Revealing Grace

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.  ...

I was in the middle of preaching a sermon when it washed over me like a flood and almost made me stop in the middle of my words. It was a truth that I had been searching for without knowing that I had lost it. It was a truth that I was desperately trying to teach the students when all the while God was trying to teach it to me , trying to embed it in my heart so that I would truly understand. It was a moment of clarity that I can only pray some of the students had as well. It was for me, a moment of beauty.  What I was preaching on was love (I love love!). The point was this: These kids, like many teenagers (and adults), are continually looking for perfect love in each other and the results are detrimental. We have at least five teenagers who are pregnant, countless who are left feeling worthless or heartbroken, and so many others who are moving from guy to guy or girl to girl searching for something that they will never be able to find in each other. So I began telling th...