I’ve sat here for an hour and half and deleted words, closed documents, switched over to reading books and now I’m back again.
The image that keeps coming into my brain tonight are all the people who moved through the night to see the baby Jesus. Now, I know historically, it wasn’t during December, who knows if it was cold; but all I can see is their breath on the air as the moved through the night to get to the manger.
Their breath moving in front of them, as they walked to meet the baby that would change everything.
And all I can think of our the words I wrote when my mom passed. That even though we were devastated she was gone, she was finally able to breathe again.
I think for the last three years I haven’t been breathing.
I mean I have obviously, been breathing. I’ve been living, moving forward, making choices, trudging through sickness, maneuvering through grief.
But, I’ve realized, that this holiday season I just want to breathe.
It sounds so simple, so cliche’.
People say they want to have breathing room, have space to breathe. That they just need to take a breath.
To me breath is more than space and room.
It’s being alive in a different way than I used to be.
One of the collection of words I deleted simply stated that I feel like I’ve failed this year.
But, really, I think I’ve just been holding my breath in hopes that it would make a difference. That when I came up for air there would be clarity.
And now, this span of time of holidays, I just want to breathe. I want to take deep breathes to my toes.
I know these words don’t feel very holiday. They feel stilted and tired.
These words need to breathe.
So that’s where I am this Sunday before Christmas.
Usually that isn’t the case. I might not like the word, but I see the good things that come from it and I can understand.
Not this year.
On Sunday, I was sitting in church and I was like “ok god, let’s be done. Let’s wrap this one up like a bow.”
And he said “nah, I’m good.”
Because, again, I have to keep going.
And no matter what that’s going to be the case. I’m always going to keep meeting places I’ve been before.
Again and again.
I thought this year would have more answers than it has. I thought maybe it would hold something.
And really, it has held a lot.
It’s still held more than I can even comprehend I know.
Usually, at this point in the year I feel like we’re starting to coast to the finish line.
Like I have a grasp and I start to understand what the baton in the relay race is going to look like.
But, right now, I can’t even see the baton. I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know if I’m even still moving towards the finish line.
It kind of feels like I’m playing Mario kart with the Steiners and I’m just choosing to go off course because it’s easier.
This year has honestly made me feel like I don’t know who I am at all.
And has made me feel like I know exactly who I am at the same time.
Because I knew this year, each thing I met, I had met before. I knew that each moment where I felt like I was walking through fire, I had walked through it before.
I had done it before so I can do it again.
And because of all of that; I stopped seeing that as a threat.
When I think about the labyrinth and how Sarah, the main character, is utilizing the book she has that is the story of the labyrinth to get through she must feel as if she’s been there before. She knew the book so well that it must have felt a bit like she had been there before.
And there were places in the maze she went to again and again.
She was caught in the place of either moving forward and or allowing herself to “rest” in a place that at one point in the journey been safe.
But the journey moved her forward.
The journey has kept moving me forward.
The things I’ve had to unearth even in just the last stretch of time that have been a reminder to me that my worth is not based on what I do.
That I’m not the glue, even when it feels like if I allow myself to let go control it will all crumble.
It causes me to sit on a street corner in Brasov, Romania across from Betsy Garmon as she leans in to tell me, remind me, implore me that I don’t have to be the glue.
It’s almost as if, I’m still making my way toward the Goblin King.
I haven’t had the chance to tell him he has no power over me.
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
I am not ready for whatever comes at the end of these words.
As I’ve said; again and again, I write to untangle.
I start at the beginning with words, or a phrase or a reference to the labyrinth or something Hannah Brencher wrote or something my pastor said in church (or honestly just during the work week) that pissed me off because I had to agree with it with gritted teeth.
And then I write.
Currently I feel that if I begin to untangle I might lose it all.
I feel, as if I am hanging onto my sanity with an absolute death grip.
That means, for today, it’s Hannah Brencher.
She does a series of notes for every month and there is always one or two that I latch onto.
For lovely words and truth; @ Hannah Brencher
I know that I know that I know I’m supposed to be letting go.
I can physically feel how tightly wound I am, how I’m still terrified at giving hope a chance.
Because if I can’t control it; who will.
(I know I’m freaking digging a deep hole with these words for my week but here we are).
Truthfully, I haven’t been eating really. I haven’t been sleeping.
I’ve been in survival mode for longer than I care to admit.
The bags under my eyes have their own bags and no amount of concealer can help.
