she writes on sundays

  • I don’t like to be lost (a short story)

    (When I can’t write, when I can’t make sense of what is going on in my head- I have found that something that helps me is to make it up. To write fiction and see what truth comes out. It’s been a while, but here is a short story that showed up as I let the story come out.)

    I like to adventure. To explore.

    I like to know exactly where I am going.

    I’m good with directions and with knowing which way is north.

    I don’t like to be lost.

    It was a Saturday. I woke up, made my coffee and stared at the mountains behind my house. They were mountains I climbed on a regular basis, normally by myself, with a fully charged cellphone and trail maps in the back seat of my car.
    I don’t like to be lost.

    It had been an emotionally charged week. I had a mishap on a project at work, I’d burned my hand, ran out of gas…

    Oh yah, and my boyfriend of two years had broken up with me.

    And by broken up with me, I mean I ran into him and his other girlfriend at a restaurant.

    I ran out of the restaurant before he could say a word.

    I don’t like to be lost.

    So I packed some snacks, checked the weather, made sure my phone was charged and clicked my dishwasher on before I walked outside to drive up to a familiar place that I had been going to since I was 16.

    The drive took the same amount of time that it always does. I parked in the same spot I always do. Threw on my backpack, locked my car and trudged down the same trail.

    I knew the map, and the phone and the trail guides were nestled into my backpack, but I also knew I wouldn’t need them. I also knew they wouldn’t help me if I got lost.
    I had a feeling the lost was coming. In this town I’d lived in all my life. In the job I’d been in for 12 years, with the friends I had, had since high school.
    I’ve fought the lost off for a long time. By always being prepared. By never risking.

    And it came anyway. And my maps, and plans and access to google wasn’t going to help it. 

    It took me thirty minutes to get the spot I always stopped at. To look at the view that felt like peace.

    But I could still feel the lost coming.

    I didn’t think the lost was possible here. I didn’t think that feeling of directionless was possible when you knew where you were going.

    I knew where I was going. And it was still there. 

    I had a feeling it would still be there Monday, when I walked into work and Thursday when I went out for drinks and next Saturday when I stared at the mountains again.

    I needed to make a decision. I needed to not be lost anymore.

    My backpack buzzed. 
    I shoved my hand in the pocket to find my phone knowing that when I pulled it out it would be Declan calling. As he had been, everyday since Wednesday.

    I couldn’t answer. I was letting the voicemails pile up. 

    They’d make me feel more lost.

    Not just from him but from our mutual friends, from his sister. 

    Everyone trying to help me not feel lost. 

    But it was too late.

    I put my backpack back on and retied my shoes to start the trek back to my car. 

    The tears were halfway down my face before I even realized I was crying.

    I was lost. 

    Every plan, every hope, every dream, every vision I had ever had.

    Gone.

    A life that was so entwined, now was missing a piece.

    And I was lost in the middle of my home.

    And I wanted to run. To run fast. To end up somewhere where no one knew me.

    To end up somewhere where lost wouldn’t feel so hard.

    I’ve heard stories of people getting lost in the woods, or the country, or being in a foreign place and not knowing the language.

    But this. Getting in lost when I was in the exact place I knew I was supposed to be?

    This isn’t something you tell a story about.

    I heard footsteps coming up the path towards me so I quickly wiped my eyes and prepared to give a smile and a wave as I crossed paths with whomever was in front of me.

    The minute I was out of hearing, the tears started falling again. 

    I made it to my car without anyone seeing me and as I pulled out of the parking lot I had the urge to turn left instead of right.

    All of my life I’ve always turned right. Whenever I have met a fork in the road, I choose the right path. The path that won’t cause me to get lost or lose my way.

    But, maybe I needed it. Maybe I needed to live in the lost.

    My autopilot found me in my driveway. 

    Home.

    Lost.

    My phone buzzed again. I knew it was him. I knew to get myself out of the lost I might need to get more lost.

    I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and reached for my phone.

    “Hey”.

  • Starting from scratch

    Starting from scratch

    I met a magical whimsy unicorn in October of 2012.

