Revealing Grace

I was recently explaining to a friend the toll that ministry had taken on me over the last year. As many of you know if you have been keeping up, I spent much of last year with intense panic and anxiety attacks. With the stress of youth trauma, suicide attempts, rapes, and demonic dreams, I was sick more than I've ever been in my life. I had an awful cold for 3 straight months, losing my voice for quite a few weeks, and I was throwing up with flu-like symptoms twice in less than a year. The stress and pressure of not being able to save these kids from the bad things that happen to them had led me to a heavy dose of burn-out. Unable to have normal emotions, motivation, or peace, I had to take a step back. At the time, I didn't really understand God's plan, or if it was His plan at all. These kids were my life, I didn't have time to step back from them! I was distraught and confused as to why I was seemingly being pushed by God to back away for a month and learn how ...

As we look to the needs of our community, I believe so strongly that the answer is simple:  Relationships.   As we get to know and love each other I believe that we will be drawn to meet the needs of our neighbor. As we leave the doors of our churches as one body, one whole, feeling well loved and cared for, I believe we will be pushed to do the same for our community. To love well, to provide, to be like Jesus as we eat with our community, take care of our community, and put others needs above our own. In 2016, and even now, the challenge is to get to know each other.  Let's become more than faces to one another.  Let's become a force of love that cannot be contained.  

I can't believe that at the end of this month I will be standing next to my husband. . . husband.  I truly can't wrap my mind around it. It feels so dreamy I swear that if you wake me up I will be so mad. I never want this reality to end. God is so incredibly good. Man, He just knows what we need when we need it. I should be better about trusting Him after seeing Him in action like this. It's all so good.  I have to admit it has been quite the journey. Selflessness is not my nature. But every day I love Cameron more and every day that leads me to want to serve him more. A good reflection of our relationship with Christ, isn't it? The more we get to know Him, the more we love Him, the more we want to serve Him.  Crazy how God gives us such a picture of our relationship with Him through the imperfect relationship with another human. God's a clever fella. At any rate, as Cameron and I begin our lives together we have the privilege to begin as "mom and dad...

It's the kind of day I have been waiting for. For 2 years in the "White Mountains" I have wanted a white Christmas-y snow day and today it has arrived. It seems to me good foreshadowing that we are going to get the crazy blizzard winter I was promised when I arrived here two almost-snow-less winters ago. Right now I am sitting in my cabin-condo surrounded by huge pine trees, and combined with the Christmas lights around my window and my pellet stove fire roaring it looks like the perfect winter wonderland outside. I know most people hate snowy, dark, cold days but they are, along with rain, my favorite kind of days. Call me naive, tell me I didn't grow up in the north (trust me I've heard it all) but I find joy in layering up with mittens and scarves and scrapping the ice off my car as I go to leave for work. I am like a child as I stomp the crunchy snow beneath my feet with glee. It's winter and I love it. One thing I love about winter is that it makes eve...

It's been a while since I have posted a "real" post. There has been so much going on in my head, my heart, my soul and what are the boundaries of sharing? What needs to stay close to my heart and what needs to be poured onto virtual paper? In a way this blog is as much for me as it is for you. As I write I heal. As I write, I discover. As I write, I realize. Throughout my three years of being involved with Apache Youth Ministries my heart has so many times teetered between soft and hard. At times I have been so overwhelmed by the sorrows that I cannot fix and in other instances I have become callous and feelingless.  It is the frustration of extremes- either my tears are relentless or my gaze is empty and feelingless.  My heart cannot figure out how to handle all that I've seen, witnessed, heard over the last few years. I push it away and at the same time I refuse to let it out of my grasp. The experience is such a part of me. It has shaped who I am for better or f...

The other night I was freaking out a bit. There are a lot of transitions going on in my life right now, and though they are all good, I don't do well with change. It is hard for me to move into a new season and let go of the one behind me. So in the middle of the chaos I sat down to write, knowing it was the only thing to soothe me, and these were the words that flowed out:   I want to shed my skin. I want to scrape it off, inch by inch, until nothing is left but muscles  and bones.  I want Your water to rush over me to touch my scorched body  to bring peace to the  incomplete.  I desire Your hands so caring  to hold me tight as I hear Your voice like the rushing wind whisper new life.  I want to be new to be refreshed to not live in the past or fear of the future but to be here now to love here now.  I want to be Your  hands  Your  feet  but instead I give in t...