(I also know none of this will be surprising to my best friend).
October was rough with ghosts and dates and memories of what once was. Then during nap time at work the day before Halloween, a text that friend had suddenly passed surprised and shocked me, shook me up.
Solidifying to me that nothing good ever happens in octobers.
I realized this morning standing in the cafe at my church that I am legitimately still terrified to hope that good things will happen.
(To me.)
And that controlling the hurt I encounter will make it hurt less.
I haven’t been feeling very brave lately. Or strong.
Or capable.
These words aren’t meant to strike pity or empathy.
They are literally just truth for me to begin to untangle whatever all this is from my clenched fists.
I think (I know) I’ve fallen back onto a pattern in which doing will get me out of being.
When I had to get taken care for a month last year, it was damn hard for me. Even amidst all that I was going through, I was still writing the menus for work, typing out notes for each and every day I was gone even though it physically made me ill to look at my phone.
When it feels like I’ve come so far from this place of doing as a personality trait I’ve realized it’s deeper and deeper.
That month of dizziness and being unable to move was the hardest month I’ve maybe ever had because if I can’t do then what am I.
So, today, I stare at my clenched fist.
I don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t know what I need to un-grip from.
I just know it’s there.
All the things amidst the grief, the pain, the things that don’t feel like hope but actually are.
And I know; none of this feels good.
The words would make my mom call me. Would cause people to feel like I’m worse off than I am.
But you know what; I’m still here.
And I’m choosing these words because right now in this world, this place we need to know that there are other people moving forward with us in the midst.
I never want to be a person who brings others into her distress, grief or pain.
I want you to know that amidst all of that you can live, you can have laughter and joy.
You can support people and make ordering McDonald’s on DoorDash something you do for the plot.
You can still have joy.
Amidst all this I may not have hope but you damn well better believe I have joy.
We have less than 60 days left in this year.
My word for the year was _______ again.
There are so many things I’ve had to do this year; again and again.
And damn it, I think I’m supposed to learn through these last two months of this year to hope again.
To believe that beautiful, bold, unattainably feeling things can happen for me.
Love, grace, bright spots of color.
I don’t know what else I need to un-grip from, but I do know that I’m supposed to un-grip my aggressive hold on hope and let it do its magic.
I’m making myself try. I’m sitting here, out in the world, deciding that I can be capabale of putting words on a page. I can be capable of finding something to talk about, something in me can untangle and I can keep trying to figure out the wisps of phrases in my brain. A few weeks ago at church I kept having the image of kids in a pool spinning the water in circles. Making a whirpool and going as fast as they could to get the water to whip them around so fast. I remember doing that as a kid and it was always so fun. But, as I thought about it that day I was struck with the fact that the water was moving. The water moves even in stillness. The kids in the image in my head amped up the movement. The spinning of the water moved things around, brought things to the surface and shook things up. But, even without the spinning the water moved. I have felt, without a doubt, like still water lately. I know that I’m still moving. I know that there is movement in the places that feel stuck. I know there is movement in the places where I feel right out of the water. It’s just damn hard. I’m a little petrified right now of the water getting spun around quickly. Because, I’ve felt like all that’s come up is the grit and the leaves and the lost pool toys long forgotten. I’m a little bit scared because it always seems nothing good comes from the stirring.
I saw a therapist for about 3.5 years. I ebbed with how much I saw him but it was always at least twice a month and for some seasons every week. I was always so anxious heading into a session. It felt like I never knew what was going to come to the surface and I wasn’t ever fully prepared for it. Things always stirred to the surface and it felt as if they were never pretty. Because the things that settle on the bottom usually aren’t the good things. I’m sitting here trying to scan my brain for any example, anything that gives me an example of something bringing good things to the surface when they are stirred.
I know that you stir things to keep them from burning, you stir them to mix flavors or to combine ingredients. Staring at my computer though; I’m unwillingly to step into something that might stir the depths on my inside.
Have you ever known in your depths that you needed to leap, you needed to step outside of what was and you needed to let go of a little control? Like, you just had to trust that there was something to catch you? I don’t feel on the precipice of a big life change at least outwardly. But I do feel like I have a death grip on the thing that’s trying to create a whirlpool inside of me and I’m just refusing to unclench my fist.
I believe we are in an interesting span of time. I think we’re just beginning to fully grasp the depths of ourselves and we’re beginning to grasp our abilities to see beyond who the world may sees us as. We just have to choose to believe that we’re up to the challenge of figuring out all that we are. We have to choose to unclench our fist and let the whirpool bring the good we don’t yet believe it can.