    Her name is Betsy Garmon. And she is absolutely wonderful. She’s one of those woman who makes the gritty look lovely. She turns the things that seem torn and broken in your life into art and hope and dreams.

    last day of the world race in december 2013

    I have learned and continue to learn so much from her. One of the life lessons I learned from her that keeps flashing in neon lights above my head these days is to hold space for myself.

    I’ve been told on more then one occasion over the last few months to have grace for myself, to not be so hard on myself, to take care of myself. 

    If we want to discuss broken records in my life this is one of them. 

    Here’s what it is: I know how to do it. I do. I know how to live well.

    I’m not sure though; if I know how to live intentionally. 

    A favorite quote of mine is by Mary Anne Radmacher. I saw the words for the first time summer after my junior year in college in a tourist shop in time square on a magnet. My choir was in New York to sing at Carnegie hall and it was my first technical week being the president of the choir. And I was terrified.


    I remember reading those words and thinking how lovely they sounded before even knowing what lovely was. I truly believe I wanted to do those things but didn’t have the means to do them.

    Now, I believe I have the means, but not the ability.

    My whole self is tired these days. I could potentially state that this is the most tired I have ever consistently been in my life.
    I’ve been trying to figure out why my receiver has been unable to receive lately. Well,more so than normal. It’s been a struggle. Nothing sticks. And I want them too, more than I can describe. I’ve searched for a reason my walls go up and I haven’t been able to find it.

    But what I keep coming back to is eventually if I can’t find a way to hold space for myself how will I continue to do it for others?

    We live in a weird world friends. A world that says to look out for yourself, but also tells us to cram as much as possible into our lives and to earn money so we can retire and do nothing. We live in a world that has for the most part lost the art of the kitchen table and breaking bread together.

    And if we aren’t going to slow down to eat our food how are we going to slow down to sit in space with ourself? And we aren’t going to do that, then how are we going to live fully alive?
    I know that I am not living fully alive these days. I can feel it in my bones. I’ve been a little terrified of the silence and of sitting with God and even sitting with some of my friends.

    I don’t like feeling like I don’t have it all together for everyone.

    And if I am being real and true, I don’t know if I know how to make these a daily practice. 

    I feel as if I am starting from scratch on the taking care of myself. 

    And that’s why I’ve wanted to say all these things I’ve said in the last few blogs I’ve written. The depression, the ugly, the hurt, the tired. 

    I’m coming to the realization that it’s ok to feel like I’ve already “done this”. Because I haven’t. It feels the same but it’s not.
    I don’t have answers, I barely have words. 

    But I’m choosing to say the ones I have.

    I’m choosing to do things that feel hard.

    I’m choosing to sit in silence even when it drives me nuts.

    I’m choosing my space.

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  • all the pieces.

    all the pieces.

    Tuesday morning when I went on lunch I had a text from a friend who challenges me in immense (good) ways. The text read: inside cover for new journal–all the pieces are beautiful.

    I grimaced. 

    Here’s the thing: last weekend I attended a conference (that I am about to not really talk about at all) but what I will say is that I had time and space and safety to sit in and push into some things that I’ve never really made time for or wanted to make time for.

    And the word that is probably the most scribbled through my journal after the 3 days?
    Ugly.

    All of it felt so very ugly, it felt gritty and dirty and something I didn’t want to be attached too. It felt off balance and off putting and if I am being honest the thoughts and realizations felt selfish and self entered.

    The complete and utter opposite of beautiful.

    I am a supreme advocate that every scrape, bruise and wound adds to the story. Something happened in your life and to get to the other side you had to walk through a thing and maybe got a little beat up in the way.

    But you got through. 

    And even if you are in the middle of something right now, if you try really, really hard you can maybe find even one thing that is the sunny day in the midst of the rain.

    I also believe that, that sunny day looks different for everyone. Everyone’s beauty and truth is different. Which, of course is what leads me back to myself grimacing at the statement “all the pieces are beautiful”. 

    There is a limit to the things in my life I deem beautiful, and I found said limit this weekend. 

    (I wish you could see how many times I have gone out of this document and tried to distract myself from writing these words.)

    It’s because of that, my need for distraction from my own words, that I know there is more to the story. If it was finished then it would be easy. When something is finished you see the beginning, the middle and the end. You see every part and you know where every path lead. But man, when you believe you already made it to the end of the path only to realize you are in the middle?