There is a piece of paper in my car that reads: missionary= person of weakness relying fully on God's power and grace It is something I wrote while listening to a devotional this past summer. I kept thinking about the glorification of missionaries and the reality of a missionary life. The truth is that a missionary doesn't have it any more together than the average Christian. Sure, we chose to live our faith out differently but it doesn't make us the perfect Christian. . . heck, the only perfect Christian was Jesus! The truth is that the "missionary" life on the reservation is hard, not in ways that are seen but in the manner of who it makes you to be. I've lamented over this recently as I look at the person I was when I came to the rez and the person I am now. I came to the rez full of positivity, consistency in attitude and emotion, excited and ready to see what God had in store. Then as the years passed by I saw so many of the terrible things that ...

Planning a wedding. Goodness what a lot of work it is! I am finally getting married at the ripe old (or young) age of 26 and if you follow this blog you know that the last four years have sometimes been hard. Everyone was getting married, having babies, and it all looked so easy. To add to the noise, in the midst of my boyfriend-less world there was never a lack of young, married, happy people who had some advice for their single friends. "It will come when you least expect it!" (true) "If you just stop looking, stop wanting it, he will show up!" (not true) "When you find the right guy the waiting will have been worth it!" (half true, the waiting still sucked) "That guy is a Christian. . . date him." (seriously??) Though the advice was all well-intentioned it wasn't always the most helpful, but much of what my married friends didn't know they were teaching me was  extraordinarily useful. Being "married last," I hav...

Gosh guys, I'm so excited. I cannot believe this is real life. God is so good! And I know you might get tired of the mushy-gushy, but I'm going to pretend that you guys like this stuff as much as I do. So today's post is a love story, a real life fairy tale perhaps. The first time I met Cameron I looked him up and down and considered his potential. He was tall, good-looking, kind, and wearing a big coat with a fuzzy hood. He had potential. It was a few months before we really got to know each other. I was mean. He was sweet. I considered liking him then decided not to. He loved me with consistency. I decided to give him a chance. Two weeks later we were madly in love with each other. We both told our parents a week after we started dating that we had found the one. He proposed at least three times in the course of our dating life. The first time we had only been dating for 2 weeks. We were in the car when he told me that he had "never been more sure of anything ...

Today at the office we were reading the story of Jesus calling His disciples. We all know the story from the Sunday School flannel-graph.   Jesus walked up to the fishermen and said, "Hey follow me and I will make you fishers of men!" I think there are probably Sunday School songs about it too. Like this one. . . Gosh that is a terribly creepy song. Please don't use that at your church. . . . . Annnnnywaysssssss. . . Anyways the version we read this morning was in Luke and there was something I hadn't noticed before. This is the version where he tells the guys to put their net on the other side of the boat and when they do they get so many fish they can barely pull it in. And then Jesus says, "Follow me" and they pick up their stuff and walk away (that's the Mer-notes version). I've always known about the "put your net on the other side" part and figured it was just Jesus showing them He was Jesus. But this morning a thou...

A few months ago I went to Pasadena for a couple of days. I was at Target (because of course that is my first stop when I return to civilization) in line buying a pillow for my couch. As is my usual MO I began telling the cashier that I worked on an Apache reservation and therefore needed to buy this pillow (strong logic). As I was explaining my work the lady behind me started asking me more questions. Was I in social work? What kind of kids did I work with? The conversation continued as we left the check-out line. She turned out to be studying pastoral burn-out and she asked if she could pray for me. We stood outside of Target in Pasadena and she prayed a prayer straight from the Spirit. The words she prayed were just what I needed, and she referred to situations I had never mentioned. As she prayed I felt my spirit lifted. God cared enough to send someone to give me His words of comfort. God loved me that much. As I thanked her she exclaimed how it was God-ordained that we end...

This past week I got a text that read: "When God has shown you what path to take in life how has He directed you?" It was a good question and frankly I was honored to be asked. Though some might see me as "young" I've lived a lot of life and had quite a few direction changes in my years. God has continually blessed me but there have been quite a few crossroads where the path forward seemed uncertain or unclear. The first piece of advice would probably be to  chill out and wait but that didn't start with a "P" so it will just be an addendum. Plus I still stink at the waiting part. Too many times we are so anxious for knowledge that we think God is ignoring us, instead of realizing that we just need to wait for His timing. But waiting sucks, so I really don't blame you if you've gotten annoyed waiting for God to answer. It's all a test of patience (which starts with a "P") and trust (which doesn't). So here I prese...

The other night I realized I had poison ivy all over my right arm. In the midst of uncontrollable frustration as to its symptoms (and initially thinking it could be bed bugs brought home from the rez) I then flooded my laundry room trying to wash all the pillows. It was one of those nights where the little things become huge problems and I felt my stress and anxiety rise as I rushed around my house howling about my arm that was surely about to fall off or kill me. Perhaps I have a flair for the dramatics. Though those problems weren't really as life-threatening as I made them seem they were a smaller symptom of a bigger problem. Throughout year 2 of my ministry on the reservation the hurts, the trauma, and the pain have built up to manifest themselves in the ever-increasing anxiety attacks that I have paid tribute to before. In the midst of the joy, the fun, the happy, my heart begins to beat incredibly fast and I cannot breathe quite as easily as before. It's definitely n...

