God's Will

Taking pictures on the "Law and Order" steps
when I first moved here.

I’ve spent the last decade in New York City. 25 years old to 35 years old. Sometimes, that is hard for me to believe. I waver between wanting to be proud of myself for such a feat or thinking I was too timid and wimped out by remaining in the same place for 10 years. Sometimes I think- “I’m living in New York City!!! I was born in a suburban town in Georgia… When I was 20 years old, I had only been on an airplane one time, and it was for a business for Dad’s job… and I was 7. This is unimaginable!” At 20, the world was on the verge of opening up for me, but still… to think back on 19 year old Megin Lea Williams… and how far God has brought THAT life. Truly, He has forged a way I could not have predicted, picked a path no one in my life as a child would have imagined…

Other times I wonder, “Why did I stop moving?” Because I did. I stopped moving after I sat down in NY. Before then, I was on the move always, whether it be my passions, or my friendships, or my physical location. Constantly turning to new dreams, something fresh and exhilarating, recreating. No place for more than 4 years max! And I wanted to leave NY actually. There was a time I wanted to be anywhere BUT here. I grew to hate it nearly. I suppose I hated much less the city and much more the relational obstacles that were in front of me. After about 4 or 5 years, I was ready to head somewhere else, meet new people, plow new ground. Staying here was hard. It meant I was going to have to press through uncomfortable relationships and figure out someway to be heard and hear others. I was going to have to navigate my way into Jesse’s family- wade through the countless days of feeling awkward and uncomfortable, until they became my own. I was going to have to sit in the fact that there were people around me in my ministry and my personal life (because both groups were one in the same) who had misperceptions about me or perhaps thought I should do things I wasn’t doing… or thought I should not do things I was doing. I was going to have to figure out how to have REAL relationships where people were allowed to make mistakes, and were forgiveness and grace were offered. I was going to have to be humble, accept praise, learn to apologize, learn to grieve. I was going to have to be vulnerable… and not just vulnerable with the things I chose to share on a blog, but with my actual REAL life. I was going to have to make THIS place where I had roots. But I had no idea how to do that. And it terrified me because I didn’t know if these people would ever accept me and appreciate me. Could they love me? Could they make me feel the kind of love I felt from my family (on good days) or others friends in the past? What’s more, I didn’t know if they’d be enough for me. Yes. As awful as that sounds, it is true. My identity was not yet fully found in Christ, and so I garnered a measure of my self-worth from the people around me. Meaning, if I could have amazing people approve of me, I felt I had worth. So, were these the people I wanted to give me worth? No. I wanted something else. This wasn’t enough. (Obviously… because I would learn that only God can give worth). This place wasn’t it, and I was tired of feeling misunderstood and emptiness…. but as I pressed forward, I found, it seemed, everywhere I turned, the signs and the doors all said STAY. I couldn’t leave. And so I didn’t know what to do. So I stayed. It was hard. And it did not feel glamorous… or exhilarating.

After I got married, as I was going through this period in my life, ministry was not as vibrant and fruitful as it had been in my first four years in NY. And I felt more confused, further from God. Counseling was teaching me a lot. I was learning SO MUCH and connecting the dots from the past to understand why I felt how I felt and behaved how I behaved and thought how I thought and saw God how I saw God… and as that came together, it was good. Changes were made… new systems were set up in my brain….re-wiring was taking place. I was learning how to communicate differently. I was letting go of relational baggage, forgiving, understanding the complicated relationships in my family of origin…

But none of that stuff is the stuff that sells books or looks pretty on the shelf. None of that is stuff that earns you applause from a crowd or attracts thousands to your church. That was all the grunt work. The research. It wasn’t the paper that had the A+ on it. Yet, that’s where I was spending all my time… in the tombs, searching and reading and contemplating and thinking. I was brainstorming… writing outlines for how to proceed, and then balling them up and tossing them in the trash only to start over again.

What was my life? Did it mean anything? Had God given up on me? I must have left Him. That’s it. Somehow, I left Him. I failed.