    Woof.

    I’ve been fighting the truth in my life that doesn’t seem true.

    One of my favorite movies of all time is “The American President” and at the very end of the movie when everything has gone awry and his girlfriend left and his popularity is down, the president makes a speech, a beautiful speech. You see through the whole movie he was silent. He said no comment a lot. So the opposition spoke for him. He ends that speech  with a declarative truth:

    “My name is Andrew Shepherd and I am the president.”

    The opposition speaks so much for us that we don’t even know what’s true even though is it true. Completely and utterly true. We have to speak it.

    I am relearning truths right now, because I’ve said no comment for so long. 

    So, My name is Meg Reeve and all of it, every piece, is beautiful. 

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  • Fact: it’s not 2009 

    Fact: it’s not 2009 

    I think part of the reason it’s been so hard for me to write the past few weeks is because my words feel incredibly familiar.If I am being completely and utterly honest–these words feel like 2009.

    And I don’t know what to do with that
    I’ve tried to make some strides. I’ve emailed mentors and (maybe) started looking for a therapist.

    I have tried to remember.

    I’ve tried to remember that I am different. 

    This season is different. 

    That I am not the same human as I was in 2009.

    I have lived since then.

    But that’s the thing about familiar grounds isn’t it?

    When we return to a familiar place it can suck all the new life out of us and place us right back where started from.

    Situations that reoccur are the same. 

    Whenever my mom goes into the hospital–it’s 2009 all over again and I am sitting on my bed in my old apartment. I’ve done that feeling more times then I want too. Or when July 7th hits. It doesn’t sting as bad anymore. It’s a dull, faint ache. But it’s there.

    And then there is when the emptiness hits. The empty before caused me to need drugs and therapy and to cry on the floor. The emptiness that caused me to not show up.
    Here’s the thing:

    This year has been a struggle and there are moments where it feels an awful lot like 2009.

    I have wanted to run. I have wanted to stay in bed and not show up.

    I have erased more words then I care to admit because they sounded ugly and devoid of hope and whiny. I have erased words out of fear that they will speak that I am back to that.

    When you’ve done what I have done, and gone through what I have it’s hard sometimes to admit that you need help. It’s hard to admit you’ve reached something rocky.

    Because it was already rocky and you already asked for help.

    I have cried a lot the past three weeks (read: I have cried a lot in 2016) I have felt crazy, unstable, inconsistent and a host of other things.

    But here’s a fact I know to be true: it’s not 2009. I have been through things. I have faced down giants that I stared at most of my life. I’ve gone around the world and I’ve felt things I didn’t even know were things.

    So, right now, I feel empty. I haven’t really known what to do. I have begun to hate the word fine. 
    But goodness, at the bottom of it all, the bottom of the tears and the confusion, at the bottom of the bevy of all of things I would like to do (run away, not be present), at the bottom is a beautifully tiled foundation that wasn’t there before.

    There is a moment from my second term in Spain that feels like a hug; a moment that is apart of that foundation. I was standing in the Mijouse living room amidst so many people and Andrew came up and put his arm around me and asked me how I was. 

    I said I was good.

    And I wasn’t lying. I was good. I was stressed and felt a lot of heavy feelings. 

    But I knew I was finally in a place where I could figure out how to live through the situation I was in.

    And then he looked me in the eye and repeated the question (which meant he was asking as a father). And I said I was ok, I was figuring it out, I would get through it and come out the other side.

    To which he replied, “Of course you are good babe, you have Christ inside of you”.

    I didn’t hear that as belittling. Because it wasn’t. 

    It wasn’t brushing my feelings or emotions under the rug. It’s wasn’t “faking it til I make it”. It was choosing to know that I would come out the other side. It was choosing to know that I had the tools and the people and the heart to move through it. It was choosing to know that doing dirty, messy soul work wouldn’t stop me from living.

    I have trouble sometimes ( a lot of the time) asking for help. I have trouble verbalizing in the midst of something. I have gotten better. I have learned and grown and expanded my emotional vocabulary.

    So when it feels like 2009. When it feels like a mishmash of emotions.

    When I feel like a burden for opening my mouth-I am still able to show up.

