Tag: faith

I’m building a library

November 13th, 2024

The really interesting thing about most of my formative teen years being spent in a church is that I have this very weird viewpoint of when I look at something through the lens of the late 90s- Early 2000s church.

When I hear certain phrases and they take me back to a cheesy worship song, or a quote or something that was drilled into my brain again and again.

One of my best friends and soul sisters, Joanna, and I have been through a master class in letting go this year. It comes at us from every direction, at every angle, amidst newsletters, emails, on instagram, on sundays. The message over and over, again and again: we need to let go.

Sometimes the letting go is obvious. Letting go of comparison, or frustration, letting go of hurt or expectations. Sometimes the letting go is up in the clouds, things that feel not real but are usually more real than we’d care to admit. But, big or small, the letting go is never easy. Clinched fists and echos of things that feel like facts that make the letting go feel like it doesn’t need to happen.

The last sunday words I wrote were about un-gripping from hope and letting it do its magic. I’ve been in a bit of a daze about how to go about that.

Trying to figure out how to allow myself hope and light and joy.
Trying to figure out how to let hope in.

Like I said, Joanna and I have had billboards every week about letting go and today she sent me an instagram that contained the words “Let go to let in”. And to circle back to the beginning of these words I was automatically taken back to high school youth group, to people in college, to words in church telling me I just needed to surrender and all the good things would come flooding into my life.

Also, let’s cut the crap and realize that all those moments, “all the good things” was a man.

But, I’ve been doing this christian and church thing for almost 25 years and I can very much tell you becoming a Christian and “surrendering” doesn’t make gold fall from the sky.
Or lumberjack looking men show up behind you at a coffee shop and pick up the things that fell from your purse.

So, today, when I saw those words all I could think about was this: what do I want to let in?
Joanna’s four year old daughter, my sweet and sassy niece Leo, wiser than all the people who pray the demons out of places, simply says this: if it’s good, let it come in.

And those words make me wonder-all those times in high school youth group and through college and small groups and everything in between; did I ever know what I actually wanted to come in.
We all have our lists. Our things we want and need. Our ideal partners, the best job, a house.
A Beauty and the beast library with a ladder.
But what about the abstract?

What about the words that live up in the clouds. The words that make you stand taller, walk with confidence. Speak with the ability to know you can back it all up.
How do you let all that in?

How do you move past a faith that always told you that the good things God brought were tangible and physical, into one that you know, which is a faith where the good things are simple, and not so simple, just you letting go and letting in to become who you were meant to be?

I think it’s so funny how everything in our life has to be a tangible. The house, the job, the man, the library with a ladder.
But what about letting in the things that make you realize that the house, the job, the man, the library with a ladder don’t actually matter.

What about letting in the fact that the minute you decided screw waiting for a wedding gift and you were going to buy your own damn kitchen aide; you had two in a week.
What about letting in that what you bring to the table isn’t something you hold in your hands.
It’s just who you are.

I know that I come across as a confident, know what I’m about, bad ass bitch.
That’s what I bring to the table.
But damn, sometimes letting that all in is really hard when it feels like the table is covered in the magazine clippings of all the reasons I am not any of it.

This past year has honestly been as if someone took the previous years of my life and just handed me the bookmarks of what has been and said: ok let’s try that again.
Again and again.

So, tonight, I’m saying outwardly, to the universe, to whatever is listening: I’m choosing to allow the good in. I’m choosing to allow myself to bring hope, light, joy and peace to the table.
I don’t have to hold it in my hands.
I just am.

So I’m gonna let that in.
I’m not going to feel shame or guilt about not feeling enough because the “tangible things” aren’t coming.
I’m going to continue to let go to let in.

(and honestly, I’m gonna build my own damn library)
With love,
Meg
reconstructing faith

May 21st, 2024

I’ve ebbed and flowed in my faith so much in the last 10-11 years. After the World Race my life was in a tailspin. I didn’t know what way was up and I wasn’t sure what the point of the previous year of my life had been.

