wondering, "what if I could ... " and you should risk everything for what fits in that ellipses. There's nothing I don't believe you can do. 

 This is what Daddy and I want. It's what we've wanted for such a long time, and it's kept us awake more nights than we can admit. We're so excited to share this with you. We believe that this is the best way to raise you, and just so you know, if you're thirty and reading this, you're so excited right now. You can't wait. We went to the base to look around, mostly to see how you reacted and what you thought of things, and you loved every bit of it. It was the last bit of confirmation that we so desperately needed, and we hope this next year is so amazing for you. We need you to know now that this is where we believe God is leading our family, not just Daddy. We need you to know that we will be obedient to that, even if it means this next crazy year of us living in two small rooms. We need you to know that we had to try, so that one day when you come to us and say, "this is just something I have to try," you will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we will have your back. We will not tell you to choose a more realistic or easily attainable dream. We will pray with you and support who God made you to be. We will cheer you on the way our parents are doing for us right now. We've got your back. 

 So if you're thirty and reading this, could you do me a favor? Call me and invite me for coffee. Tell me if we did this next year right. Tell me what you loved and hated and learned. Your voice is so important to me. If you're who you want to be, let's celebrate. If you're lost and struggling. tell me who you are and what makes you come alive and how I can support you. 

 I hope this next year of your life is so amazing Bella. You are so loved, so special. I'm so glad God gave you to us, and to this world. Everything is brighter because He did.

Love, Mama. 

What On Earth Are You Guys Doing?

5.11.2016 8:08 AM 11 2009 Melanie 4 comments
There have been a few questions lately as to what exactly Peter and I are up to right now. 
"Wait, you're where?"
"What did I miss?" 
"What's going on with you guys?"
The short answer is that the short answer has never fit into a Facebook status so I never really put it there. I am sorry if you felt blindsided that suddenly we were leaving. But if you're curious, or interested, or just nosy (like I am), then here's what's up with us. 

 Peter and I met doing full time ministry. We were working with YWAM, were living in Hawaii, and spending our lives on something we really believed in. The plan was to get married, take six months to a year off and then head back. But we never went back. We went to Wyoming to spend time with his family for our first year, and then when we had immigration troubles, we knew we had to get that sorted out before we could do anything else, so we did. And suddenly before we knew it, 11 years had passed and two children had arrived. 

 The plan was always to go back into full time ministry in some way. Missions, church planting, something else. As the years went by it became less and less clear what exactly we wanted, what we felt like we could or should do with our lives. Our schedules were ridiculous. Shaw is shift work, and Peter's schedule changed every four weeks. For 8 years. Many of those years were spent working split shifts. 9-1, and then 5-9. If he stayed on splits then his schedule wouldn't change, only his days off would, so it was a hit we took for some semblance of continuity in our life. But after Emma arrived, it just wasn't working. I was working nights and homeschooling during the day. Peter was on splits because it was thee only thing that worked for our childcare. We averaged 4 days off together every two months. 

 We were unhappy. It's one thing if you're making huge sacrifices because you're doing what you love or at least something that speaks to you in some way, but we weren't doing that. Here's a confession. Peter couldn't possibly care less whether or not your UFC pay-per-view fight comes in clearly. Especially if you're calling him while drunk on a Saturday night when he's missing his kids and wife. Just saying. 

 We've been talking for our entire marriage about what it would look like to stop. To do something that mattered to us. We're not ungrateful. We had good jobs in a bad job market and we provided for our family. But we didn't feel like we were getting to be a family. Our dissatisfaction was manifesting in other ways that weren't healthy for us. Nothing was seriously wrong (honestly, we didn't see each other enough to be having serious problems), but the cracks were starting to show. 

 Last summer I sent Peter to see his dad to take some time away from everything and think and pray about what he wanted. When he came home, I asked him, "Let's play the stupid lottery game. We win 50 million dollars tomorrow, how do you want to spend your life? What do you want to do first?" 

 "I'd want to take a minute to think about it."

 I suppose that's the short answer as to what we're up to. We desperately needed a minute. We needed some time to be a family. We need to go camping. We need a second to think about what it would look like now to completely change how we've been living for the last decade, and how to do that with kids. So since last summer we've been planning the logistics of quitting our whole life so we can have some time to think and pray about what we are supposed to be doing with ourselves. Maybe it's YWAM again, maybe it's going back to school, maybe it's coming back in a few months and getting a different job. We are, quite literally, open to anything.
It's obviously a little late to try and decide what we want to be when we grow up, and a little early for us to have a mid-life crisis, but there it is. 

 We also really wanted our girls to have some time with Peter's side of the family. We haven't seen each other in 16 months. So we talked to them, and to my family, and the tentative plan came out as follows:

Peter and I both quit our jobs.
We downsize the amount of crap we own significantly.
We pay off any unsecured debt completely.
We use our savings account to have 4-6 weeks off as a family.
Peter gets a part-time job while we have very few expenses and that money all goes to savings.
We spend six months in Wyoming staying with Peter's mom and dad to pray and rest. We work on our marriage, our relationships with our girls, our relationship with God.

 The obvious next question is, "what happens after six months?" 

 We don't know yet. This was kind of a big scary leap of faith for us. It was HARD for Peter to quit. He is a good provider for the girls and I. He's a hard worker. But he's been so unhappy, and it's torture watching someone you love struggle like that. 

 I've been so overwhelmed. If you're a mom who homeschools and works, I think you're a superhero. I don't see how it can be done effectively. I can't do it effectively. That's hard for me to admit, but I wasn't keeping those balls in the air. Not at all. I wasn't being a great mom, a great wife, a great teacher to Bella, or a great employee. Let's not even think about housework. I felt guilty and anxious every moment. My mental health was beginning to slip, and then it began to slip some more. I felt like I was drowning.

 There's a verse in Isaiah that's been rattling around my head for a few years now:
 "Why do you spend your money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance." 

    
So that's what we are trying to do. To listen. We'd appreciate your prayers during this time. I'll be blogging more - I actually just got a guest spot writing on an amazing education blog I follow, which came right out of left field for me, and I'm excited about that. Pray for Peter to get the right job while we're here, for the girls to handle this transition well (they're doing amazing so far), for grace and blessing for Peter's family while they host us (they're being beyond gracious to us) and grace for my family who are missing our girls terribly. 

 Feel free to message me on Facebook or e mail me. If you have an iPhone you can still text me. We'll try and keep everyone updated on what's up with us, but for right now, the short answer is, "we're not sure yet." 

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