     I know that something doesn’t need to feel true to be true.

     I know (so much more of) who I am.

    I’m choosing to keep showing up for my life. I’m choosing to ask questions.

    I’m trying hard to have grace for myself and to rest. 

    I’m choosing to allow myself to cry.

    Because it’s not the same mountain. 

    There is a different horizon I’m looking upon.

    It’s not 2009.

    And there is so much more.

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  • a loss of lovely.

    a loss of lovely.

    I had a breakdown today.Lies were piling on from left and right and all I could see was a barren, dry, dusty road.

    I felt like all of a sudden I’d been tipped over and shaken up.

    My friend Glenalyn chose today to text me about a book about my soul.

    I ended up talking to her via text for an hour or two. It, of course, made me ever so thankful for this tribe I have found myself grafted into. It made me know that even when I feel the most alone, I am not that thing.

    But in that conversation I realized that there are two things that I’ve lost the ability to do.

    Somewhere, I believe in the last 8 months, I forgot how to tend to my soul.

    As I’ve come back to the hustle and bustle of working, of doing a job that has substance as opposed to one that was monotonous, as I’ve come back into community and church and having a social life I’ve lost my ability to soul care.

    I can tell someone else how to do so, I know what used to work for me. But now, everything falls flat. It’s like charging a phone that always has to be plugged in. It needs to be connected to the source at all times. 

    So, tonight when I told Glenalyn that I was going to doing something lovely before I went to bed I sat on my couch and opened my hands up and had no freaking idea what to do.

    I (feel as if) I’ve lost the loveliness in my life. I feel like it’s been trampled in and kicked while it was down. 

    And in a brutally honest moment I’ve realized tonight that I don’t know how to sit with Jesus especially where it just feels like nothing wants to settle down.

    I’ve been posting a lot of words that feel like that don’t have solutions, words that feel like fruit basket upset.

    Words that don’t feel like peace.

    And I know in my knower, in the depths of me, that I am ok. I know I am peace, I am lovely. I know the answer is tucked deep within me.

    And I know Jesus is here. Right now. On this couch with me, even when it seems I can’t look him in the eye. Or when I want to stand tall and carry my own burdens.

    That’s the best part of it–he knows me.

    And I know I won’t run.

    I’m not lost, I’m not on the wrong path.

    Even when I don’t feel it, I am that thing.

    And so are you, when you feel like you are grasping at straws, grasping for breath, grasping for wisps of peace, you are still who you are. Who you were created to be.

    You are lovely, even when it seems you can’t find it.

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  • why Spain ruined adulthood

    why Spain ruined adulthood

    I’ve gotten more then one comment about my emo-sounding Facebook statuses these days. Most of them have to do with being done with long weeks, and needing a drink.
    (2016 has been long)
    I don’t write them to get a reaction–it’s more like Facebook has become this weird time capsule of my life. And I really enjoy it.
    (And I also I like sarcasm.)

    I’ve been trying to find longer words and sentences to help explain the thoughts in my head. I’m much better at explaining them at my kitchen island or over group text. But when I try to long form these thoughts I hit a stalemate.

    So here goes nothing.

    Before I went on the world race in 2013, I had lived in Orange County essentially for about nine years. 

    The first four in college and then from 2007 to the fall of 2012, I lived and worked in the area. I babysat a lot, went on adventures with my friends, was involved in my church, paid rent & bills, went to therapy, cooked my own meals, did my own laundry. 

    What I am trying to say that before I went on my whirlwind two years of adventure, I had done the adult things. I had dealt with grown-up matters.

    And then I went around the world and also dealt with adult matters that a lot of adults don’t deal with: emotional health, spiritual health, border crossings and praying against witch craft. 

    But then? 

    Then I went to Spain.

    And if I am being honest it has screwed up being an adult.

    I found out that I have more control over who I am then I ever thought.

    I found out my presence changes things.

    I found out that there is more to me.

    I found out that I could change the colors of my flowers if I wanted.

    And now I’m back in the states. Settled. Working 40 hrs a week. Involved in church. Paying bills, doing laundry. Not cooking as much as I should. 

    But it’s different. Now, that I am settled and where I am going to be, I found myself living in this tension. 

    Now, I know there is more.

