Portland and Cake

Holy Cow.
Im in love....The only thing that could make this trip better would be Dreamrider (Thats the station wagon we were supposed to buy and drive out here.) We are currently in Portland Oregon where we are staying with one of Lindseys friends from martha's vineyard. She is really cool and I feel like I could dedicate an entire blog to her and how cool she is. It is so nice to have someone to show us around and take us to the best parts of the city. Today we went to a coffeeshop (of course) and a thrift store, an amazing Mexican resturant, and to a waterfall.
I dont really know what it is about this place taht I love so much, but I do. I think part of it is the atmosphere. Everyone is laid back and pretty friendly. Ive never really been out to this part of the country and I think that is a crime. I wish I was a writer so that I could explain all of this better. I want to describe the beauty mixed with the culture as well as the roadtrip dynamic.

I am glad that we chose to stay here for a few days. Alina will be showing us more tomorrow and Lindsey's other friend Marc will be coming up to visit as well. (This will be good for balldick/Marc Trembly) We have been so fortunate to have met all of these people along the way. These people are connected to us in some way (usually through Lindsey, but we have been so blessed with amazing people. We stayed with complete strangers the first night like I said before, then we stayed with Aunt Joyce (so cute), then Marc's parents, and now Alina and the people she lives with. I love that people are willing to open their homes and share their lives with us even if it is for only a short time.

Well theres the german chocolate cake...Gotta go (What you must know is that we really havent eaten a meal until today and this cake is...well icing on the cake....Needless to say, its not tuna and I am excited:)...)

Joy in the Journey

Yesterday was my favorite day so far. I drove first and we headed to Yellowstone. Cody to Yellowstone was once referred to by Teddy Roosevelt as the most beautiful 52 miles he had ever been through, and I agree. I was in complete awe of God and Wondered why more people do not live/visit and talk about this beautiful place. Im not sure, but I think when we die or are raptured, it is possible that God will just take us to Yellowstone. There was Construction for the first 6 miles and I didnt even care. I sat there as we listened to eastmountainsouth and Sigur Ross and just enjoyed the beauty around me. I have never felt more relaxed. usually when the three of us are going through beautiful mountains or something cool, we make comments or giggle(Yes, Marc giggles), or we just keep saying wow. Yesterday was different. Lindsey and I were in the front and Im pretty sure Marc was sleeping. We were sitting there in silence but it wasnt awkward, it was necessary. There were no words and anything we could say would ruin the moment. I have never experienced Beauty in this way before. It was so natural and rugged. Beauty isnt always soft. Mountains amaze me. From afar, they look so peaceful and gentle, but the truth is, they are hard and made of rock and dirt. Trees make the mountain look so delicate but when you get close they are prickly and rough. This has to symbolize something but I will leave it to the songwriter. For now just know that yesterday there was joy in the journey, We were not at our final destination and we still have about 5 more hours of driving today, but yesterday was beautiful.
PS, Ryland, we saw a black bear on the way out of Yellowstone. We never would have seen it if we had taken the right way out of the park, but I guess thats the consolation prize for the extra hours in the car.


"They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now, They'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
Come down now, But we'll stay."

Joy in the Journey

Yesterday was my favorite day so far. I drove first and we headed to Yellowstone. Cody to Yellowstone was once referred to by Teddy Roosevelt as the most beautiful 52 miles he had ever been through, and I agree. I was in complete awe of God and Wondered why more people do not live/visit and talk about this beautiful place. Im not sure, but I think when we die or are raptured, it is possible that God will just take us to Yellowstone. There was Construction for the first 6 miles and I didnt even care. I sat there as we listened to eastmountainsouth and Sigur Ross and just enjoyed the beauty around me. I have never felt more relaxed. usually when the three of us are going through beautiful mountains or something cool, we make comments or giggle(Yes, Marc giggles), or we just keep saying wow. Yesterday was different. Lindsey and I were in the front and Im pretty sure Marc was sleeping. We were sitting there in silence but it wasnt awkward, it was necessary. There were no words and anything we could say would ruin the moment. I have never experienced Beauty in this way before. It was so natural and rugged. Beauty isnt always soft. Mountains amaze me. From afar, they look so peaceful and gentle, but the truth is, they are hard and made of rock and dirt. Trees make the mountain look so delicate but when you get close they are prickly and rough. This has to symbolize something but I will leave it to the songwriter. For now just know that yesterday there was joy in the journey, We were not at our final destination and we still have about 5 more hours of driving today, but yesterday was beautiful.
PS, Ryland, we saw a black bear on the way out of Yellowstone. We never would have seen it if we had taken the right way out of the park, but I guess thats the consolation prize for the extra hours in the car.


