Support Letter, October 2021: Welcome Back Megin
Dear Beloved Friends and Family,
Hello! How are you? Most of you, I believe I have spoken to
as of recent via facebook or text or, GASP, IN PERSON. (That would be nice,
huh?) So I hope this email does not catch you completely by surprise. If it
does, my apologies for how inappropriate it may seem.
I write to let you know that I have just done the scariest
thing in my life since moving to New York City, or heading to seminary in
Boston, or flying to Hong Kong back in 2003. (Yes. We are all that old now.
Although maybe you’ll all tell me I’m so young. Thanks. I turn 39 on the 15th…
#realitycheck.) ANYWAY,
After much thought, prayer, and counsel, I stepped out in faith to follow what
I believe to be the leading of God, but as I step, I realize that I am
literally (okay fine, metaphorically) Peter walking on the water now.
The chance for failure or rejection is IMMENSE (especially if one considers
rejection as failure….which THIS one typically does), so I have to KEEP MY
EYES ON CHRIST at like… every.stinking.second. Brief Aside: I’m so self-conscious
right now in regard to my writing style, which I tell myself is simply a
creative liberty, but as I’m including LITERALLY some of my most respected
professors of all time on this support letter, my heart is beginning to race at
the audacity of … ME! Perpetually 20-years-old it seems. Back to the point-
I started a GoFundMe to sponsor a month of
childcare so that I can have some time to research, study, listen, engage in
the community, and…. WRITE or create.
My Inspiration: There is a plethora of easily accessible
LIES being propagated via internet, television, media, and (COLLECTIVE GASP) Christian
celebrities as well as LOCAL churches. People are hearing what is propagated as
the Good News of Jesus, but the result is that they are led astray. (I
can barely associate myself with the word evangelical anymore because of what
it has come to mean in many circles.) The ways in which holy Scriptures
are used to support political agendas and false prophets IN OUR CHURCHES AND
COMMUNITIES is robbing people, destroying families, and even taking lives. Who
needs dystopian television shows when we can sit back and watch reality in
real-time? Subsequently, I am left RESTLESS before God AND man… I
cannot parent or minister or be in community or even the most valuable of
relationships, like marriage and friendship, without time to fuel my mind and
my body and my relationship with Christ, AS WELL AS to live out the purpose God
has given me, to CREATE EXPRESSIONS of God’s truth that those who SEEK God
might FIND God because GOD is not far from us (Acts 27:17).
I used to think God had called me to bind up the broken-hearted
by physically bandaging their wounds, and for a while, apparently He had… but
these days, I bandage my own kids wounds with paw-patrol Band-Aids and buy
audiobooks for myself so that I can at least listen to something OTHER than the
aforementioned television show while I wash the dishes and prepare and
administer homeschool at the same time as playing tea-set or dress up AND
simultaneously refilling the dog’s treat container to infinity and beyond… wow.
😊
I do enjoy those things, actually, being a mother and a wife
and supporting ministries at our church, but the last few years, and even, one could
say, the last 16, since graduating college, I have incurred many more losses
and become much more acquainted with the griefs in life more than I would have
imagined I would while trying to follow God. At times, the
seasons of disillusionment felt endless. Nonetheless, SOMEHOW today, I find
myself feeling similar to Job in Job chapter 42. “I had heard of you by
the hearing of the ear, but now my
eye sees you,” (Job, ESV).
Actually, I
prayed that once- that very scripture. After my first miscarriage, I prayed to
God and told Him that if He was going to take my baby, then He had to make me
Job. I had to be able to SEE HIM in a NEW WAY DESPITE MY GRIEF. Clueless Megin
had not considered the fact that Job not only lost one child but multiple
children AND possessions… all at once, and then had basically what I would
imagine to be at least half of his friend group tell him it was all his fault. That’s
some suffering… I wanted to see God like Job did, but was I willing to suffer
like Job did?
As soon as Job says those words though, that he’s SEEN
God, he repents, in dust and ashes, the text describes. I’d like to do a word
study on that verse in the original language because in my experiences, that is
EXACTLY what it felt like… after I questioned and wrestled with God and then
God spoke into my heart in time. The jadedness of my grief revealed my idolatry.
I served God not for God’s sake but for what God could do for me. Thus I
repented, again, and it felt like dust and ashes…
But then, THEN, I saw the GOOD NEWS
, the ΕυαγγÎλιοn, afresh, anew,
like seeing Christ and redemption and the hope of Glory for the first time all
over again… So yes, I am interested in that text as well as the Isaiah 61:1-3
as these verses have been the cry of my heart since I was a child, that God
would use me in that way.
Most of you know by now, I met God because I grew up experiencing
intense loneliness, hurt, brokenness, rejection, and despair, BUT God
literally pulled me up and out and transformed my life AS WELL AS
the lives of those around me. WHAT’S MORE, though God brought me
through deep seas during which time I thought I was completely alone (Psalm 77),
in time, I recognized the metanarrative of Scripture again…AND somehow
UNDERSTOOD A PART OF IT for MY OWN LIFE. I saw redemption and the glory
and goodness of our GOD that scripture TESTIFIES toward. (Okay-
that was bad… I used a split infinitive. I started the paragraph with a
conjunction. I ended it with a preposition, and I LITERALLY just preached a
sermon about Jesus when half the people I am sending this to aren’t even
Christians. SORRY GUYS. It is going to take guts to press send on this thing.
Please still love me as you always have).
BUT THIS EXPERIENCE, in my humble Megin opinion, tells us A
LOT about WHO we are and WHO GOD IS. We are God’s children,
and God is a GOOD Father, though God’s ways, methods, and
decisions, we do not always or even consistently understand. And even that makes a lot more sense now that
I’ve mothered children. They think I am trying to kill them when literally I’m
just asking them to take a bath after day 13 without. (DANGIT! I JUST DID IT
AGAIN. I PREACHED. I STARTED WITH BUT, ended WITH without…. AND I revealed
that my kids are disgusting. GUTS! GUTS I TELL YOU!!!! TO SEND THIS LETTER
WILL TAKE GUTS!)
So I will end here, humbly, before I write into the 4th page of text, but I will ask if you’d consider sponsoring and nurturing me and really our family in this way…
Ten dollars seriously buys me 30 minutes of
childcare, and every second counts! I
have hopes and dreams that much more could happen, but for now, I’ll take it a
day, hour, or half-hour, at a time 😊. The link for the GoFundMe explains everything in more
detail. (I know. You’re probably thinking, THERE IS MORE DETAIL?)
And whether you donate or encourage me that I’m not insane for
reaching out this way (those things are of equal value), I THANK YOU. Thank
you for your love and support through ALL these years, however many there have
been. Quite certainly, you have all been utilized by God as my community to
shape and form me to use. I am who I am today and WHERE I am today because
of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU PLAYING A ROLE IN MY LIFE. So thank you, and I
love you with all the love that God enables me to give, by God’s marvelous,
wonderful, grace. Amen-
Megin Lea Williams-Eng
but mainly just God’s Megin Lea.
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