    And I’m not talking about more in the sense of “more out there”.

    (backpacking living ain’t for me.)

    Yes, I want to travel more and fill another passport. I want to go back to Spain and have a blue chair bocadillo and I want to see Samaritan Creation’s coffee shop and have Kay make me a Thai coffee.

    I mean, there is more for me here. There is more to sink my teeth into. But right now, I’m living in this tension. And it’s weird to describe. Because, I know, I am here for a reason, for a purpose, for a life. And I know that apart of that is what I am living and doing being right now. But there is something beyond the everyday. 

    The more is now and also later.

    (Both/and)

    Here’s the tension: if the more is now, how do we put the more into our daily lives? How do I take all the things I’ve learned and received, that I attempt to walk in daily and use them?

    How do I change the color of my flowers if no one else is?

    How do I become a person who reacts out of who I am not who the other person is when the person doesn’t give a damn?

    How do I fit the more into a 40 hr work week?

    Being an adult was so much easier when I didn’t know any of this.

    But I do, and I am grateful for the knowledge. I am grateful I have a voice and a mind and higher thoughts and the ability to live in this tension.

    I know I’m here.

    I know the more is now.

    And I know the more the future.

    I don’t have any answers.

    I’m figuring it out.

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  • Number 6 is for you

    I got my first tattoo (preschool) spring break of 2009- “remain in my love”. It was a reminder of where to remain. Literally, in the midst of all the chaos and crazy of that season of life, I needed to abide, to remain in his love. 

    October 2010 brought “restored”, it was a declaration not of what I thought I was, but what I was claiming to be. December 2011 brought awakened and a stepping into who I was and who I knew myself to be. 

    March 2012 brought “love.” a present after my accident, a reminder that I was and will always be (ironically even before I knew that fact). 

    And then April 2013, Brasov, Romania, brought “give me faith” (inside the infinity sign) as a reminder, while I was on a crazy whirlwind of an adventure, that everyday, continually for the rest of my life, I wanted more faith then I had the day before.
    I almost got a tattoo in Spain. Words that were very much in my heart and still are. But it just didn’t settle. (And if anything in life has to settle it’s what you are getting tattooing on your body).

    And so came “always”. Always is defined in Websters as: at all times, forever, in any event. 

    I don’t when I started using the word as a sign off or as something that described all the things, but I took to using it as a stamp of mine. It said I love you, I got your back, I’m in your corner.

    No matter what.
    And it’s for when I needed to remember the truth in the fact that God’s promises and truths and lovely over my life weren’t just still true, they are always true. If when they don’t feel like it.

    And lastly, but certainly not least a nod to one of my top three favorite lines ever written,

    “after all this time?

    —-Always.”
    So, yesterday, at the end of what felt like too many long weeks in a row, I got off an hour and a half earlier from work then I normally do, bought a bottle of water, (because all I had done all day is double fist coffee) and I went and got always.

    And man, just thinking about all the people with whom I share always makes me teary.

    This tattoo is dedicate to you. 

    To those from Kingsburg for whom I would seemingly move mountains. 

    To those in Orange County who have stuck with me through my wandering.

    To my RFK people who have caused me to feel more love at the times I didn’t even know I needed it. 

    To my best friend, ALWAYS. 

    To Melissa and our crazy friendship. 

    To my family, because you are my family, always. 

    To Katarina. 

    To the Gorbett’s. 

    To the fathers in my life who say “always” to me. 

    To the class of six.

     To my tribe made of humans as near as down the street and soon to be as far as India made up of people who traveled the world with me and those who I met along the way.  

    And of course, to the three women who got the first picture of this tattoo.

      
    Always.

  • You won’t win this round Washington.

    You won’t win this round Washington.

    I was writing an email to a couple friends today, it was an email I’ve tried to write at least three times in the last two weeks. I’ve done a lot of deleting and not saving drafts. And as I was typing I started talking about how California was never a battle. Like physically. Living in Orange County, in the environment, the air, the ocean, the sunshine.

    Sure my ten years in Orange County were filled with depression and sadness, death, broken friendships and tears. But I also did yoga, on the beach, while the sun went down. And Disneyland was my backyard. And I wore sandals most days. And nighttime beach trips after mojitos in Huntington. 