I’m afraid right now. I’m afraid of the straw that may break the camel’s back, I’m afraid of the other shoe dropping. I’m afraid of the wizard being found behind the curtain.
But, I’m also afraid if I don’t unclench my fist now I might never find my way back home to myself again.
So, I’m going to do some things that might cause stirring. I’m going to let people in to places I’ve forced to be still and I’m going to speak words that create movement.
It’s been a really hard place for me to be in. A place where I feel incapable of communicating or saying what I mean, or feel. I’m a writer who has spent most of her life using words that come out of my brain as a place to land. I’ve discovered more than I can even explain via my own writing. I’ve untangled, I’ve stared at words on the screen that I had no clue where they came from but just knew that they were true and real.
I’ve found the end of the rope through my words on more occasions than I can even count.
I’ve found hope in between the lines of my own writing because at the end of the day, when I write it, I know that it’s there. When I write something I know that there is something more in me, something I can grab on too.
Something that is more real than the things that feel dark.
But right now, there is none of that.
It feels like I’m standing in a hole and I have all the pieces to something that will help me out of the hole, but it’s a piece of Ikea furniture and I have no instruction and I don’t have that damn little tool to help me build it.
The only way out of the hole is to build it.
But, instead of building it, I’ve just sat there, not trying because right now it’s easier to stay in the hole than get hurt by the fall again.
Three years ago today I wrote that I was starting to not be afraid of the other shoe dropping.
And then a month later my mom died.
Now, I’m sitting here in this bar, writing these words feeling like I’m just throwing a pity party.
Because I know I’m strong enough to get out of the damn hole.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how my high school youth pastor used to talk about how it was better to be a Christian whose fire was completely out than a lukewarm Christian. I remember, like most things from high school youth group, feeling so incredibly ashamed of that. I remember thinking that I just had to stay “on fire”. I had to do all the things I needed to do. I had to show up, be everything. I needed to sing on the worship team, and go to every bible study.
I couldn’t let the fire die because than I would be less than.
But here I am over 20 years outside of high school youth group and I would like to call bullshit on my youth pastor.
I would much rather have some dying embers of faith than feel as if a wet towel had smothered all the flames.
At the beginning of this I said that I haven’t been able to write; that isn’t completely true. I have been writing.
The words have just all felt completely and utterly devoid of hope.
Which, I know isn’t true.
Because choosing to write is choosing to believe in the hope that there is something at the end of the words.
Choosing to write is choosing to believe I might be able to be a little stronger than I was before I started writing.
Choosing to write is choosing to believe even though I feel incapable of it; I’m still someone who has the ability to stir hope and light.
So, that’s it. That’s me right now.
I guess, that at the end of it all, I’m here with my hands open, being a little more honest than I want.
I feel absolutely unsettled by all of these words and normally that unsettledness would push me to not post them, to shut my computer, maybe to even delete them, but instead I’m choosing for a moment to lean in to the things that don’t feel settled in hopes that the action might help them settle.
I probably should save all these words for myself, but something inside me says even though they are bitter, ugly truths, sometimes we need those.
I probably shouldn’t have sat on my couch reading in the silence while the room around me turned dark.
I probably shouldn’t have made the decision to sit on my kitchen floor and stare at my laptop as if it’s holding a piece of me like a scratcher ticket with a truth about myself I’m not capable of bringing to the surface.
I probably shouldn’t have tears in my eyes from not having said anything.
Lately I feel like all the ghosts of my life are hanging around. All the words people have said to me, the actions that showed I was insignificant.
All the times I wasn’t chosen.
They’ve all been here.
And the only thing I’ve been able to do is shut them out. Plug my ears and run.
I found things and ways to shake them off, to numb whatever they are.
Almost a year ago I got diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. My face stopped working, my body stopped working, and I was so undeniably lost.
The only thing that kept me moving were the people who were in my corner. The only thing that truly kept me going forward was their belief and love for me.
Since August 20th I’ve been dealing with this thing, this inability to feel normal that has drug up all the ghosts that live in my past.
When I was really young I wrote a card to my Grandma Reeve, my Kansas Grandma. The one I never really saw. I remember in the card telling her that I wasn’t normal. I never felt normal as a kid. I was a loner, I was overweight, wore glasses and had a funny sounding voice that people couldn’t understand and made fun of.
