Category: Honest

why Spain ruined adulthood

March 20th, 2016

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.
You won’t win this round Washington.

February 27th, 2016

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.
An open letter to who the hell knows.

January 25th, 2016

Dear human,

I’m sorry that when we met for coffee, facetimed or talked on the phone it seemed as if I was biting my tongue while you spoke. You talked about where you wanted to be or who you wanted to be, or you processed through a lie you’d been battling.

I want you to know that I heard you. I understand that the thing you feel, the lie that haunts you or the goals you wish to achieve feel weighty and insurmountable to defeat or achieve. I want you to know that I believe in you. I believe you can achieve that thing, you can defeat that lie and grab onto that truth.

I’m sorry if it looks like I want to shake you or if my voice starts to raise.

(I’m sorry if I quote the mindy project too much)

But I need you to know that I BELIEVE IN YOU.

I need you to know that you are already that thing.

I guess I bite my tongue for this reason:

I can’t believe for you. I can slam my hand on a table, or look you in the eye and tell you that you are already the thing, the truth, the person.

You don’t have to wait to become anything. You are already the fullness.

You are already free.

You just have to decide. To choose. To believe.

And I know that’s MUCH easier said then done. When the days are long, and tiring, when the lies pile up, when the failures feel like huge and the victories feel small, it’s hard to know that you are still the fullness of the person that you are.

Because it doesn’t feel like it.

But we don’t need to “feel” like ourselves.

We are ourselves. All the time. No matter what.

(This is as much for me as it for you.)

Everyone time I tell you that you are already the fullness of yourself I’m saying it to myself at the same time.

When I look at you I see the full picture of who you are. I see your wisdom, your truth, your hope, your abilities and gifts all on display around you. I see them like an old video game where you just have to grab the icon to power up.

I believe you can grab the icon and power up.

So to you I say; shame off, guilt off, striving off.

Choose to know today that you don’t need to figure everything out first. You are fully the human you were meant to be today.

Take a step in those shoes and see what happens.

You are already the thing. So get to it.

With love,

Me.
I met shame in 6th grade

January 10th, 2016

My roommate has a now infamous grad teaching she did in Spain. –well, infamous in the yellow house.

She talked about decisions, not having a bad day, living above the fog.

When I feel like a bad human, I give it a relisten. When I am leaning less on my ice cold brain and more on my ping-ponging red hot heart. It doesn’t happen a lot these days. It’s actually harder for me now to give grace to my emotions then ever before.

I stop my emotional output more often then not because I choose to believe that I am not ruled by how I feel and others should not have to deal with that.

I thought I was a horrible human last week. I was tired, grumpy, lazy. All the things. I couldn’t look at God. So, in church today hike everyone around me was singing the words “your praise will ever be on my lips”, shame came.

It overwhelmed me.

I’m one of the first to speak shame off of someone, it’s like I have a tiny shame alarm that pings when someone is speaking shame over themselves. I actually never thought I dealt with shame as a big theme. A lot of other heavy, messy words–but not shame.

I’m reading “Scary Close” right now. It’s shocking to me how many statements hit home. But, it was the brief chapter on shame that nestled into my being to be saved for later.
Like I said, I felt like a horrible human last week. I broke down twice- once in my bosses office and then with my roommate. And on Saturday I had a grumpy hangover–this feeling where all the joy has been taken out of your world and you no longer no how to exist in said world (no drinking involved). I was beating myself up about my lack of humanness. I couldn’t even sit with myself.

Then I read the chapter on shame.

Donald Miller talked about doing an exercise in which he pinpointed the moment shame stepped into his life and oddly enough I thought his moment might be similar to mine. But no heart-tug, nothing jumped out at me. But I didn’t go any deeper. I shut the book and moved on to Netflix.

So, when shame walked in this morning and weaseled his way next to me, it shocked me that all of a sudden I remembered where he came from.

I was in sixth grade when shame sauntered into my life.

Sixth grade was the year the girls got mean.

I remember this specific morning that I got to school and plopped my backpack down by my class and walked over to the middle of the yard to find my friends.

I looked all around for them. In the corner of the play hard I saw a wall of kids all standing in a line and looking forward laughing and avoiding eye contact with me. I would come to find out they were doing that to hide all the girls I was looking for. They were crouched down and hiding from me. They were giggling and laughing.

They didn’t want me to see them.

