A Gift of Pearl

O that Pearl of great price! have you found it?

Is the Savior supreme in your love?

O consider it well, ere you answer,

As you hope for a welcome above.

Have you given up all for this Treasure?

Have you counted past gains as but loss?

Has your trust in yourself and your merits

Come to naught before Christ and His cross?

Every once in a while, I feel like God leaves me a breadcrumb on my path, a sort of encouragement that I'm on the right track, even when I can't see him.  This week, the word "struggle" remained on my mind from my previous blog post.  Yesterday, I was struck with a sudden curiosity as to what my name- Megan- meant.  The answer was pretty simple: Megan means pearl.

Pearls, as we all know, come from oysters.  Oysters get an irritating little bit of sand in them, and as a way of dealing with the irritation, coat the sand in layer after layer of nacre. Eventually, enough nacre is coated on the sand that a pearl is formed.

A pearl is a treasure born of struggle.

Futhermore, oysters in their natural environment have to take the materials to make nacre out of the water and environment around it.  This is a long, slow process.  It can take up to 20 years for a pearl to form in nature.  20 years of struggle and irritation to create the beautiful miracle that is a pearl.

My name is Megan.  Megan means pearl.  And you can't be a pearl without struggle.  So maybe, with my struggle, there's a hope of a treasure at the end...

How to Write the Perfect First Blog Post

Google didn't give me many good suggestions when I entered the above into the search bar.  I guess that's the problem with blogs- there's no guarantees that yours will be worth anything.   Especially when the writer is one with as paltry of a resume as mine:
 
Experience: little. As the Patron Saint of Abandoned Blogs, casualties of my laziness/forgetfulness/cowardice lay scattered about the dusty corners of the internet.  I always eventually decide that I never should have fancied myself a writer.


Qualifications? Few.  I am not on top of my Pinterest Game.  I own a sewing machine that I've never used, my husband is the dedicated chef in our home, and I can barely remember to lock the front door before I go to bed at night.


I am, however, good at struggle.  I’m a professional struggle-r. I struggle to figure out who and what and where I’m supposed to be.  I struggle to have faith that God is close.  I struggle to believe that my life is meaningful and that beauty is a part of my inheritance.  I struggle with anxiety and depression, I struggle to find the right medication dosage to manage, and I struggle with feeling guilty that I need to be on medication at all.


Is my struggle worth something to God?  Does it matter to him that sometimes, I feel like I don’t know Him- don’t love Him at all?  I often walk into a church service and feel anxious and overwhelmed.  I rarely share my spiritual life with my non-Christian friends, because I don’t want to sell a product that I don’t feel like I’m using.


To readers looking for spiritual guidance, wise advice, or fearless faith: you will be disappointed here. 


To my fellow strugglers, I say: Welcome.