The Year of Two 2's

People assume that as we get older, we also get wiser. That we do as Paul instructs and “throw off childish things,” things that hinder us, things that restrict and bind, the things that hold us back.  Sadly though, it seems that each year I find a number of things to keep me from breaking from the chains that keep me from living with freedom.

As I grow older the mistakes of the past are more daunting, the questions I have about the future are more apparent, and more and more the decisions I make weigh upon others…  

So here is to being 22 and living a life both glorifying to God and satisfying to my soul.

Hello to 2012 and to…

Traveling to Ireland

Graduating from Messiah College

Taking time for myself

Deciding on a grad school

Finding an apartment of my own

Writing because I find it life giving

Taking classes I am passionate about

Going on a road trip to Alaska

Saving my money

Working hard at my job

Blogging more

Encouraging others

Being the friend I want to have

Letting my inner creative being out

Doing the things I love, because I love them

Spending a week at the beach with my closest friends

Saying “no” when my heart is not in it

Accepting the invitation to go on that date…

More to come in 2012

A Little Leprechaun: Thirty People in 30 Days

For as long as I can remember, I've been keeping things. No, this is not a cry for a Horders intervention or Buried Alive. I keep things. For example, letters, cards, pictures that are outdated.  (I still have a frame in my bedroom from my 16th birthday with eight of my closest friends at the time. Needless to say, things change and many of us have lost touch.) But I keep it anyway. Maybe it reminds me of a simpler time when I didn't have to fill our loan information or even work forty hours a week.  Maybe it reminds me of the days when I had birthday parties at my home and felt special because I was older than everyone around me? 

Whatever the reason, I keep it. 

Although I'm not positive why I've kept some of the things in my room or in the shoebox underneath my bed, I am sure there is a reason I've kept one specific letter.  

There is a single white piece of paper.

It moves around with me.
From school to home and back again. 

And the words on that single sheet of paper, which is now looking a little ragged from all the times I've opened, refolded, stuffed it into some envelope, only to repeat the cycle not long after... the words on that paper are simple. Maybe 200 words max, but it is not the word count that keeps me coming back and reading it so often.  

There is something beautiful about the letter. It is the only letter he ever sent. The single sheet of paper he took the time to fill about four months into our friendship. You'd think someone in ministry might show love in other ways, and he does, all the time, but the strength of the letter came from knowing that the letter he sent was what I would receive best. 

So here I am. Getting ready to start a new year, with a new staff. People I already enjoy and find myself anxious to get to know and excited to learn from. Another year to get it right this time after feeling like I failed so miserably last year. And I pull out the letter...
"some people can't see themselves truly when they look in a mirror and they need another to tell them. Well Meredith, when I look at you, I see love. Everyday. Keep on loving Meredith, because you are so good at it."

Oh boy, I've been burned this past year. I've made some of the hardest decisions of my life. Done the right thing for myself and my relationship with the Lord when no one understood or supported it. And there that letter was. Just sitting there. Waiting silently for me to open it and allow it to speak volumes. 

and so I open it again, when I think I won't get it right
and I hear someone else say what is sometimes so difficult to remember...

"...you are so good at it."

Because my friends, that's what the people who love us do. They remind us how brillant and wonderful we are, when we can't it ourselves.

Abigail: Thirty People in 30 Days

Abigail.
She's beautiful. And I can say that in the most basic of ways. If you're a man, you want to be with her, if you're a woman, you want to look like her. She carries herself with confidence. She's the kind of beautiful that looks adorable even during a hike, the kind of beautiful that as her friend you say... REALLY!? And the kind of beautiful that if you're not her friend, if you don't know her story, you're jealous of. (Easy to understand.)

But the problem with her beauty is, if you stop there, and too many people have, you miss the bigger picture.
If you stop at the fact that she's twenty and stunning, you miss the things I've learned from her in the 8+ years that I've called her my friend.

Abby has always been a trend setter. She moved out of her Dad's house her second year of college and lives in Pittsburgh now and attends classes. She wants to be a doctor, or a nurse, or something else entirely? (whatever it is, she'll be great). She goes grocery shopping at this kinda creepy store over by the water, and drinks wine in her apartment late at night. Abby visits markets on Saturday afternoons and goes to music festivals. She doesn't make excuses, she is her own person, she lives without regret. She has big dreams, big plans, and she is going somewhere.

So, you're probably thinking after all of this that Abby has taught me that I want to live in the city, or live a little more free, but on the contrary. Abby has taught me that I am as grounded as they come. I want a house, with a white picket fence, in the middle of the country somewhere. Writing some book and volunteering at a women's shelter and baking cookies every afternoon. It is almost as if Abby is sowing my independent oats for me. The stories she tells, the memories she is making, they sound wonderful and exciting, and although I tried the city for a month and have visited her, I have learned that it's not me.

This is what I think she taught me most though, that people are more than they seem. People are the bits and pieces that others have left with them, the hurts they have been dealt, they blows that landed on them, the memories and scents and dreams that will never leave... you person you're talking to right now, the person you're about to send that email to, the cashier you're about to see at the store, they are more than they seem.

So while she is out making a name for herself and conquering the world, maybe I'll be the friend in her corner in the middle of some country town somewhere. Reading her blog and hearing her stories and cheering for her. Maybe that's what I can write my book about? All the things she taught me...

Carrie Foust: Thirty People in 30 Days

Carrie Foust.