All the reasons flooded into my being. I talked funny, I was too fat, I wasn’t enough.

I was too much. I didn’t cry, I just laughed it off and walked away, tears bringing at my eyes.

I made a new friend that day: shame.

He now wheedles his way into a lot of places.
When I feel not enough, or too much, or like I am being too sensitive.

Last week I felt all those things. Felt like a failure. Inadequate, not enough.

Left behind.

And because of that, shame snuck into my house over the last 5 days. He took out his paint and painted the walls a disgusting green.

So all the things, the words, the actions, all the everything that I felt I was doing to counteract the bad days got colored in shame.

The emotions, the venting, the deep breaths were now ways I was communicating to myself I was not enough. That I was inadequate.

So now, I am sitting here with all these thoughts and realizations and have no clue what to do with them. I have no way to tie up this blog in a neat package.

And that’s ok.

I’m not going to dwell on the not knowing and I’m going to (try) not to beat myself up.

And I’m going to remember that I am a good human even when I have what seems like 100 reasons that I’m not.

Because it changes things, when you realize how shame first walked in the door.
…and so I will stand

August 23rd, 2015

I’ve started three different blogs today all around the theme of being in Bellingham for 6 weeks, all about the loveliness that surrounds me and the lessons that I’m learning and walking in.

But before I write that blog there is apparently something I need to get off my chest, something that sneaks up on me here and there and lately it’s been trying to steal from me and cause me to question truth around me.

There is something I just need to say:

Anxiety is a bitch.

It creeps up on me in the weirdest of moments and decides that it is allowed to make home here.

But to that anxiety I would like to say this:

Hell no!

I think we all have things, certain feelings, certain skeletons that are long since dead and buried that try to come up above ground and live normally with us.

They sneak in the backdoor and hide in a crevice around the corner and just wait. They wait for that singular moment to sneak up on you and jump in.

And sometimes you don’t even notice.

Tonight I was struck with anxiety sitting at a restaurant with friends and it began to bubble up. It grew like a weed, really fast because I just didn’t notice it.

We were having some spirit-filled conversation and the anxiety inside me started to react to it, started to push against it and all I wanted to do was run. I wanted to get out of that restaurant as fast as I possibly could.

I wanted to get in the coziest of clothes and get as far away from people as I could.

But I knew that’s not what I needed.

I needed to stand my ground.

That’s what it was.

In the moment that I wanted to hide in my room I realized that I just needed to stand my freaking ground and reclaim my headspace and my heart space and remember that I have the ability to do that.

I can easily allow anxiety to have control over my emotion. I can allow it to cause me to spiral into the oblivion, to cry and to surrender to the chaos and confusion that I feel in my head.

Sometimes it is actually there. And when it is I do have to deal with it.

But tonight the moment I gave a “hell no” to the mess inside it began to subside and ease up.

When I stomped my feet and stood my ground physically the knot inside began to untwist.

My life isn’t easy-breezy right now.

I am working hard and jumping into community.

I have lessons I’m being taught and truths I’m being reminded of.

But I am also learning that I have the power to move mountains inside me and today as I told the anxiety inside me to go to hell I’m realizing that I can indeed to that.

So this is my encouragement, my challenge and my reminder: stomp your feet, stand your ground and remember that the person with the power to fight hardest is yourself. Your words to yourself are just needed as your words to others.

And the other part of that is this: surround yourself with good people. Because they will give you the courage to stomp your feet and stand your ground.

So I guess this blog does speak of the loveliness of this place because I am surrounded by truth, kingdom and love and I have the roaring voice inside me to yell back at what comes at me.

I have people around me on a daily basis that walk in who they are and because of that I am able to stand in who I am.

This community empowers me more then I can describe.

And man, is it lovely.
a life message at 30

August 2nd, 2015

I have realized over the last 6 months or so that I am developing words and phrases that are turning into what I can only classify as “life messages”. It was a concept I didn’t really know about until Spain, until I met men and women who have certain words and phrases that touch their hearts.
I think at 30 I am more then allowed to claim things as apart of my heart and as apart of something that I will always speak on or know.
One of those things is the concept and what I deem the lifestyle of borrowing trust.

Now, before I get into this I am want to be clear and say this: if you know in your knower in the deepest part of you that your trust or even your borrowed trust cannot be given then don’t do it. You know you know.

What is borrowed trust?