I'm going to throw this out there: loving someone is hard.  I know, epic new thought, right? Of course I always knew that love wasn't like the fairy tales, that prince charming didn't come and sweep you off your feet with a song and a ride into happily ever after. I knew that it was harder than the movies depicted, but I still kind of thought that real love would be entirely blissful and lovely and there would always be a twinkle in the eye and dancing in the kitchen (I do watch a lot of romcoms, let's be honest). It's just been over the last few months that I have learned the true nature about love and let me tell you, it is oh so different than I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, loving someone is one of the most beautiful, challenging, rewarding, and humbling experiences of my life. I will always choose love, no matter how hard it is. To love is wonderful but to love is to be challenged, much more than I originally realized .  So here is what...

It was the quintessential Robert Frost moment. The fork in the road labeled two paths and the decision lay before us like an open hand. There wasn't danger in one or the other, and neither had terrible consequences, but the first footstep would hold the answer.                                              <---- More Difficult                Easy -----> I had been battling sickness all week so the sensible answer was obviously the "easy" path, but with one look at each other my brother and I knew what we had chosen. We took our steps past the "more difficult" sign with confidence and moved toward the goal of the lakes promised above. The signs weren't lying with their descriptions of ease and difficulty. The path we chose included steep runs of slippery rocks that had to be climbed in the fashion of a monkey, on all four...

Last night there was a bat in my ceiling, a spider in my bath, and I may have given my boyfriend food poisoning. Not the best Monday I’ve ever had. But hey, you win some, you lose some. And let’s be honest, it probably wasn’t my beautifully homemade and delicious meal that poisoned him, right? (At least I sure hope not. . .)  Anyways. All that drama brought me to some deep thought (that happens when my boyfriend is indisposed and I don’t have someone to chatter at. . . I mean chat with). So in lieu of the usual chatter I settled into thoughts of independence. Yup, here we are again. You guys know I’ve always been one for independence. I used to thrive off of it, or the idea of it I suppose. If I was going to be single then gosh darn it I was going to be the best independent single person the world has ever seen! Look at me hang up these decorations on my own! Look at me get this couch on my own (and coerce the IKEA workers with frantic looks to do all the work for me)! Loo...

Today a phrase popped into mind that epitomizes the past week: “The joy of the Lord is our strength.”  Goodness, what truth that is.  I was feeling a little burnt out and cynical as the school year came to an end when like a fairy godmother new life came and turned the pumpkin into a coach! With two new volunteers from North Carolina who throughly embody the joy of the Lord and 15 (yes, FIFTEEN) kids coming to the Kennel this past week, things have gone from blah to ta-da ! Gosh, God is good.  It has been in the midst of this joy of the Lord that another important word has popped up: Family .  We have always called our Kennel staff and kids a family, but this past week it has truly felt that way. Cameron has been coming to the Kennel most days (the only perk of his frustrating and lack-thereof work schedule) and the kids have taken to continuing the “daughter/son” phrasing. Cameron takes to the role with gusto. He loves being dad as much as...

It all started with one ninth grader.  She joined a group hug with me and Cam and the rest was history. Within minutes she claimed herself adopted and started play calling us "mom" and "dad." When we saw her at the Kennel yesterday she jokingly started singing, "Reunited and it feeeeeels so goooood!" Cameron had willingly and lovingly accepted this first newfound daughter, but little did he know it was just the beginning. We had spent the past weekend at the bi-annual Rising youth retreat. 28 middle school and high school students from our Thursday night youth service and it was awesome.  From almost the moment of our arrival four of the middle school girls had attached themselves to my hip. It all started with a comment of, “Is that your brother?” and the response of, “No, he is my boyfriend!” and the jokes and bonding was well on its way. At one point I asked them, "Do you want me to kiss him to show you he isn’t my brother??" T...

Guys. My goodness. I've been busy. This last month has been so wonderful, so exciting, so hard, and so tiring. So many days I have felt overwhelmed by the task of caring for other people. It isn't the right way to think (and somewhere inside I know it) but I pile everyone up on my shoulders and promise to carry them wherever we go even if they didn't ask for it (metaphorically of course). I know everyone has legs and their own lives and they can walk through it without my help, but somewhere along the way I have rested into the notion that it all depends on me. The lives of so many people depend on me. And even if my legs fail, I will carry them until it kills me. Well that is quite a burden to carry and it's rather impossible, especially considering that I don't have the time or energy to carry everyone and they don't really need to be carried. But I walk around with them all on my shoulders anyways as I cry out to my friends, "Why am I so tire...