I had been sold this notion that following the “calling of God” was going to bring me to an answer, to a level of contentment in the midst. That it would bring me to wholeness.

All it brought me was sadness, confusion and one of the deeper lonely times I had ever encountered. I felt so, so lost and it was incredibly hard to explain that to people who assumed I had just had the best year of my life. Which the year had been beautiful and amazing- but there was also a lot of hard things.

I went to Spain and picked up some pieces, I found some footing I had lost and then I moved to Bellingham. It was in the beginning of my time in Bellingham that I wrote a piece for a website and realized that all of the things I had caused me to want to wash my hands of all the things that were faith had nothing to actually do with God.

They had to do with the way people manipulated words and phrases and ideology, they had to do with religion and law and everything in between.

Today I came to the realization that somewhere along the way my deconstruction turned to reconstruction.

I’ve worked really hard in this process of letting go of the things I don’t need, of taking the things apart to see how the work or how they started in my life in regards to faith, and of not throwing everything away because the water it lived in got murky.

It felt really important to me to not throw it all out.

I couldn’t throw it all out.

There are a few moments in my life that I can only affix to God. And in all honesty it’s those moments that anchor me and caused me to deconstruct this house I built over the span of 20+ years down to only its foundation- because the foundation made sense.

But now, it’s time to put some things back together.

And I know it doesn’t look like that on the outside. I never truly stopped going to church, but I’ve taken breaks and had seasons and spans where I don’t feel connected. It probably looks as if I never did any construction- because my deconstructing doesn’t look like someone else’s.

But part of my deconstructing was choosing to believe that this foundation I stood on was still stable enough to rebuild. And choosing to believe that those moments affixed to God would still be there even if I decided to never set foot in a church again.

And it was actively understanding that the shame I felt when it all fell apart wasn’t from God. It wasn’t some enemy or a spirit or anything intangible.

It was the people who decided what church and men and women in the church should look like.

It was the house they built that made you feel crazy- with doors that led to nowhere even though they told you the door led somewhere.

It’s the institution that told me I was never enough, never whole enough or holy enough or did enough.

I still have a very hard time going back into spaces that are like all of the spaces that told me those things. I have a hard time coming to grasp with words that have been used so wrong I forgot how to read them how they should be read.

What I’ve realized though is the spaces that need my voice and viewpoint the most are most likely the spaces where I know the language needs to change.

The places where I inwardly gag are the places that I need to help make good and real again.

All I want for anyone who interacts with me, is to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are loved. That what they have other people need.

And if all those people never set foot in a church; who cares.

If they know someone loves them, and that some believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone believes that they have things to give the world- that’s what matters to me.

If all I am is a picture that not all people go to church are judgmental and uncaring- that’s what matters to me.

That’s why I’m choosing to rebuild again.

It’s not to save anyone, it’s not to evangelize, it’s not shame anyone for not doing it.

It’s just to rebuild myself and my faith with the things I want to keep. It’s changing the narrative and the words and the tone.

It’s being a home for others when they need it.

A safe space.

And it’s recreating the things that brought me to the deconstruction and it’s making them be safe again as well.

So, I’ll just be here, still really hating women’s ministries, all religious language and anything that feels even an ounce like shame.

I’m rebuilding again.

With love,

Meg
To the RFK 2023 family

July 2nd, 2023

To my wacky, shenanigan-filled, wonderful Royal Family,

I’ve started this letter a couple times in the last 24 hours. My brain is still full of emotions, exhaustion and now that we’re back down the mountain all the real life stress has flooded back in and it feels like I’m incapable of articulating what camp was.

While I was sitting in church today I reread the letter I wrote from last year- about how it felt as if we were walking among ruins. Personally and corporately. We hadn’t been to Pinecrest in two years and to be completely honest looking back, last year feels a bit like a fever dream.

We are definitely still rebuilding on the ruins this year- we’ve slowly seen what needs to be kept and restored and what maybe needs to get tossed and started anew with.