"They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now, They'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
Come down now, But we'll stay."

Here we come

Well we are well on our way. I have to be brief, but we are in Cody, WY. We will be heading to Yellowstone tomorrow and then to Spokane, WA. We started yesterday morning. The "plan" was to arrive at Mt Rushmore and camp out and then head out in the morning. What we didnt know is that we are idiots and that would not have made any sense because its farther than we (I) thought and so we decided we would stop sooner. Then God placed Peter Anderson in our lives and he happed to have a good friend in Sioux Falls, SD which is about 5 hours sooner and a much more convenient place to stop. So there we were at 9:00 at night at a complete strangers parents house. Sure we are planning on staying with other complete strangers but not unannounced, you know. So that was fun. Today we had more ground to cover than we "planned" because of the deter to Daves. Today I saw Mt Rushmore and was amazed. I loved it. We were all sort of Crappy today but not at each other....we were quiet/PMSing(not Marc)/needed to have a good poop/been traveling for 2 days straight. We were hot, tired, hungry, and quiet. I remember getting alittle better when we were going through the mountains that I didnt expect to drive through. Lindsey and I of course had a great talk about our futures and how the most ideal thing would be to just go, and then think about what we've done.
Hey Im sleepy. We have a lot of ground to cover in the words of Lindsey's aunt and Marc wants to check her mail.
I will be better at this blog later when we get Wireless in Seattle.
Megbow the adventurous

Tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow

"Today is
Where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten"

No time to write, tomorrow we begin the roadtrip. I will keep you posted.

Rejection

Today my inspiration comes from what will hopfully be my last job rejection. Today I got a call from another hospital in Kansas City. Once again, they will be unable to hire me until I pass my boards. I totally understand...I wouldnt hire me either. About a month ago, I failed my nursing licensure test. After I found out, I sat there and thought hmmmm what should I do now. I called my friend Lindsey on my way home from work and she was like well, lets talk this through. What we came down to was, Ive been bitching about nursing for at least 6 months now and maybe this was the last "sign" that I need to do something else (at least for right now). Honestly, if I had not signed my lease in KC, I would have been on the phone immediatly figuring out how to be assigned to a mission corps, but there was a reason I signed that lease. I am supposed to be in Kansas City. I dont know why yet, but I will let you know. All that said you might ask...."Megbow, why did you go ahead and apply at hospitals if you had such a peace about the test results?" I will tell you. I have spent more time helping others feel ok about the results than even caring myself. It gets frustrating and sometimes I even check to make sure Im not making it up, but Im not,,,,I seriously am not bothered. I lost a lot of pride last semester thanks to nursing, marcus, and Mikes Hard lemonade so maybe that has a lot to do with it, or maybe this really is not the end of the world.
So, about these rejection phone calls. I felt a lot of pressure from many places to still apply for nursing jobs because to those sources, it made a lot of sense. I was trained as a nurse and I should try to get on at a hospital. However after painful interviews and phone calls from people who made me feel like an idiot for even trying, I remembered once again, nursing is not the end all for me. Yes I have goals and this might be a slight detor, but I honestly believe that God called me to this training for a reason, but I believe it is the same God who gave me peace about what could possibly be the most embarrasing thing that has ever happened to me and that requires closer examination.
I recently talked to a counselor from the University of Cinncinnati about their masters program in Midwifry. Dont you need your license for that meg? Im glad you asked...Of course I need my license which is why Im going to retake my test, but I wont be working in a hospital unless something changes. I am going to look for a job at Starbucks or something like it and save some money, take my test, apply for the program, perhaps do some volunteer work and become a midwife without working on a medsurg floor where I have to sacrifice my calming, gentle spirit and yell at old people because they cannot hear me.
Well I have to go now because we are having a good bye dinner for me.
Love
Megan

