My Story

Want to know why Wide Meadow is a big deal for me? Why claiming this corner of the world for us is a big deal?

Here’s my story.

For too many years I listened to those who treated me like I was too small to do anything significant. That naturally devolved into a belief that I couldn’t accomplish much of anything. So I darted around like a frantic hummingbird, burning off what little energy reserves I had in an attempt to prove everyone (especially me) wrong, under the false belief that if I could DO something “significant,” I’d BE something significant.

I lived like I was a human DO-ing. But I’m not. I’m a human BE-ing.

The funny thing about a belief like that is it leads to self-sabotage. Having to prove “I could do” meant I believed “I can’t do.” If I knew I could, then no one telling me otherwise would have had any effect on me.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Am I the only one?

Well, as you may have guessed, that proving I was worth something through accomplishments didn’t work. One bit. Honestly, when I look back, I thank God that I was too burnt out to accomplish more, because it would’ve taken me even longer to get to the bottom of that empty pipe dream of self-made self-worth, and He knew it.

Finally, I did a small thing: I started to paint, badly, and then, slowly, slightly less badly, and meanwhile, combine it with that thing I do as instinctively as breathing--write. And now this weekend, a new thing: I drop a tiny little website into the ocean of websites. Yes, a very small thing.

A small thing, okay. But this small thing is built on a very big thing that I didn’t have before: BELIEF. Belief planted a tiny growing seed that maybe the things God says about me are true. Belief is a series of tiny choices to cling to the truth of God’s voice over the din of the lying voices that can so quickly become a soundtrack for life in this broken world. It’s a seed that blossoms into a belief in my own calling to do something significant, with a whole new definition of significant than I had before. Because I don’t need to stand on a stage and have 5000 people clap for me in order to feel like I’ve arrived anymore. I don’t need to get on the New York Times best-seller list. I need only to respond to the calling God whispers into my creative heart – for now, it’s write, paint, write, paint. I need only to put in the work to get the writing and painting out there so that those who are meant to see it, will. And I don’t need to worry about the rest, because ultimately, it’s not about me.

What I do can now become the natural flow out of who I am, rather than trying to define who I am by what I do.

So this is the heart of Wide Meadow: I am a beautiful mess. And I’m pretty sure you are your own breathtaking version of a beautiful mess, too. Ultimately, this Meadow is a place where we are discovering who we were created to be, based on truth, not distorted by baggage.

This is a place to rest in the freedom of the perfectly imperfect while reaching up to the God who created us and has fulfilling plans for us.

So wherever you’re at right now, let’s embrace this beautiful reminder from Zechariah:
“Do not despise the small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”