Telling Bible stories this year felt like I was always one moment away from losing the kids-whether or not that was true- and I was clinging on to the hope that whatever I was saying would get through to the kids.

This year felt like whatever hope I’d been clinging onto for the time leading to camp, finally got released from my clinched fist to maybe, just maybe, be helpful to someone around me.

There was so much laughter this year up that mountain, a lot of homesickness from the kids, a lot of late night conversations, a blender and a toaster oven, a lot of baggage we all brought up that we wished we didn’t have too, there was a lot of holes we didn’t see last year that maybe became slightly more gaping this year (my royal family note is much longer than it was before of things I need to do next year) and there was a lot of freely giving out of love and hope that I don’t know if we all had enough for ourselves.

Before I came to camp, spiritually, I felt like I needed to fit into a dress two sizes smaller and only had ten days to do it.

But God.

He reminded me he was already there- that he would go before us, that he would cover us- no matter our levels of exhaustion or emptiness.

That he would do it for the kids.

And He did, through us, in spite of.

I had this image earlier of everyone at camp wandering around with a clenched fist. And whatever we were holding was not able to be contained in our palms- but we were so afraid that if we let it go, we would have nothing left.

Each of us had a moment where we let what was in our fist go.

It might have been hope or strength, it could have been love or patience or peace.

Whatever it was- at some point- we let it go to give it the kids.

But, I do keep coming back to hope.

So, right now, in this moment, I’m asking to God to fill us each up in supernatural, beautiful ways with hope over the next year.

And not just hope for others- not just hope to give away, but hope for our daily lives, for ourselves.

So much hope that we no longer have clenched fist.

Hope that we have the ability to keep rebuilding on the ruins.

Hope in the process of whatever restoration needs to happen in our lives.

And hope that we can use, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to keep moving forward.

I’m proud of us as I am every year.

I’m proud of how we show up, how we push through, how we eat iceberg lettuce at lunch and dinner.

I’m proud of how we leave things behind and how we pick up things on behalf of the kids around us.

I’m proud of how we do things out of our comfort zone for the kids.

And this year, I’m proud of how we give what we held in our clinched fist.

With so much love in my heart for all you beautiful people and this needed reminder; “Everything you’ve lost; Love’s returning”,

Miss Meg
faith is not ikea furniture

February 21st, 2021

I’m currently working on a fiction story.

I’ve been working on it since 2014 when my faith and the church around me felt like it was crumbling.

I had just come home from the World Race which was this intense year of life where I pushed through things that I probably shouldn’t have just pushed through. I was carrying stories in my backpack that I didn’t need to be carrying.

I didn’t know how to start processing through the things I was carrying. I didn’t know what I felt.

All I knew is that my faith felt broken and I needed to figure out what to do about that.

So, I started writing.

My story begins with the end. It begins with the main character Vera, walking away from the church. Filling up boxes and moving away from a life that she had always lived because she realized that all it had done was hurt her.

She packed things up though because she wasn’t throwing everything away. She knew that there were parts of her that had been made with that life that she didn’t want to get rid of. She wasn’t going to throw the baby out with the bath water, but she was going to for sure change the water.

I wrote that story more throughout my time in Spain and over the years I’ve revisited it here and there.

This past three weeks I’ve worked on it every single day.

And it’s been bringing up stuff that I didn’t realize I held onto.

Here’s the bottom line: I didn’t realize the depths of my church/religious trauma.

Because this is the thing about writing fiction (at least for me); the story comes from the places deep inside that need to be made sense of. They come from the places that are twisty and the only way in which I can untwist them is to put them outside of myself and start writing.

Then, like the lights that you put on your Christmas tree, they slowly start to become a string of lights and not a tangled mess.

And you begin to see what lights are out from the last Christmas, places where the garland wouldn’t untangle or even maybe remnants of last year’s tree.

You can’t discover those things unless you sufficiently detangle the lights.

Sometimes you don’t realize something is broken until you put it next to something that isn’t broken.