    I didn’t have to physically battle with the environment around me.

    So I came to a weird realization as I haphazardly threw words on a page. 

    Washington is beating me up. 

    The weather, the lack of sunshine, the fact that said sunshine isn’t super warm. 

    And then I got to thinking to the world race and the countries that physically were the hardest: Peru (both months), South Africa, Mozambique and (duh) Cambodia.

    Peru was dirty, all the time, and hot and sticky. But I can never get back the month spent in Trujillo with access to some of my favorite people all the time and I would have followed pastor Nestor all day and watched him interact with the people of Chincha. South Africa was cold and cold and cold and tiring and frustrating and sad, but when I walked out of the stable every morning I could see Table Mountain and I felt home. Mozambique it never stopped raining, everything was wet, cooking was an all day event, but the spirit of the Lord was there. 

    And Cambodia. Dirty, small eye, cellulitis, all the freakin things. But after a seemingly rough month in Thailand of team dynamics, I dare say the 112 was officially bonded for life over Cambodian princess pictures and also Cambodian small eye.

    So, what I can learn from all these experiences is when the environment is tough and dirty, and wet and you spend too much money on Clorox wipes, sublime chocolate, Maui onion & balsamic chips and ice cold pop, that when the environment is wanting you to run, that maybe just maybe you need to stick around for the view from the top.

    I remember when we were in Capetown and a group of us decided to spend one of our last days there climbing table mountain. Our contact said it wasn’t “too bad of a climb”.

    It was a staircase up the side of the hill.

    And I was maybe ten minutes and was the least physically capable person in the group and looked at the physical challenge facing me and wanted to throw in the towel. But the ladies wouldn’t have it. They wanted me to make it to the top with them.

    And it took me longer and more breaks, but I did it.

    And let me tell you–it is something I will never forget. 

      
    I will never forget that view, or the view of the rice fields in Cambodia, or the expanse of the land around the compound in Trujillo.

    All those times I just wanted to out my head down and run, or sink into myself (or not be in a tent in Mozambique during the rain). All of those environments, physically were everything I find it hard to exist in. They all tried too, and sometimes succeeding in their attempt to beat me up and push me out before I had the ability to get to the top to see the view.

    Those were really small seasons in life, 3-4 weeks tops. They are bookmarks in my story, a place where I have dogged eared the pages in order to remember and look back on.

    Washington though, is life and home for the near future. 

    And it’s doing everything it can to beat me up. 

    Telling me that I can’t wear flip flops and shorts. 

    Telling me that I can’t be who I am here. 

    Telling me that I can’t make it to the top of the mountain and find the goodness.

    Washington is trying to tell me I don’t fit.

    YOU KNOW WHAT WASHINGTON?

    If I ran from every place I didn’t feel like I fit in at I would be nowhere.

    I didn’t feel like I fit in Spain, or at Vanguard, or in Kingsburg. I didn’t feel like I fit on Team BA and I was their leader. I don’t feel like I fit or have a place at any of the churches I attended/worked.

    I have spent most of my life battling the environment around me and not feeling as if I fit in it.

    I just had another listen to my now over a year old prayer and prophecy from grad week from G42. And all of them are crazy scary accurate to my life. 

    The last two were spoken by two men whose words I hold in high regard. And as I heard them again I realized that they had truths I need for now.
    “But Meg, don’t diminish yourself or shrink back or hide to make the people around you feel comfortable but just unfurl yourself in the fullness of who you are and force them to catch up.”

    “Where she takes a safe place with her, not leaving a safe place, you are a safe place….. you are going back out as a safe place”

    Because, if I have learned anything from my years of traveling and being places where I didn’t feel as if I fit, it’s that at the end of the day I am still the same human, whether I am in the deserts of Peru or the rain of Washington or the sunshine of California. It’s taken me a lot to get to that place and (obviously) I’m still learning how to fully remember that when my brain feels spinny. 

    So that’s it. No solutions. Small epiphanies. Ugly truths.

    But one I thing I know for sure: if the cellulitis, small eye filled village in Cambodia didn’t cause me to give up on who I am?

    You don’t stand a chance Washington. 



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  • 10 things I know to be true.