A few months ago I was walking around Barnes and Noble, single, with just my greek food beside me. ( You can read about it here ). It was pretty epic. Fast forward to yesterday and I’m eating the same greek food and perusing the same aisles of Barnes and Noble (what can I say, I’m a creature of habit) but this time there was something different. This time I was there with someone, and that someone calls himself my boyfriend.  I know. It’s weird to put it in print. I have a boyfriend. We all were a little worried it would never happen, we can be honest about that. I live in the woods, I work all the time, I have a weird need to prove my independence and love men that are imaginary. . . not quite a recipe for success.  But there he came. Riding in on a white jeep, the knight in shining under armor. He pursued me relentlessly with kind words and gushy looks. I fought back with comments like, “ Don’t look at me! ” and “ Stop being so nice! ” Its a surprise he stuck arou...

About a week ago I was sitting in a hospital holding a baby that had been born less than 24 hours before. He was tiny and perfect with a head full of hair, enough to make into a baby mohawk as we sat together. He was so innocent and untouched by the world. I loved him from the moment I held him. He was the baby of one of my students and I had come to visit them. She is only 15 and we ended up spending 24 of those first 48 hours of the baby's life together. Together we tried to figure out his needs, his sleep, and how to get her rest through those midnight hours. We were in this together and I wasn't going to leave her alone. When he was a little over 24 hours old I took him out of the bassinet and held him close. My student was finally asleep and as I looked at his little face I began to pray. I prayed for his life and his future, that God would raise him up to be a good man, one who served Him and treated others well. I prayed into his little self that he would be a g...

It took me by surprise when I realized that I was standing in the exact same spot I had stood 10 years ago. Ten years ago when my life was about to drastically change it all started on that corner in Mission Beach, San Diego. And here I was again. The last time I had been there I was a junior in high school and life was kind of falling apart. My family was about to move to a different state and I felt like I was losing everything, but for a week none of that mattered because I was going on my very first mission trip. As I sat with my friends in San Diego we were prepared for what God would have in store for us that week, but I had no idea that it was going to be the week that changed the entire direction of my life. I remember that trip so clearly. It was the kind of mission trip movies are made about. The kids chasing the van each morning, the relationships built with the locals, and the mentorship of a local leader who challenged me to use my skills and gifts and to let th...

I was talking to one of my kids the other day as I drove them all home in the van. We were talking about life (obviously) and in an effort to be positive I exclaimed that life was "beautiful and marvelous!" I asked one of the kids if he agreed. "Yea," he replied, "beautiful, marvelous and miserable." I laughed because I thought that sentiment was so perfect. Beautiful, marvelous, and miserable. That's life, isn't it? The beautiful are the quiet moments that make life so good. They are the everyday blessings that we almost forget to notice. It is the perfect cup of coffee, the breeze and the sunshine, the friendships that make you laugh until your stomach hurts. It sounds cheesy but it's true. Life is full of beautiful moments if we look for them. For me the beautiful is having an apartment all my own, getting unexpected packages from faraway friends, and getting to love on the best kids in the world. Each day we can find the beauty if w...

Perhaps you find this blog to be simply a series of ups and downs, highs and lows. Perhaps you are thinking, "Wow Meredith. One day you are all mad and stuff and the next day you are all cheery. What's up with that?" Or maybe you aren't thinking that at all, who knows. But it actually is kind of true. The highs are high, the lows are low, and all the stuff in the middle (which is most days) is too boring and you wouldn't read it. So you get the good and the bad and I keep all the normal days to myself. But that's ok. This is the journey we are on together and I like that. So this post is a happy post (to combat the relatively unhappy post of last week). This post is going to be about glorifying the God who loves us more than we ever could deserve. And I can never write about that enough (even if you get tired of reading it). For example, let's start with this: Last week God brought 3 new volunteers to the Kennel. . . who we had never even met befo...

I’m going to be honest with you: sometimes there is not a silver lining.  Sometimes knowing the evils of the world leads us to bitterness and rightly so.  It is overwhelming, the evil that impacts our students and our world. In 2 weeks we have had four students raped. All of them are under the age of 17, 2 of them were hospitalized because of the insane brutality with which the crime occurred, and there is a great chance that the perpetrators will never be charged for their crimes.  It is simply put, overwhelming.  As I sit trying to process through this evil my body quietly shakes. It is hard to handle even the thought of this happening. Whether I know them personally or not doesn’t matter. Crimes like these are so far beyond unacceptable. This violence is not what God ever intended. It is straight evil. The anger wells up into a rage and all I can keep saying is, “This has to stop.”  This has to stop.  This has to stop.  ...