"All the way my Savior leads me
Who have I to ask beside
How could I doubt His tender mercy
Who through life has been my guide..." 

My dear friends. I had no intention of writing this post today, no idea this post would ever take the tone it is about to take. Oh yes, this beautiful girl deserves more than a post in some unread blog. She deserves a crown of many jewels in Heaven, a beautiful red carpet, a song just for her... today she received one of those things. A very very large crown from our Heavenly Father.  This weekend Carrie's battle with cancer, Leukemia to be specific, came to a very tragic end. Although not sad in eternity's eyes. And I have no doubt that is exactly how Carrie would see it. My beautiful friend fought a very long and hard fight, but I have no better conclusion to draw other than that God needed another beautiful voice to worship at his throne. 

Let me tell you what Carrie taught me. 

As if fitting all the lessons her beautiful heart taught could fit into a blog post...

Carrie was that smile, the one that even on the worst days made you believe in something greater than yourself. Her mere presence helped you to find the joy in the simplest of things. Whether it was decorating a hall for a Christmas competition, celebrating with pizza parties, attending a basketball game and cheering on the other women who lives on her floor, bible studies, and tye-dye. Cancer... even that Carrie faced with this overwhelming sense of calm and faith that the Lord was in control. 

Carrie taught me what it meant to live out the verses in Jeremiah.  "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." The thing that a person really learns from Carrie is not the simplicity of a naive faith believing in these verses... no, Carrie understood what it meant to wander in the desert like the Israelites did for seventy years before Jeremiah ever had the inspiration to write such a verse. You see, she knew real pain, real trial, and real desperation and still she was the first to pray, the first to offer encouragement, and the first to ask how she could help... I have no doubt Carrie allowed God to work more through her short life in twenty years than some people allow him to do in their eighty. Carrie taught me about strength and about all things friendship. She continues to teach me still...

So Carrie, for you, I will be what you saw in the world. I will have hope, I will persevere, and I will never ever lose faith. Your death has brought me to my knees and as I petition God for answers, I know that even if I never get them in this life, I cannot wait until the day when we worship him together again. That day will come, and I look forward to hearing your beautiful voice on the other side. Heaven is blessed today. <3

"When clouds veil sun
And disaster comes
Oh, my soul
Oh, my soul
When waters rise
And hope takes flight
Oh, my soul
Oh, my soul
Oh, my soul
Ever faithful
Ever true
You I know
You never let go
You never let go
You never let go
You never let go..." 

Whoever Built that House I Stay in at the Beach: Thirty People in 30 Days

Day 2 of 30

Outer Banks

So, I know the history behind the Outer Banks. The stories about pirates and treasure, ship wrecks and the stormy seas. The Wrights even have their own special memorial there that I've visited. They are great, wonderful inventors, and I highly recommend visiting the memorial if you ever find yourself in the area, but this post is to the builder of the house I stay at during my week long vacation every summer with my family and our friends about two blocks back from the Atlantic coast.

Since before I was born my parents and a number of family friends and relatives have been pushing through the 7+ hour drive it takes to reach the house.  That doesn't include the countless hours of planning. I remember the "beach planning" parties my Aunt used to have each summer before we left. Not so secretly, I think they all just used this as an excuse to get together, have a few drinks, and enjoy themselves.  The lists were real, however, couples were in charge of one meal a night, and plans were in fact made. When they made these plans between the laughter, jokes, and story telling I'll never know...


So to that building/designer/owner (I honestly don't have a clue who he is), thank you for designing the perfect place for the memories we've created together. Thank you for allowing us to borrow your piece of land, your weathered decks, the pool that oddly enough seems to collect frogs in the early morning. With out, I would have missed out on a number of lessons in the last twenty-two years.

Since I've been alive our family has only missed going to the Outer Banks two years. The first was the year everyone in the group seemed to have different plans and we ended up staying in some place at Ocean City Maryland (nice, but not the Outer Banks by a long shot), and the last was the summer of 2010-2011. My sister was in between two surgeries and the right decision was to not go.

That beach, that house, somewhere between Corolla and the Town of Duke, between TimBuckII and the BBQ place we frequent each summer lies a number of my childhood memories. Hacky-Sac in the garage during a storm, water balloon fights with the neighbors across the street, my cousin Will hiding the monkey my parents bought me, singing THE original songs that my generation of pop stars attempted to redo, making sand castles with my neighbors, burying toes, getting so burnt my dad took me to the in door community pool... they are all there. Memories I've collected and am finally old enough to cherish.

So thank you very kind sir for your beach house for our week of vacation each summer. It is because of that house that I learned a very valuable lesson about life... it goes by. It look all year to plan, hours of driving, tons of packing and repacking (because lets face it, my dad was not prepared to have two girls clothing choices fit into one suitcase...), and in one week, seven days, we would do the same in reverse to come home to our dog a the time, the need to collect our mail from the post office, and to realize that we did in fact finish two bags of combos in seven hours...

Fonzi. Happy Days. Get it?

So breath it in, because you've got what, a solid 80 years here if we're lucky? Take a moment to dig your feet into the sand, or ride the waves in, jump from the diving board into the pool yelling "FOR FONZI"  (or whatever you want to yell!), and watch the fireworks on the 4th with your favorite people. Because life is short, but if we stop waiting for life to begin, and start enjoying everyday we're blessed to live... we might just get to 80 and be glad we went to that beach house every year and reclaimed a bit of our childhood.