Have you ever been in a situation where you were sent somewhere or to someone by someone that you trust and you had to choose in that moment to trust that place or person before you had time to deem it trustworthy? You just knew that you couldn’t give your own trust time to develop and you just chose to dive in?

That’s borrowing trust whether you knew it or not. That was taking the trust of the person that sent you- the trust that they had in the person or place and claiming it as your own.

The concept and theme of borrowed trust is very important in my life.

At first I thought it was something that I first encountered going on the world race. Because I chose outright to trust the Garmon’s and Tiff, Kelly & Joshua with who I was because I had chosen to trust AIM and since AIM trusted those people then I could trust them too.

And then somewhere down the line I gave AIM that borrowed trust back because I had my own.

But I realized that going to therapy was very much about borrowing trust. My therapist was a preschool dad. He was someone somewhat well known and I had to choose to trust him from minute one.

I didn’t have the capacity to do so.

There were people I knew that trusted him. It was a spread out kind of trust but I was able to collect enough of it to hold onto until I had my own.

In a way borrowed trust is like the blankets and toys my little kiddos in my classroom have. They are a small reminder of home. They are a reminder of mom and dad. A reminder that mom and dad left them there and loved them and trusted us. So, even if it takes a moment for the kiddos to trust me, something in their blankie reminds them that their parents trust me.

And eventually the blanket gets lost in the shuffle.

Borrowed trust is important because it gives us the chance to live before we think we might be ready too.

Borrowed trust reminds us that we already trust something.

I don’t think I could have come to Bellingham without borrowed trust.

I had to believe that these people and this place was for me.

I had to trust that when I made this jump I wouldn’t get too bruised.

There are a good handful people in my life who trust this place and this people. They are people who I first trusted on a hell of lot of borrowed trust that I have since given back and replaced with my own.

And because of them and what they have done and who they are in my life I trust this place.

We need to find trust as much as we build it. We need to choose to connect people with trust from others.

You can’t borrow trust if you don’t trust in the first place.

Let’s choose to clear out the bad examples in our lives and replace them with piggy banks of trust that we can take and use.

It will not only change your life but I guarantee it will cause you to move in ways you never deemed possible.
untitled honesty on friendship

March 28th, 2015

I was the kid in junior high that sat by herself and read a book at lunch and I was completely fine with that.

I had friends that I hung out with in high school, girls who were in the same AP classes as me and my after school time was taken up in the little theater rehearsing for whatever play was going on at the time. The people I still keep in touch with are those ones, the ones who I spent hours at a time with painting sets and rehearsing lines.

I moved away for college and made friends there. I chose to be a little more outgoing. I was in choir so I was plopped right into a group of 50 women who I wandered southern California with on weekends. I lived with 3 other women who I laughed, danced and with whom I made seemingly bad decisions.

What I am trying to say is I have always HAD friends.

The last two years have been community on high. I participated in an 11 month mission trip where day in and day out I was with the same people. Then I went to a 6 month leadership academy in Spain where I lived in a house with other interns and sat around a dinner table every night.

And it was those moments, those ones where I had to live in these communities where I realized something about most of the friendships I’ve had in my life:

I don’t always 100% believe that I am someone’s first choice. That I would be anyone’s first phone call. And because of that I hold friends at an arms length. I don’t expect anything from people.

There is a small group of people who I do believe, now, that I am the first choice.

But I don’t go into most friendships believing that. I don’t go into friendships believing that I me, in who I am, is enough. That I don’t need to do some tricks to get someone to like me.

And isn’t it that feeling that makes us post the pretty, filtered pictured on instagram, or edit statuses until they are just perfect explaining the best of our days?

I’m not saying to post depressing things or “my life is the worst” statuses like when were teenagers and had instant message and would make roses out of an @ sign.

What I am saying is we need to stop believing that we have to wrap ourselves in pretty pink paper. Something Shauna Niequist says in her book Bittersweet hits home for me.

“I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go.”

That’s how I’ve felt a lot of my life. That I wasn’t enough. That I didn’t merit the first phone call. That I’m not a first choice.

And that is a sucky way to live.

We need to choose not to live that way. This isn’t about comparison or something that someone else is doing. This is me, and my perception about other’s action.

And the knowledge that I am not going to be everyone’s first choice, but I am on a handful of people’s speed dials.

It comes down to the realization that I don’t need to be liked by everyone. It comes down to being myself and knowing that as long as I am that it is enough.