Sometimes you don’t realize something hurt you until you start talking about it in a fictional sense and realize that you feel deeper about it.

When the storytelling begins to not be storytelling anymore.

I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do with the stories I have that feel heavy or who I might need to talk to.

I know I have situations and people from my past that I need to let go of. I know there are people I need to write letters to that I will never send.

I know that there are spaces where I was told to be quiet and I was and I still am.

There are things that I believed to be true, that aren’t.

There are words that have shamed me into believing I wasn’t enough that are all the way from when I was a teenager in high school youth group.

Or moments where they sat high schoolers in a room and had them watch a terrfying movie about “the rapture” so we lived in fear of not living up to a standard that was even there.

There are farfetched relationship ideals that I don’t believe I can ever reach too.

There are intense shameful parameters around sex that have warped my brain.

There has been church leadership that never supported me and told me to just listen to God.

Spiritual “authorities” that told me my depression was sinful and that I didn’t trust enough.

Men who told me I shouldn’t speak, or that I didn’t hear from God and that I should just stay in women’s ministry or children’s ministry.

And sometimes these things make me angry. Not all the time, just sometimes and in very specific instances.

But I’m choosing, as I chose for my main character, to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I just need fresh water.

Because there are things that I want to keep and hold.

And things I just don’t need anymore.

So Vera and I are walking this together. When I write out a scene I go back later and meet with it.

I see if we have anything in common. I see if it hits me between the eyes. And if it does? I sit with it. If it doesn’t? I still sit with it because it came from somewhere.

So that’s where I am today. I wrote this at the end of watching church from couch and I currently have worship music playing and it isn’t causing a reaction within me.

Do I still ferociously scroll past jesus tiktok? Yes. Do I swipe away from men who talk about ‘Jesus’ in their dating profile?

Also yes.

My faith has dramatically changed since Meghan the high schooler who sang on the worship team and went to youth group every Sunday night and went on mission trips to Mexico on spring break, and attending Christian concerts and music festivals.

I’ve been on mission trips to 13 countries and attending a Christian university, I’ve worked at three churches at one time.

And even though parts of those things hurt me and changed pieces of me in ways I might not get back, there are moments that I don’t want to give away either.

The beautiful thing about something breaking is that when you put it back together again you can choose different.

You can choose to see the pieces in a different way and create something new.

Faith is not a piece of Ikea furniture.

You can get creative.

So, this is where I live now. Continuing to write a fiction story that is helping me unearth and replant things, that’s help me to clean up and see the beauty in certain places.

Emptying my head of the Christmas lights to find out which are broken and deciding which strands can be fixed and which need to be tossed.

If you’re on this journey and need to throw all the lights out and start fresh- do it. If you need to be like me and replace the broken bulbs with new ones- do it.

There isn’t a science to building up what was broken.

Once again; faith is not a piece of Ikea furniture.

Be creative and kind to yourself.

With love,

Meg
a late april easter

April 21st, 2019

My faith has been elastic the last few years.
It has stretched out to fit big truths that need to be held and it has been scrunched down to fend off words that don’t need to be kept.
I believe that there has been times where it has broken and torn and then stitched back together to try again.
My faith has for all purposes, changed and I’ve been given a fresh perspective on what it looks like.
I know it seems incredibly stereotypical of me to write about Jesus on Easter but, the Jesus I’m going to talk about is one I’ve found never in a place Jesus “should” be.

I’ve been finding Jesus at bars or parties, I’ve been finding Jesus in my anger and confusion and loneliness.
I’ve been finding Jesus in my mess, my literal mess in my room.
I’ve been finding Jesus in moments eating taquitos and in text conversations with my roommate.
I’ve been finding Jesus in people who would never deem themselves people with Jesus.