She proceeding to write me back saying she didn’t want a normal grandchild and that she loved me how I was.
But, each time I got made fun of, each time someone responded to me trying to talk with a “wawawawa” like they couldn’t understand me. I would fade away again.
It was easier for me to be silent.
When I was in second grade I will never forget my teacher telling my mom that they needed to figure out my voice. That I would never get anywhere with it.
It was easier for me to be silent.
That’s been a voice that’s come back in full force this year.
It’s easier for me to be silent.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m stubborn and I’ve not been silent. I’ve yelled back in the face of the thing that tells me I should be silent and for the most part, to the best of my ability shown up.
But, tonight sitting on this kitchen floor, I’m realizing how much those ghosts have reappeared in more ways than I can even compute.
And for every time I’ve shown up, there is another where I’ve stepped away with the feeling that it’s easier for me to be silent.
When my world spun last year for 3 weeks I didn’t know if I’d ever find balance again, in all honesty, I don’t know if I have.
I don’t want to write these next words because I know they aren’t true. I do know that- but I think I need to face them on a screen: I don’t know if it isn’t easier if I’m silent.
I don’t know if I’m strong enough anymore to be stubborn enough to push the lies down.
This past year has been harder than I have even had the words to communicate. And even with all reassurance that people don’t notice what my face is doing: I do. I feel at a loss, off balance and unable to be who I am in ways I know how.
I spent the last 10 years building a confidence in myself that I hadn’t ever had before.
I started to know who I was, what I was about and I liked myself for it.
But then it was like the world played a uno reverse on me and suddenly I was going backwards.
And all I see are the ghosts of the things that used to haunt me.
So, tonight sitting on my kitchen floor I’m going to tell those ghosts that I see them.
They won’t have space to follow me anymore.
And even though I don’t fully believe those words: I have to say them anyway.
This is usually where I’d tag a note, something to say hey we’re here. We’re together.
But I think sometimes, we have to get rid of the ghosties by ourselves.
In the last couple months I’ve started more blogs and more pieces of words than I care to admit.
I’ve absolutely written the things that I deem safe sans one collection of words back in June.
Ever since those words I’ve been afraid that anything I write about the dark things I feel would negate the words I wrote then, the things I know to be true. The light I know I am.
That me speaking of the things that have been hard would negate the things I know to be true.
I have had a lot of beautiful, sparkly moments this summer. Moments with friends where I belly laugh and sitting in the sun and enjoying every moment.
But, then there have been more moments than I can count that feel like depths I haven’t been to in awhile.
And that is really damn scary to say.
I’ve written in spaces that say I’ve moved past them but in reality the mornings I’ve been awake til 2 or 3 am and the days at work I’ve survived on 3-4 hours of sleep are more then I would care to admit.
When I was at camp and had spent an evening on the absolute verge of a panic attack and I admitted to it Susan one of our directors-she asked if I had a mantra, something to say that grounded me in the moments where I felt like I could keep my breath or my head out of the darkness.
I didn’t. But I came up with one.
I am here.
It’s a play off of the words of Hannah Brencher “be where your feet are”
My feet are here.
I am here.
Then there is this:
My word of the year this year is again.
And I’ve had to work really damn hard to not tack the word on the sentence: it’s 2009, again.
Because that’s honestly all that’s been in my brain. The recesses of my brain that hold dates and memories and pain just keep telling me that I must not be strong enough since I’m here, again.
I want you to know human being reading this that I know, in my absolute knower, that it’s not true.
I know I’m stronger, bolder, and so many things in between.
I know.
But, good god, I never want anyone to feel less than if they feel as if they’ve met the pages they’ve been in the book before.
Something a Nigerian med student told me in a small village on the border of Russia in Ukraine (it’s just a fun sentence I had to say) was that he was never going back to Nigeria. He wasn’t the same so he couldn’t go back, he was going forward to Nigeria.
I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like I’m going back.
I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that the strength I have will be diminished if I admit I’ve met some mountains that have to be climbed that just so happen to look foothills I’ve climbed before.
I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that people will think I’m a fraud that can’t just get over it.
I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like 2009 and I don’t want to live through that again.
But, when I silence myself I can’t get to the end of the sentence.
When I silence myself, you don’t have the space to get to the end of the sentence in your book,
The end of the sentence is this: it feels like 2009 again, but it’s not.
And if we don’t get to the “but” we can’t negate everything that came before it.
