Mondays with Megan: On leaving, feeling left, and another wild ride around the sun

I woke up on Saturday morning to this view.  My two best friends and I spent Friday  night in the Pocono Mountains catching our collective breath.  We branded it as “Megan’s Birthday Party,” which was celebrated with all my favorite things, but we all like the same stuff anyway so it worked out for everyone, I think! 

We spent time laughing, sharing stories, reliving college days, high school days, and even childhood days, eating too much charcuterie and sitting in the hot tub splashing around like we were twelve. It was soul nourishing. 

I drove home Saturday afternoon, the first day of my new year of life, full of happiness and also lots of cheese. (They’re the same thing, no?) 

I do not know a lot, but this is what I do know: Not one soul in the world thought this year would go how it’s going. Who imagined a global pandemic, political chaos, overwhelming tense feelings everywhere you go, immense racial inequality in America coming to the surface needing to be confronted, and a toilet paper shortage? Not me, that’s for sure! I drove along the highway home reliving this past year of my life, celebrating the victories and intensely sobbing at the sadness. That’s right, I cry hard and drive carefully. See me for multitasking tips and tricks! I experienced incredible pain this year, because I was seeking incredible healing. The drive home allowed me to think through the processes that made me into who I am this very day, and celebrate doing the hard work of seeking vision, creating a close and prayerful circle of confidants, and making decisions that simultaneously broke my heart and set me free. 

Before I go on, and before you read my next set of words, know this friends: I realize that my last trip around the sun has been a different experience from many others.  I live a life of privilege as a white female with a salaried job, health care, and stability intact. This is not lost on me, and I pray it never will be. 

I am okay. 
That is the conclusion of my drive home from the Poconos. 
While this might not sound like a big deal to you, I have lived the last four years of my life thinking I may never be okay again. I have battled, and I mean battled, some mean beasts, all the while being entrusted with ministries domestic and foreign, creating community, reshaping a life I thought once was, and trying to just make it through the day. In seeking healing, I received it. I have never felt more happy, free, and confident in my life. I am healed, and whole, and my battle has been won. 

I worked hard, and begged, and pleaded, and prayed, and journaled, and read, and saw the most incredible Christian therapist, had really hard conversations, sought forgiveness, forgave, and reconciled.  I worked really hard to eliminate ego, increased my time with God, rearranged my schedule, incorporated a true Sabbath and protected it, set boundaries and kept them, and started telling the whole truth.  The journey to this healing started when my PastorBoss walked into my office one day eighteen months ago and said, “I don’t know how to ask you this, but are you okay?” I sobbed. “No,” I replied. “But I don’t know why.” He sat and listened, prayed for me, and said “however I can support you, just tell me.”  Those became the eight most important words after “Do you want to know Jesus?” of my whole life. 

Most of my adulthood has felt like big dreams realized and big dreams s h a t t e r e d, sometimes all at once. I spent this past trip around the sun in the middle of that disaster – dreams realized and dreams shattered. I have experienced incredibly high highs and some of the lowest of lows of my life, but I’m okay. Why? Jesus. We are quick to run to things that we think will make us feel better: money, relationships, notoriety, social media likes, power, food, the list could go on. But, God… nothing is able to heal the things that are meant for only Him to heal.  

He is waiting for us to seek His will, His desires, and His plans for our lives.  Often while we’re busy crying in the corner wondering why the things aren’t going well, we realize we hadn’t invited Him into them in the first place. 

As a result of feeling fully alive again, fully healed, fully human, fully present, fully aware of systems and people and structures, right and wrong, and truth, I made life changes this year that I wouldn’t have been brave enough to make had I not been healed. I started with small ones to see if my discernment meter was tracking, I incorporated the closest circle of friends into those decisions to hold me accountable to and call me out, if needed, as the time went on.  I created boundaries in my professional and personal life that should have happened years ago! I sought reconciliation and restoration between God and I, and others and I, and experienced His reconciling power like I hadn’t before.  I started to ask questions when I prayed, things like: “What is next for me, God?” “How do I do this thing right, God?” and mostly, “Is this where you want me today, God?”  I began to understand a life fully surrendered to Him, not just in the big things, but the little things as well.  I (had) two really big full time jobs, am serving a caribbean nation I adore and feel called to more than almost anything else in the world, and was needing to make room and time for some other exciting life things. In each pointed time of prayer this trip around the sun, I felt the nudge to create room. 