A little over a year ago I wrote a blog at a bar entitled “In the midst of it all” where I talked about being unsure in my faith. And in this last year I have gone to church less than I ever have and I think in doing so I’ve made space to find Jesus in places I didn’t think I could or ever would.
I’ve always been an advocate for choosing to see the good in everything everywhere. Of choosing to see the holy, the lovely and the Christ in everyone and everything.
Sometimes, that’s easier to me without the lenses of the church. I’ve always gone to church out of habit, out of requirement- not that anyone ever told me I had too, but I just thought I was supposed too.
And this year I felt the freedom to step back when I needed too and to take a breath when I needed too and to step back in when I needed too. And to choose to go when I didn’t want to but truly felt I should.

And it changed something inside of me.

I believe I changed in a way where I became capable of loving more, and loving with less borders and also giving more boundaries to my love out of protection of my own self.
I think of this on Easter for many reasons.
To me, this year, Easter is a reminder to keep going. To keep moving forward.
To keep living.
To keep choosing to see love in people and don’t be held up by walls.
To see people who they are.
To see people with eyes that aren’t full of hate but of hope.
To me Easter is a reminder to keep seeing people.
I have a bracelet on my wrist that I bought for my baeby sharks. The inside of it has in scripted “keep fucking going”.
I know that seems aggressive for words on Easter.
But, shouldn’t we all be doing just that?
I don’t know what you believe or don’t believe. I don’t know what you’ve been hurt by or who you’ve been hurt by. I don’t know if you feel like you belong or feel like you’re just out of the frame of the picture.

But, what I want you to know today is this:

Easter is a lot of things. It’s a day where dead things came to life. It’s a day where it was declared the last word has not been spoken.
It’s a day that’s signed with love.
BUT it’s also a day of newness and day to remind ourselves that we can stand up and keep moving forward.
Today, on this day, in this moment, you can keep moving forward. You can take a breath and choose to see what is lovely and good and hopeful around you.
It might be Jesus to you and it might not.
Find the good, the moments, find the hope in what isn’t hopeful and keep moving forward.
I think I’m still in the midst of it all. I think that I still have places where I’m coming from the middle and looking down into to it to see what’s happening but that’s ok. That’s more than ok.

It’s good.

With love,

Meg
words about my ever-changing faith

October 21st, 2018

Six years ago I was returning home from training camp for the world race.

World race training camp 2012

It’s funny because at that point my world had been turned upside down multiple times and at training camp it was turned upside down again.

I didn’t know a lot about God then even though I’d been a Christian for 14 years at that point and went to a Christian university.

But it seems that the more “Christian” things I’ve been apart of the more changes I’ve seen happen in myself in regards to my faith and identity.

I don’t think anything I’ve been a part of is bad: It hasn’t in any way, shape or form caused me to want to not believe God or run from the faith I have.

If anything what it’s done is cause me to settle even more into finding who I am outside of the church and christianity. It’s been more about finding who God says I am by the life experiences and interactions I have in daily life.

It’s more about finding out who I am not, through the life experiences and interactions I have in daily life.

When I came home from the world race I was a wreck. Well, I became a wreck about a couple months later. Then, I went to Spain and it was better.

And then I came to Bellingham and the wrecking ball came again.

It’s not even that I have doubted more, because I’ve definitely had times that I’ve doubted more than the last three years.

I think, that my faith and my life, since doing all these “Christian things” has been more about the realization that God, faith, all of those things are so much bigger than people give them credit for.

I don’t make decisions based on my faith, or the fact that I’m a Christian, or my conscious or whatever else you may call it.

I make decisions based on who I am.

And who I am changes. Not because I’m reinventing myself but because I am learning more about myself each day.

Yep folks, each day.

So it makes sense that my faith would turn and grow and change.

I want to take the shame out of reframing your mind. Letting your faith be shaken, walking away for a moment to figure something out.

I know not everyone agrees with me on that.

But, walking away from something doesn’t mean you are running away.

Sometimes, walking away is the only way to guarantee that you are going to stay.

Today, in church, I realized that I have some pillars in my life that hold up the makeshift house of my faith that aren’t necessarily super sturdy.

In non-Christian verbiage, I realized today, that there are pieces of myself, pieces of my identity that I think are major parts of myself that actually aren’t.