You can probably guess what I’m going to say next… NO! Not so! I hadn’t failed! I felt like I was getting nowhere, but actually, I had covered more ground than I could have imagined. I’d come further than I dreamed I would have come. Looking back, I’m in awe of the ground that God brought me through. All I saw were thick walls around me. It seemed I was walking in the dark forever. But now I realize that I was passing through a great mountain, thick and deep, but there was another side….eventually.

The book of James tells me that God exalts those who humble themselves before Him. There came countless times that I really felt there was nothing I could do but humble myself before Him. I had nothing else to give, nothing to go on; my sin was glaring. I stunk of it! And yet here I am, on this other side, and still in the physical place that I wanted to leave… with many of the same people who I didn’t know how I’d ever have REAL relationships with… this place which I thought could never understand me and which I did not want to define me…. And yet now… I am part of the history of it. As God was forging me and making me, even though I thought I was doing nothing, somehow, I was shaping the people and places around me, and they were shaping me. And in all the tumult and crashing and backtracking and redoing and apologizing and forgiving and working through anger and grief….God tilled a ground…  a ground where He is doing something new, something that requires faith, hard work, and lots of guts… something that certainly isn’t the easy way out… and it’s right here, where we’ve been. He’s been working the soil…. for 10 years… working the soil…. and now He pushes us onward.

There are a million and one different ways I could have gone in life after moving to New York. The options are endless. I could have moved on to another city, stayed here and switched career paths, found another church, dated a different guy… I could have chosen not to marry Jesse. I knew marrying him would tie me to a place that was, at the time, hard to be in. I’ve often wondered if I made mistakes.. if this was God’s will. I knew it was in the beginning, I’d think, but maybe I messed up somewhere… maybe I got off track…

It’s easy to push such a thought aside when I look at Eli. But I don’t want to take the easy way out even in my mind! I want to really know that I believe in the outcome, the circumstances, that have made up my life… Was it God’s best? God’s will? Could there have been something else?

At the end of the day, when I read the Scripture, when I see God’s agenda for Redemption of the world, for His glory to be made known, for ‘’abundant life’’ to be lived, when I see His commission for us to be disciples who make disciples and people who love people… I know this was right. Exactly right. Because this life has shaped my core. I am different. In a sense, I am the same work He began many years ago, but He has shaped me in an incredible way I wouldn’t have imagined. What matters to me in life has changed. What is important to me has changed. My relationships have changed. I am more abledtoday to give myself to others. When I was 25, I had passion that drove me to sacrifice and pursue ministry. Today, I have conviction that is fueled by a deep knowledge, something that feels much more solid. Life isn’t about creating a name for ourselves or an identity. Life isn’t about being validated or understood. Life isn’t about being loved or praised. Life isn’t about realizing our dreams, having them become reality. No. Life is about understanding what matters for eternity. Life is about being grounded in that and committed to that. At any moment, all our comforts could be gone. There is very little that separates us from those half-a-world-away who die of hunger and disease or find themselves in the toils of war. Life is much more than the coffee I’m going to drink in the morning, the vacation I want to take next year, the new ministry I’d like to create, the book I could potentially write, the degrees I could earn for myself, or where I could retire. Life is about more than arriving somewhere or having people see that you have made a life for yourself. Life is more than about being satisfied with oneself… because if we are honest, we are never really satisfied. We always do want a little more in time.

Life is about realizing that in the end, our life is better lived when we hold onto it a little less. For he who loses his life for my sake will find it, says Christ. That’s probably because the lives we create for ourselves are so meaningless in the first place.

Seward Park Community Halloween Party

10 years. New York City. I could have created a great many different types of ‘lifes’ for myself… but this one… this one that God constructed… that seemed haphazard and by chance so often, the non-glorious one that will win no academy award and make no New York Times bestselling book, this life… not my own, but a living sacrifice…. This life is where I find the mighty hand of God, rising from ashes and dry bones, doing the unfathomable, creating something out of nothing. His thoughts are not my thoughts after all, and I am thankful for that.