    I started this blog as something very different. It was full of a lot of incomplete sentences and a lot of uncertainty about why I feel as if I am lacking the motivation to find more life. Why I feel unable to live my life from a place of fullness and feels like I am scraping the bottom of the barrel some days. 

    I don’t like speaking to the hopelessness of that. I don’t need to spend precious moments I have speaking to the empty. I need to find ways to make the empty full.

    SO.

    A couple weeks ago at the yellow house our small group watched this Ted talk (seriously, watch it) and then as we parted we gave the prompt of writing a list of “ten things I know to be true”. And I haven’t really sat in it. And it’s a lovely thing to think about. 

    So here is, without further ado, a list of ten things I know to be true at 10pm on Tuesday February 16th, 2016.

    My truth #1: My roommate is currently making two different varities of master crumble.

    My truth #2: When I don’t watch tv in bed I sleep better.

    My truth #3: My Aunt Ann’s cinnamon rolls are best served with butter and microwaved.

    My truth #4: I hear from God.

    My truth #5 Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the superior cereal of the cereal aisle.

    My truth #6: You should never return a Tupperware empty.

    My truth #7: I miss my friends and what used to be. 

    My truth #8: Tiny and not so-tiny-humans anywhere in this world above all need/want love. 

    My truth #9: I know the Istanbul airport probably better then any other airport I’ve ever set foot in. And also it’s probably the airport I’ve cried in the most.

    My truth #10: Pacey is far superior then Dawson. BECAUSE HE IS A MAN. (I’m at the end of season 3. #nospoilers)

    So there it is. It took me about fifteen minutes to come up with that list. And it was fun, and serious, and lighthearted and weird. It was fifteen minute to sit in something that I hadn’t before.

    I’m getting used to this whole Washington winter thing, I’m learning how to roll with this extremely full life I’m living.

    I’m learning I’m allowed to not be ok. 

    It doesn’t mean I’m bleeding out or failing at life or depressed.

    It just it what it is. 

    I’m still Meg. All of those the truths inside me are still true no matter how I feel. 

    My identity doesn’t change.

    I have to remind myself of that, that it doesn’t make me lower or less than to feel this way.

    I am who I am.

    I am me.

      

  • A mishmash on showing up

    A mishmash on showing up

    I have been writing a lot about showing up on my Facebook and via Instagram. Wanna know why?

    Because writing inspirational captions about why we need to show up each day is much easier then writing a 400 + word blog.

    Because it’s hard.

    I think I have been doing an ok job at showing up in daily life. I have good days and bad days and all those in between but for the most part I feel capable of walking into a situation and figuring out how to be present.

    I don’t like to write about things when I am in the middle of them or when I don’t have a response or when I don’t understand why this or that is happening. I am still figuring out fully why showing up is so hard for me to talk about.

    And today was definitely one of those days.

    But it’s near the end of today and I think I can fully and truly say that today it was not the greatest.

    Today was a day chalk full of memories and phone calls and pain. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I shed a few tears on my way to work. (I shed a few tears at work.)

    But I knew, that if I crawled into a hole, if I ignored everything, if I sunk into myself, it wouldn’t be fair to anyone around me. Because I chose to put on my big girl panties and jump into my life, so I was going to do it.

    That doesn’t mean it can’t be hard or I can’t have emotions or break. 

    Showing up isn’t about being perfect. Showing up is about being present in that moment, with those people, in that situation. It’s about being where you are.

    That’s something I have struggled with for a long time. Being present where I am. Not waiting for the next thing, or the next event but choosing today each day. I think that’s why this season of life has been difficult. There isn’t a next thing, or an event. 

    I am here.

    That’s it.

    So, today, after all was said and done, I knew I needed to write more then a caption or status. I needed to admit that it’s hard. That it’s a battle. And that showing up isn’t really a physical thing. It’s mental. Emotional. Bigger then just actually being there.

    Showing up is choosing to think of yourself and others at the same time.

    We show up for ourselves and then because we show up for ourselves we are more capable to show up for others.

    So, please. Don’t just physically be somewhere. Choose to BE there. It isn’t easy. We won’t always get it 100% right. But if we do it, daily, a change will come.

    Let’s bring change, shall we?

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