I realized today that my identity isn’t based on my faith. And the more I learn about myself, the more I realize that my faith doesn’t make me who I am.

I think my faith allows me to look at things through a different lens just as any set of beliefs would.

My faith does add to who I am, but it’s not the only thing.

And it’s ok if it changes and evolves.

You aren’t less of a human if your mind changes, if you find out more information, if something doesn’t settle with you.

You aren’t less of a human if you allow yourself to grow.

My faith has grown, been stretched, fallen away, come back again and evolved over the past 10 years immensely.

I think in this time in our world it’s more important than ever to listen to what’s happening around you. Listening to your faith, or spirit or whatever and know that we can’t change anything if we don’t allowing ourselves to change.

And know that it’s ok to change.

As humans we grow and change and collect more data every day.

But, even in that and with that I will always be me.

And you, my friend, will always be you.
Figuring out the silence

July 16th, 2017

I don’t think I talk about my faith a lot. I think I try to live it, I try to let what I do speak for who I am. I try to be kind, try to treat people how I would want to be treated. I try, to the best of my ability to make good life choices that reflect who I am, not who others are.
And today, in church, everything felt electrifyingly silent.

This silence isn’t new to me.

A couple years ago I wrote a piece for a now inactive online journal about my faith becoming broken and sitting in silence.

“It was a weird silence.

Like Jesus, playing the part of the creeper in a horror movie, when just after the power goes out, calls your house so you can hear him breathe and then when the police track the phone call you find that the call is coming from inside the house.

Jesus was apparently in the house still.”

Normally, I write in an effort to untangle something. I write to figure out how to get to homebase.

Right now I am writing to remind myself that I do have Christ inside me.

I think that, for a while now, I’ve forgotten that.

I know the words to say, I have full confidence in my ability to access my faith and my spirit.

But, I’ve lost something.

Recently, I had a situation occur in my life that knocked a lot of faith and grace out of me. I’m realizing how much it effected me as an individual, as a Christian, as a human who tries to extend grace and love to those around me on a daily basis. I’m realizing now, how much it broke off a part of me and caused me, subconsciously, to want to step away from those parts of my life.

It has caused me to question the foundational things of my life. Those things that cause me to love and be kind are still in me, but activating them and using them has taken more effort.

I didn’t realize that it was causing me to question my faith and feel tangible silence, because I was stepped on in a way that I don’t believe I have ever been stepped on.

Back in 2014 while I was in Spain, I had an instance where Kellen, someone who was an adamant speaker of truth and life and hard realities in my life, told me during a stressful, somewhat overwhelming portion of my six months that “I was the leader and I needed to love them through their shit”.

I think that’s what I’ve done since then in different aspects of my life.

And about a month ago I text him to yell at him because I felt like I’d been kicked in the face because of it.

When I started writing today, this isn’t where I was meaning to meander. I just wanted to figure out what was blocking me, what was causing the world to feel shockingly silent.

And over the course of these 500 words or so, I’ve realized that I’m feeling more broken and hurt than I gave myself grace for.

I’ve realized that a new wall was formed and my actions and the way I love people, albeit probably not as much as I feel, has changed.

My whole heart isn’t in it.

But, in that regard, it pushes me on, to know that I am capable of big love.

My need to protect, to be wary, shows that it is still there.

You don’t protect something a castle if there isn’t anything inside.

And the silence I’ve felt isn’t bad.

It’s space-giving.

I guess, what I want to say, at the end of this is that even when it seems like something natural for me, loving people and being kind and giving grace is a choice for me.

Actively. Every day.

Part of it is tied to my faith in Christ, part of it is just inside.

But it’s still a choice.

And that’s ok.

I believe I will get those pieces of me back.

I believe that I will continue to choose love and grace and kindness even if I need a moment to make those decisions.

It’s who I am.

Please, give yourself space to feel. Space to figure things out.

Space to be.

Deep breath to the toes friends.