So What

Get up!!

We have young and vibrant lives ahead of us!

We are just babies!

So what I didn't get into the program I've applied to twice in the past year?!

So what I planned on moving in a couple months and now it maybe a whole year?!

So what if I feel like every dollar I save I only have $0.50?!

I'm still here with my friends & family and the love of my life. I also DO have a job ya know (even if its not exactly the one I would have chosen) and I am getting a paycheck (even if I barely even see any of it).

I have many things to sit and reflect on and be thankful for...guess its just up to me to take that time.

-meg

Love & Freedom

Love...

will not betray you....

dismay....

or enslave you.

It will set you free.

To the greatest love I've ever known...happy first 6 months, Joel and the many, many more to come :)

Adulthood Puberty

Transition

:alteration, change, development, conversion, realignment, shift, turning point, or flux

That I am.

I feel as awkward as I did during middle school and puberty.

I am the "recent college grad, no money or job, living for free off of my parents" stage right now. Although it has a couple of its perks (free cable/internet, also food and gas), I'm still funny right now...with no idea where I'm headed.

I've spent the past 4 years growing and changing, becoming my own. And now as though my wings are fully prepared to fly....I can't.

Oh how bad I want to fly from the nest!! These wings haven't grown for nothing!

Give me liberty or give me death!

But then again....please don't let me drown.

I'm soft and tender. Young and haven't seen the world yet. Innocent, yet mature. Intelligent, yet naive.

My dreams are big, my heart is full, and my hands are ready to get dirty.

My patience is thin, but I can feel that the wait may be....just.... worth it.

meg

Today Finally Came

This little girl received her first play doctor's kit when she was 4.

She loved that it resembled real doctor's so well. It was if she was just like them.

She loved to play with it and even wrote her name all over it so everyone knew it was hers.

She practiced on all her dolls, her little siblings, playmates, and even her parents.

She drew pictures of her working in the hospital and knew that there surely wasn't anything else that she'd rather become.

This little girl soon realized that when anyone asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up nothing else came out besides wanting to be a Nurse.

So in the 3rd grade when 'Career Day' came at school all she needed was to find the right clothes to pull off the nurse-look she so badly wanted.

Time flew by as all the milestones were achieved, then the day arrived where a decision was made to fully pursue the little girl's dream.

She had no idea what it would actually take to get there.

The number of sleepless nights she had.

The countless breakdowns and tears cried reconsidering the dream all together.

The phone calls home saying "I just don't know if I can do this anymore."

All those times she had to stay in while her friends went out and begged her to come too.

The uncertainty of ever being good enough to actually make it.

But...

she did it and the little girl inside of her always knew this day would come.

Megan Marie Stout, BSN, RN :)

Fireworks

Who doesn't love watching fireworks?

This time every year I always wonder to myself why we don't set off fireworks more than once a year.

But this annual celebration keeps their sacredness.

It reminds us of our freedom.

That glorious day when America escaped her bondage.

It's pretty great that centuries afterwards we still celebrate like they did.

Let's burst our souls and cry out our hearts for we are free!

That's probably what they were all thinking then.

And that's what the fireworks represent.

But I long to share our freedom. I want set off fireworks when a young girl is released from her bondage in the sex trade, when a child doesn't have to work in the factory anymore, or when an alcoholic never touches a drink again.

That is the freedom I want to celebrate.

Closure

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you.

Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous.

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today maybe forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be good enough.

Give your best anyway.

In the end, it is between you and Him....It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Teresa

Advice

Here's advice no one has ever told you, but I want you to have:

Go back to all the places you have bad memories of and make newer and better ones.

It may be difficult at first. Those bad memories are there and have been haunting you for quite some time now...But alas! They will quickly fade and be forgotten due to the intentional mission you have made!

I wish I could print mental pictures...but falling asleep with a smile on my face will just have to do for now.

meg