So, I resigned from a job. It wasn’t an easy decision but because I’m committed to always telling the whole truth, it wasn’t exactly a hard one either.  It was time for me to go and I felt like God released me from that seasonal ministry in a time of prayer that I dedicated specific to that decision. I texted my closest friends that morning and said, “I’m deciding on leaving this thing today, can you please pray right now that God would give me discernment?” Boy, did He! I am confident that the Lord called me out of that ministry so that He could do something new in and through me and I am beside myself excited about it. What is it? I’m not entirely sure yet which makes it all that more fun! It was (mostly!) a joy to serve in that capacity, particularly because of very rich relationships I was able to form, but now it’s time to focus on what God has next.  (For clarification, if you’re reading this and local to my current life: I will continue to be the Pastoral Director of Anchored Student Ministries at the Ocean Grove Church and am so excited about what God is doing in that arena!  That is, for sure, not the job I quit! That’s my calling and I’m passionate about raising leaders to be world changers through the work of the local church!). 

I’ve spent most of my adult life living in resentment and feeling left.  My friends were marrying the people of their dreams, creating the cutest families ever known to earth, and purchasing white picket fences (quite literally!).  I grew up thinking that’s what I always wanted because that’s what I was told I wanted.  Point of clarification: I absolutely want to be married and have my own family, truly it is the only thing I feel like I don’t have in life, but I will only do that if it’s the obedient and right thing. (So send your single guy friends my number!) But, I am so done fighting God on this. It’s exhausting. He always wins and I always cry.  I’ve spent the last eighteen months deconstructing what I thought I didn’t have and actually realizing what I do.  Through the wise counsel of my PastorBoss, the epic questions from an amazing Christian therapist, and the constant support of my family and best friends, I’ve been able to realize that I’ve actually hit some home runs in life while I thought I was just sitting on the bench! What freedom in that realization. I haven’t been benched at all, I’ve been batting and swinging and hitting and running and accomplishing things for the Team that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.  In creating room, I was able to surrender, to rid myself of resentments and to once again see the joy in this epic journey.  

I’m wondering if anyone else needs the encouragement of surrender, today? 
Are you holding onto things that weren’t meant for you? 
Are you clinging to a life that once-was instead of surrendering to a life of what-could-be?

My friend Annie F. Downs wrote this on an Instagram caption yesterday, “In the musical Les Mis, Fantine sings a song that says, “….now life has killed the dream I dreamed.” And in my story, that’s been true a few times. (Yours too probably, right?) Big LIFE ones and 2020 ones and little daily ones.  But when the song stops, our lives don’t, and also? That song doesn’t factor in God’s kindness. Your life, your year, may not look the way you thought it would (mine either!) some dream may have died, but some new dreams have grown…. and there’s SO MUCH FUN when you are given what you didn’t know to dream up.”  

My encouragement for you today, friends, is to be open to the dreams that God has for you – the ones you don’t even know about. I didn’t think I would find mine this trip around the sun, but I did and it’s been better than I could have ever imagined. There is freedom in surrender, peace in absolute uncertainty, and calm in the chaos if we choose it. 

I want to challenge you today to see it. 
…to find the peace amidst the storm
…to seek Jesus instead of whatever else you’re looking to for satisfaction
…to ask for healing where you need to be healed
…to commit to a process of betterment if you’re in the pit 
…and to choose to see the joy in the journey. 

He is here waiting for you. 
Will you submit to Him, today? 
Will you let go of whatever is causing you angst and admit that His plans are best? 
Will you choose to surrender, to open your hand, and to reimagine what a life full of Him could look like? 

I promise it’s good. 
It’s not always pretty.
But it is good.