Her Mother and I

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one. Ephesians 5:31 The New Testament.

I'll betcha I can count on one hand the number of nights in my life when I couldn't sleep. Tonight was one of them.  The dreams are always about getting ready for a major event, but never quite getting everything done.  And that is literally how completely general they are.  Every night.  No further details appear.  No Moody gym in a Tri-County High School hallway surrounded by friends from Mona Shores.  Nothing.  Just me preparing for something . . . anything, and waking, only to fall back asleep so the preparations can continue.

The other handful of nights were probably waiting for Melissa to arrive home much later than her reasonable "curfew" allowed.  Technically, she didn't have a curfew. Caller id was in place by then, and when she'd call and say, "we're gonna watch a movie or I'm gonna spend the night here . . ."
we knew she was where she said she was.

Only once, on a cold winter night, when I woke around 4am and noticed her car missing from the driveway, did I wake up the Wiseman's and ask them if, possibly the bug was in their driveway.  It was one of the few times she got grounded. 

When I write my book, there will be a whole chapter on grounding your teen-ager.  It will talk about effective discipline, reaping what you sow, making good choices, consequences, letting them fail and very little about punishment.  We can't always be grounding children, we should be teaching them to fly. 

Melissa would say in 2010, she heard God calling her to Himself and old things passed away and all things became new.  She caught the faith we tried to instill. We would say, you can only teach children about faith and pray they get their own.

And so tomorrow we push her from the nest. Actually, she jumped out in 2005 and has learned most of her lessons through trial and error and the hard way. Another chapter in the book will be on children being under their parents covering, letting them make mistakes so lessons can be learned . . . sigh. Tomorrow she and Spencer start building their own nest. A covenant with and ordained by God since time began. 


She was never one for dressin' up and worrying about what she saw in the mirror.  One of our worst moments as mother and daughter was in a department store dressing room. But one of our best will be when we catch eyes as she walks down the aisle, on her dad's arm, to meet the love of her life, in her beautiful dress.

Melissa always said she wanted to get married in a hoodie, jeans, and barefoot. 

Two outta three, ain't bad, Tootse.