It feels like 2009 again, but I’m stronger.
It feels like 2009 again, but I’ve rebuilt and I will again.
It feels like 2009 again, but I am Meg in 2024.
I don’t know how you are silencing yourself.
I don’t know if you won’t let yourself get to the “but” that negates the thing that scares you that comes before it.
To get to the overcoming we have to get to the “but” in the sentence.
We have to change our language and our outlook.
I don’t know if you feel up for sharing the end of your sentence and if you do please drop it in the comments or shoot me a message.
Here’s mine (sorry for the language):
It feels like 2009 again but, for fucks sake I’m still here.
I joked last night that I’m someone who is always going to circle back to the Labyrinth. It usually happens without me even noticing it as I write and then bam David Bowie has found his way into another one of my blogs.
And it seems lately all the words I’ve been writing are scarier than I like to deal with.
Today at church I desperately wanted to run. I felt myself wanting to not show up, to bow out and everything in between. I stayed knowing that normally my desire to run is actually the sign I should stay.
But, as I sat during worship and wrote I once again found myself replaying a scene from the labyrinth. When the main character Sarah at the end of the movie is trying to get her baby brother back finally from the Goblin King. She’s done all the tasks and she’s made it through the Labyrinth and now the Goblin king is toying with her and moving about and she keeps having to move her neck and change positions and try to keep finding him.
She can’t remember the final line of the story and I believe that he thinks he’s bested her.
But she takes a breath and realization fills her face and she says the final words of the story “you have no power over me”.
Normally that’s the place I get too but I realized today in church that I’m currently right before the moment of realization. I’m in a place where it feels like my mind is blank and I have no idea what the words that should come out of my mouth are.
I know that I know them but I can’t piece them together.
I’m a strong human. I’ve always been stronger than I give myself credit for. And today while walking to find a place to clear the cobwebs I had a little conversation with myself about strength.
Sarah in the Labyrinth didn’t realize what strength she had. She didn’t get that her whimsiness and her ability to see beyond what was, was actually strength. That those things and walking in who she was is what got her through the maze.
She was the only one who could have done that journey. And it wasn’t the bad things in her life that made her strong. It wasn’t the things that she went through that were her strength.
It was the things that she chose to keep and protect in spite of what was that were always her strength.
As I was walking here I was thinking about all the worship songs and sermons and what not I’ve heard in my life that strength can only be found in God. That in him my weakness becomes strength.
But what if all the things we thought “made us strong” were just the things that cover up where our real strength is. Where it actually lies.
It’s funny how there are lies and things that have been whispered in our brain for so long start to turn into our own voice.
Sarah was always told to grow up. To stop imagining. Her parents saw it as weakness, but instead it became what saved her. Her ability to dream and imagine.
The thing I hear in my own voice now, as much as I’ve tried to get it away from me is that I am a burden, too much and that I have to be an island.
It’s scary how quickly those things can flood my mind.
But, today pondering Sarah I wonder what strengths those are covering.
I pride myself in my ability to keep fucking going even when I’ve been absolutely inundated with grief and pain and health issues. Even when I can’t smile, I’ve kept moving.
And that’s what I’ve claimed as my strength.
But what if is covering up true strength?
Here’s the deal: there is a lot of evangelical statements that I’m 100% not ok with. But, I think that there are times where we forget we are all uniquely made and equipped; however you believe people came into existence- we are all unique. We all have strengths that have been in us since we were born- it’s just up to us to allow ourselves to find them.
I won’t mince words: my mental health has never bounced back since my mom passed. It was a pummeling of burnout and grief and now for almost a year dealing with this facial paralysis and unsteadiness. I’ve had some of my more scarier lows of my life in the last 5 months.
But, like Sarah, my strength isn’t what it seems.
My strength isn’t my ability to show up, or keep moving forward.
Those are all the reactions of things that have happened to me, that have been done to me, that I’ve had to deal with. I have made them strengths out of survival but they aren’t actually where my strength lies.
The things that have happened to us don’t make us who we are.
I don’t know right now if I’m ready to look at the goblin king and say “you have no power over me”. Right now, I don’t know if I believe it.
I do know this though: I will no longer give the darkness that has shadowed my life the credit for how strong I am. I’m going to choose to find the things that are actually my strengths, not the reactions to the dark things.
I was strong before them, not because of them.
Like I said a while back: when David killed Goliath, he didn’t prove it by carrying his head around.