Captivating

I am currently reading the book Captivating. I had heard of it before, but never really wanted to read it. I figured I would just be annoyed and disagree with a lot of it. I havent finished it yet and honestly, it hasnt said anything that I have not heard before or done anything to change my life, but as I have been reading it, it has made me examine some areas of my life that I would much rather keep on neglecting and pretend dont exist.
The first issue is what it means to be feminine. I dont know when I started rejecting femininity in my life, but I know it happened somewhere. There are things about me that are different than other girls. I dont like jewelry, I am not giggly, I burp and fart without much dicernment, I pride myself on packing extremely light for trips, showers and makeup are optional and sometimes I talk sort of dirty.
Last fall I read a book that talked about women needing to guard their feminine mystique, and that really made me stop and think about some of the ways I act and maybe why I am the way I am. I remember being little and always being told I was just like my dad. I looked like him and had his personality. I have all sisters and being the middle child, something has to be different so I think I took on the role of the son in a lot of ways. The only redeeming factor for me was the fact that I pretty much suck at being competitive and my younger sister took over in that arenea.
I am not sure why I took so much pride in being different and not girly, but it really did define me for a long time, at the same time however, I still wanted to be beautiful. I always wanted people to like me. And maybe my goal was to know that I was being liked for my personality and my humor and not for superficial reasons. I think that is a good theory, but like all insecurities, it needs to be reevaluated once discovered.
So now I have to decide what is feminine about me without becming fake. I dont want to buy into an idea or societal pressures or even try to be what people expect. Somehow I have to figure out what it means to be feminine and beautiful without gettting a personality transplant or changing into something I am actually not. (Please dont take any of this to mean that I am feeling pressured into becoming something else. I am just begining to notice areas of my life that were created out of fear and compensation and I want to become confident in who I am rather than trying to prove myself or something like that)

The next thing that I started to examine as I read this book is my relationship with men. The book talks about the "man's role" in each of our lives and how we grow up needing to be told that we are beautiful, and that determines our relationships with men in the future. I believe a lot of what she says in the book because as a female I have learned, sometimes inconciously, the effects of men on my life. I have begun to notice how extremely and painfully awkward I can be around men. Part of that is my personality and just the fact that I am somewhat introverted and reserved and the fact that I didnt have brothers, but I think some of it has to do with men from my past. I really need to think through this more, but I just wanted to journal some of this and maybe as time goes on I can start to recognize changes in myself.

Like I said before, most of this is just what I started to think about as I have been reading this book and I am sure anyone who has read it took something much different from it and thats ok.

PS, I am so excited about the roadtrip. A week from right now we will be on day one....and in two weeks I will be worshiping in the same room as one of my favorite authors, if he is at church that day.

Motorcycle Diaries

Well I finally did it. I watched the motorcycle diaries. (this does not mean I wont read the book) I was forced to watch it alone in my bedroom because after 10 minutes my dad said, "this is stupid" To which I replied as intellecutally as a Tipton Co girl can (I was after all watching a movie with subtitles) "You're stupid"
Anyway, it was great and inspirational. I remember Paul Dawsons reaction to the movie after he had seen it. He was very happy and he said he wanted to go on a roadtrip and, I assume, to become like Che. Who wouldnt feel that way (besides Daddy of course) Since we are getting ready for this trip, I knew I should rent it. There are so many parts that I thought were incredible. I love the way he sees people and the way he is so honest. I love that he was a doctor and that he had such a useful skill to use. I love the scene where he swims across the river, asthma and all, just to be with the patients that he loves on his birthday. I started thinking about how his friend and everyone on the "healthy" side were discouraging him and yelling for him to come back. For a while he is alone in his decision. they think he is an idiot for risking his life. Then all of a sudden, the patients see him coming and realize who it is and they start encouraging him. Once he makes it, they help him up and everyone is cheering. Even the people that started out against his idea were cheering him on. His friend even makes the comment, "I knew he could do it" That is sort of how I feel at times. I feel misunderstood and discouraged by the very people who one day will tell me how great they think I am and what a wonderful thing Ive done. Not just with the roadtrip but with other things.
I was talking with an older friend the other day about some things we disagree on. It was more a discussion between andrea and the friend, but Draba was drowning in her argument so I was helping her to articulate a little better. During the discussion the friend kept referring to the fact that I shouldnt be here. I should be on a mission field somewhere. There is so much more that I could say about that conversation, but for now, I will say that I agree. I wish I could "go" and "do" but for whatever reason, I am going to be in Kansas City for awhile. I need to study. I need to become useful. And more than anything, I need to realize that suffering people are all around me. Sometimes this means denying myself certain things in order to live more simply. Sometimes it will mean spending time with people when I would rather be somewhere else or with other people. It will mean being uncomfortable at times. This year is going to change me, prepare me, to break me down a little more if that is possible. This trip is going to prepare me also and change me.