We need to stop believing that we need to be something other than who we are. It’s something I’m obviously still working out and walking through and figuring out what to do when the lies hit.

And thankful, I have those friends to remind me who I am when I forget.
Foreshadowing

March 10th, 2015

“God is a novelist. He uses all sorts of literary devices: alliteration, assonance, rhyme, synecdoche, onomatopoeia. But of all of these, His favorite is foreshadowing.And that is what God was doing at the Cloisters and with Eudora Welty. He was foreshadowing. He was laying traps, leaving clues, clues I could have seen had I been perceptive enough.” Lauren F. Winner (girl meets god)

I marked foreshadowing in my AP language novels in high school with pink highlighter. Finding foreshadowing and figure out where it was, is one of my favorite past times.

I’m a literary nerd. Deal with it.

I love calling things in TV shows and movies. I think I’m pretty good at doing it. Seeing what a character says to realize a key plot point it going to occur or more often than not someone is either going to die/come back to life.

In my years of Bible classes and theology studies I’ve found that there is beautiful foreshadowing all over scripture.

God wants us to know what is going to happen. He spells it out. He shows us that the whole time He has a plan. He is going to see it through.

It’s not about searching for the answers or using it like a magic 8 ball. It’s about asking the right questions and figuring out why He tells us certain stories or asks us to learn certain lessons.

I’ve recently come to the huge revelation that Christ was always there; he was ALWAYS in me. It was never about me ACCEPTING him into my heart or “opening the door” to let Him in~ it was about realizing that He was always there. He was infiltrating parts of my life already. God was, is and will always be in my life.

I need to continue to see the foreshadowing of Christ in my life. The foreshadowing of the moment that I would fully realize that He was there. That He was always there. Where He had highlighted in pink in my life story so that maybe one day I could realize and see that He was always with me; even when I wasn’t with him.

It brings my peace now. It brings me hope for myself in ways I can’t really describe. And it shows His protection in places where I needed it and now I realize it was always there.

It shows me that my heart has always been focused on his heart even when I wasn’t defining it by the parameters of Christ.

The good in this world isn’t waiting for Christ to come. The good in this world IS Christ. Even when it isn’t defined by His name.
RIP rearview smolder

January 22nd, 2015

I’ve gotten really good at celebrating “the last time”. I think it’s because I have lived a life (especially the last couple years) where I have HAD to celebrate those milestones in order to give closure to short chunks of seasons in my life.

I can tell you about the last optional chicken sandwich Friday in Malaysia with the 112 or the last time Veracity ate breakfast at Ana’s table in Ecuador.

I can tell you about the last time I took a bucket shower or hand washed my clothes (both in Cambodia).

The last coffee I had from Maria’s or the last time I watched the sun come up over the Mediterranean.

I can even tell you about the last time I sang together with the Vanguard Women’s Chorus. And that was almost ten years ago.

I love celebrating last times. Closing chapters, turning pages. Making an end. Telling people what they mean to me and telling them thank you.

And that’s how I know how it ends.

But what if you don’t know something is the last time?

Like, for instance, I didn’t know that the last time I took the bus to Fuengeriola and the hot bus driver was our driver (his name is Miguel) that it would be the last time I got a little rearview smolder.

Or that the last time I went to Starbucks with Joe would be the last time I ever went to Starbucks with Joe. And I didn’t know the next time I would see his face would be on a program for his funeral.

It’s crazy when you hit this moment and look back and realize that something was the last time and you didn’t get a chance to treat it like that.

The past three weeks I’ve been working at the preschool. I’ve had a lot of amazing conversations, gotten to hug the necks of a lot of moms whom I adore, and gotten to see how their adorable kiddos have grown. It was a whirlwind as I’d only been home from Spain for 2 weeks when I started.

There was all the normal questions, “What are you doing next” “Where have you been?” “Are you staying?” and of course “Can you babysit?”.

But the one question I got from close friends and people whom I trust was this: “Are you going to go see Sam?”

Sam (whose name ISN’T Sam, I just changed it) was my therapist. I saw Sam regularly from February 2009 to December 2012. I sat on the couch in his office week in and week out. I didn’t cry much, but I did fight a lot of battles in that tiny room. He walked me through a lot of hell, and when it comes down to it was probably one of the first men I ever allowed myself to place trust.

