Don't tell anyone, but I'm totally at home in pj's, doing laundry and catching up on The Office and Fringe. I neeeeed this night.

I went to Greensboro this weekend to see my favorite Emily on the planet. I just love Greensboro so freaking much!!! I think it's the artsy culture everywhere. I need to spend more time in Carrboro.

It was so nice not to work today. I love Apple, and I love being around the people at work, but it was so great just to get away for a Saturday. I feel like I never am able to just up and go anywhere. It's always strictly scheduled, always arranged whenever I can possibly fit it in. I don't like that. I don't like being in class for 21+ hours a week. I don't like working 18 hours on top of that. And I don't like having to squeeze in photo shoots and lab time on top of THAT. Hopefully next semester won't be too bad. I can't do choir, which is a bummer, but it will free up a lot of my time. I'll be done with my psyc major after this semester, and I only have 2 required classes left, meaning I get to take two electives and then have only 12 hours!!!! Hellooo graphic design and studio photography!

Emily brought up a really good point this weekend that we don't have to pick just one thing to do after college. We can do as many things as we want. That's such a relief. I feel like I have to know what I'm going into, what I am going to commit myself to after school. That's so not true! Those fifteen potential careers/locations posted on my door-- I can do all of them if I really want to (it might take a while, but whatever).I wish I was more creative. And I wish I set aside more time to write and play and sing and just do what makes me happy-- to exercise my creativity. I feel really stifled lately. I'm worn out and it's just not in me to pour out more of myself into creative things. Even photojournalism has begun to be a chore for me. I hate that. It's another thing to get done, not necessarily to dwell and grow in.

As sad as this is, I want this semester to be over. I love all of my classes, but I'm spread so thin that I can't even really enjoy it.

But nights like this are good, and I just now felt a sudden burst of creativity, so I sat and wrote what may be a poem, maybe a song. It's really good to have sudden creative flow like that.

Yay. Tonight was not wasted.

So now I might go write some more or read or just do anything except be on this computer! Boo internet. Boo.

With love and laundry,
Megan

For the past week or so, I've felt really strange in my time in the Lord. I can't pinpoint what it is-- I feel so painfully aware of my sin and yet reassured that His grace reaches into the depths of my experience. It's not an emotional feeling-- it's sobering, really. I've been clinging to the words of my sisters, the word of the Lord, even song lyrics to reinforce this to me. I can't get enough of it; it's just something that I need to be immersed in, not to make myself feel better about myself, but just to have this truth bored into my heart.

Someone shared this passage with me yesterday, and I don't remember having come across it before. It's in Ezekiel 16, which is a little obscure, but it is so descriptive of where I have been lately.

Again, the word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother at Hittite. And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

"And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, "Live!" Yes, I said to you in your blood "Live!" I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

"When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God."

God saw me, lying in my blood, and said, "live." There's no romanticizing the fact that I was completely bare and dirty, and there's nothing of value I have to offer Him.

I don't know what it is, but this is just really humbling and sobering for me. And I like that there is the promise of Him making me beautiful. Making me like Himself.

It's just lately I feel like I've taken steps backwards, that I'm still lying there, feeble, in need of rescue. He has redeemed me already; why am I feeling like this? I guess it's one of those times where my worship and love for Him is a choice, and whether or not I feel clean and whole and capable and full of strength, I will follow him.

with love and chilly weather,
Megan

J.D. has been preaching a series called, "Why I'm Not a Christian." They set up a website for people to respond (whyimnotachristian.com), and they published a huge page of responses. You can feel the anger seething from the responses-- people who have been wronged by the church, or who think that Christianity is ludicrous. One answer resonated with me the most. It was simple and genuine.

"mostly because I would have to give up too much."

I don't know why. But this just pierced my heart. I want so badly for this person to know what they would gain from knowing Jesus. But I'm really surprised by their honesty.

I'm really happy that the weather is starting to change (I'm ignoring the fact that the high is 95 today). But I love fall; it's my favorite, and I'm so excited about the leaves and such, since I really missed them living in the city last year. Yay for crisp air and falling leaves and apple cider and sweaters and corduroys.

Trusting God is good, and I'm trying to do more of it.

I also have realized lately that I spend way too much on stuff I don't need (ok I've known this for a while). I'll go buy something cute from Target, even if it's a dollar, and it serves as a kind of pick-me-up, and that probably shouldn't be the case. I need to find my identity, fulfillment and delight in the Lord, not in things.

On the agenda today:
Deliver book and photos to Ms. Montague
Dinner at home
Laundry
Clean, clean, clean because I certainly won't have time to do it this week!

With love and good sermons,
Megan

I don't think I have ever had a semester in which the days fly by so quickly. It's not that I don't want to get things done, or that I'm procrastinating. It's that there aren't even enough hours in the day to do what I need to do. I am already behind-- how is that even happening?

Things have been hard lately. I've found that I hold myself back, to the point that when I do have to talk in front of people, it comes out in a jumbled mess often opposite of what I mean to say. Lesson learned this week: speak boldly, but speak wisely.

Finding my identity in the Lord has been a point of focus, too. I am so thankful that in Jesus there is freedom. Not slavery or shoes to fill or checklists. But joy and rest. True, true freedom. I get this image of a tiny bird released from a cage, overwhelmed by the fact that it can go anywhere, not sure where to even begin. But fluttering on the wind and finding a course, stumbling upon beauty and making discoveries.

So here I sit with my green tea and rose candle, my written-in-every-available-space planner opened to this past week. I'm catching up on things that are past-due. I had a 12-hour day today and I am going through feminine products like it's my job. I mean... did I just say that? And I have clean jeans on my bed and a hair straightener that actually works, and lots and lots to do tomorrow, including shooting a giant paper puppet show thang for pj, doing a multimedia project that will inevitably take me a few hours and lots of other things.

Now it's time for showering and cleaning this crazy room and bedtime.

With love and dearly missing my 10-22mm lens,
Megan