He was the proof.
But he had the strength in him before he killed him, not just after.
The strength didn’t come from the overcoming. The overcoming came from the strength.
The strength was already there.
Right now, everything in my life feels like it’s covering the strength I need.
I don’t know how to distinguish between what I need to keep or what I don’t need to keep
I do know, it feels like I’m holding a key to a treasure box. Something that’s been covered for so long because I didn’t think it was there,
I thought I could only make diamonds from pressure- not that I contained them from the start.
So here is where I am this week, staring at the Goblin King as I await the words I need to find the strength that was there even before the journey.
I don’t know if you need the reminder that you already had the strength built in you like I did today.
To my beautiful, probably still heat exhausted Royal Family,
Somewhere between sitting on the floor of Redwood singing Lux Aeterna at 1am, leading another round of “Miss Meg says” and crying from laughter in the dark with Susan, Tyler, Priscilla, Vanessa and Beth I realized that there was no way I could have actually been prepared for camp this year.
And I think that’s why the only thing I could hear from God the weeks prior to camp was “just show up”.
All we could do was show up because I know for me, for a lot of us, we had so many things we had to choose to leave at the door. We had to choose to toss some things down the mountain and disconnect because that was the only way we would be able to move forward.
We had to choose to believe God was already there; ahead of us, behind us and walking in the midst of us.
I was a little overwhelmed leading communion on Monday night. I felt the weight of whatever was to come. As we waited to see the campers that might not make it, as we tried to get as prepared as we could.
And again I heard “just show up”.
We showed up in chapel and in the hot sun. We showed up at the pool and we ate so the kids would eat even though it was too hot to eat.
The deans and staff counselors and directors showed up with the amount of steps they took running along side kids. They showed up for the counselors by making sure they were finding ways to meet their own needs. (I think my annual Susan makes me cry by asking me how I was occurred on Friday).
You all showed up for me by doing one more round of miss meg says and encouraging your kids to listen. You also all showed up for me by not seeing a single bible in lost and found.
I think this week was a reminder that while we all have things and trials and stressors and ways we feel less than- we will all show up for the kids.
I say it every year: I feel as if, during the week of camp, I’m operating out of exactly who I’m meant to be. It’s a weird thing to explain, it’s just something I feel. I know that no matter how much energy I do or don’t think have- that at the end of the night (or in most cases- the start of the next day) when my head would hit the pillow I knew that I had given all the things in my hands and no matter how it felt when I woke up- my hands when be full again. Even if they were just full from the cold Celsius Jen handed me before 7am.
There was one moment at camp that I felt a breakdown coming so I found Susan and Tyler at a table during the birthday dinner and told them I needed to check out for a moment. Before I even stepped away from the table I had two or three boys want to tell me a bible verse; so I stopped and did that and then made my way to lay down and cry and fend off what felt like a panic attack before going to chapel.
That night was the LIT hayride and even though I’d spent most of chapel breathing through tears I got on the hayride with the boys and got to see my favorite thing that camp brings: kids being kids.
I got to see kids be kids because we adults decided to show up.
There’s a lot of reasons I push myself for a week at camp, a lot of reasons I show up with all that I am and all that I have.
This year there were 90ish kids and 100 adults that were the reasons.
I know that there is more for me to sit with about this week of camp. I know that God shifted a thing inside of me that I didn’t realize needed shifting.
So, on Tuesday, I’m going to find clean clothes in my house in the morning and probably go sit somewhere and write and rest and find some of my friends to hug. And I’m going to sit and ask God what He put into my hands this week. I’m going to take sometime to write some words to the humans who showed up with me this week.
But, right now, on the plane from one home in Irvine to another home in Washington I just have to say that I’m so grateful for another week serving His kids with you all. I’m grateful for a week of moments that matter. I’m grateful for karaoke golf cart rides and Pixar shorts and sarcastic nine year olds and side hugs from little boys who tell me I’m the nicest person they’ve ever met (sorry Lenore). I’m grateful for the same little boys and their choice vocabulary and the way they helped me up the hill so I wouldn’t fall. I’m grateful for the ability to see little girls be little girls and play in makeup and dress up. And also feel strong using a hammer and building projects. I’m grateful for all the laughter and how the girls in upstairs redwood were very particular about the temperature of their showers.
And I’m so grateful that as He always does- that God met us there.
With all the love in the world and a promise to show up with all that I have, Miss Meg
she writes on sundays 