When I got home from the World Race I freaked out. I had a slight panic attack seeing all of the things that had changed. My world had shifted and moved and I didn’t know how to deal. So I grasped at the one thing in that space that I knew to grasp.

I made an appointment to see Sam.

Did I really need to see him?

Probably yes. I needed something to ground me. And for 4 years that space and that place had grounded me. And it did help; momentarily. It reminded me of where I had come from.

When I got back from Spain, I assumed a little bit that I might need to go see him. That I would need that affirmation or even need to tell him I was good.

To tell him I TRUSTED.

But as more and more people would ask if I was going to I realized I was ok.

More then ok actually.

I knew what to grasp at.

I KNOW what to grasp at. And it isn’t even like I’m having to consistently grasp. I’m more or less just steady. But when I do need to grasp; I know where to go.

When I happened upon that revelation, that I didn’t need to see him I had another revelation. The last time I saw him was the last time I would sit on that couch. The last time I would sit slightly anxious with a pillow in my lap.

And since I didn’t know it was the last time: I have never told him thank you.

And though he may never ever read this I just have to say:

Thank you.

Thank you for helping me walk through some of the most treacherous four years of my life. Thank you for talking me off of a ledge metaphorically and literally. Thank you for helping me laugh through tears and helping me realizing what my story actually meant. Thank you for being the beginning steps for me to show up to my life.

And thank you for following up my email with a phone call back in February 2009.

We don’t always know when something is the last time. And that’s ok. I’m not saying to live every moment like it’s your last because then honestly we get into this crazy, sometimes irresponsible mindset. But I am saying this:

Write. Document. Know. Make MEMORIES.

Show up to your life.

You will never have to live in regret or wishing you hadn’t done or said something. You can find ways to say them or you can know in some way you already did.
wash & dry in under 2 hours

January 14th, 2015

The appliance I have come to most appreciate after all of my time overseas is the dryer.

Not the stove, or the fridge but the dryer.

(though the stove and fridge fall quick in line behind)

Today, at the lovely home I am staying at, I knew that I needed to do laundry. I’m almost at the bottom of the barrel of underwear which is honestly my key deciding factor in doing laundry.

So this afternoon as I was pulling clothes out and deciding what to wash the thought occurred to me, “Oh wait, I need to wear these jeans tonight so I can’t wash them.”

My mind went on autopilot and already started calculating how many days it would take my clothes to dry. It calculated how long it would take my clothes to catch up to me.

But of course, I’m not international anymore.

I don’t have to leave my clothes hanging upstairs, or be fearful it’s going to rain. “Lavanderia” no longer has to be one of the first words I learn in a foreign country.

Because, next to the washer, in the garage is of course a dryer. My load of clothes was washed and dried in under two hours.

I didn’t have to wait for my clothes to catch up to me. Didn’t have to pretend those clothes don’t exist for one or two days because they are stuck in the purgatory off the drying rack.

I think that in this world of therapy (of which I am an advocate of) and processing (of which I get the concept///hate the word) we sometimes forget that we don’t have to wait for lessons to catch up to us. We forget that we don’t have to pretend that we don’t “get it” yet and we can just live it.

Sometimes we can just put something new on and be done with it.

I think I’ve been timid the last couple of weeks to allow myself to just step into what I have learned and done. Almost like I took all of the clothes I got in Spain and set them out to dry instead of popping them into the dryer and putting them right back on.

There is a time to let truths sink in, and there is a time to repeat them so they are true.

But why don’t we wear them through that process?

Why don’t we choose to believe that we don’t have to catch up to something that was so truly already inside of us?

I got off to a shaky start here in the OC.

I got a lot of lies spit at me. I didn’t believe them. I put them aside, but also thought I had to find my footing when I really didn’t.

I was told I had to process.

I didn’t need too.

I was choosing to believe I couldn’t just pull my big girl pants out of my suitcase and put them on and live. I’ve had a hard time communicating that beyond text messages and stream of consciousness emails.

I thought United States Meg had to catch up to Spain Meg.

But they are the same people.

I no longer have to let my clothes air dry and catch up to me a few days later.

So I guess my challenge to you today is this:

If you’ve had revelation or truth spoken at you; if you’ve come to the realization that something you’ve known all your life is a lie?

Walk in it.

Claim it.

It doesn’t have to be something you hang up on the clothesline to dry so you can put it back on again.

Pop it in the dryer and wear it.

It’s for you.

Today.