"This is not a tale of heroic feats. Its about two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.....Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me anymore, at least I'm not the same me I was." ~Motorcycle diaries

Whats all this about a roadtrip?

As I am preparing for this upcoming roadtrip, financially as well as mentally and physically, I have to ask myself (mainly because everyone else does) why are we doing this. A few months ago, I was sitting in my living room mapping out the girls vacation that I was supposed to go on with my family. We were going to the East so when I was done, I decided to make a trail to the west. This of course was just a dream and I figured Id have to wait until I was older and probably married before I found someone that I could make go with me.
During second semester of my senior year, a little peice of my life that I have named "the pits of Hell" I met the most wonderful person. Lindsey Czechowicz and I became friends while we werent looking. One day during a meal in the Nash banquet hall, I mentioned my dream for whatever reason, and her eyes got huge and she exclaimed that that was also a dream she had. Then she said, "MEGBO, LETS DO IT!" I was shocked. My dreams never become reality, especially big ones like this. Was I brave enough to do it, was I going to allow myself to take the adventure of a lifetime even if it wasnt the most structured thing in all the world....Maybe

From that time on, we talked about the roadtrip and the more we talked the more it became a reality. I read more books last semester than Ive probably read in my whole life. A few of them were books about roadtrips or people living simply. Whatever they were about, they inspired me to really want to try this. My favorite author is Donald miller. The first bok of his that I read was in one day on my way home from alabama. One of his books is about a roadtrip from Texas to Portland. He has made me fall in love with a place I have never seen. A good part of the desire for this trip stems from just wanting to see Portland and Seattle and everything in between. Do I hope to meet Don, OF COURSE. Do I think he will be so excited about me and lindsey and want to come back with us and sit at Moon Monkey for hours and talk about life, love and other mysteries, YES. And do I think my name will appear in his next book, WHY NOT?
But is that the only reason we are going, HECK NO. I need this, Lindsey needs this. I need to know that I can do it. I need to discover something, and if I already knew what it was, I wouldnt be looking for it would I? Is this trip at all irresponsible or frivolous? I dont think so. Its one of the most grown up things Ive ever done. Lindsey said something the other day about changing the world on our road trip. My response was, we might not change the world in those two weeks, but it will inevitably change each of us, and I believe we will be much more useful in changing the world as a result!
Expect great things to come!
Megbo

the opener

So I wanted a blog.
I will mainly use this to post updates on my life for anyone who is interested, but maybe I will also come up with another use for it as well. Today I just got beck from Kansas City, MO where I will be moving soon with my dear friend Rozalinda Rosner. "I am excited, but scared" if I may quote the lovely Lauren J. Widner Boehme. Im glad to get out of my hometown. I think Jesus explained it best when he said a prophet in his home town recieves no honor or something to that effect. I love my family, but the roles are hard to define when I cant let myself change and be the person I have become and am becoming. It might not make sense, but I think this is a natural part of life. The part where I leave and find myself and learn how to pay bills.
I dont have a job yet. I know it would make sense to get a job in a hospital sense that was my major and all, but thats not happening. I guess the real question is, do I trust God enough to wait patient ly for direction in this area. Well I didnt trust him today so I guess I will try harder tomorrow. I want to believe that God can use me, but it's hard when I dont know exactly who "me" is. Hopefully I will know a little better after the upsoming roadtrip. Stay tuned. you wont want to miss the roadtrip entries.
Megan