Katie Meyler, Standing in the Egg Aisle and 1 Million Dollars

A few years ago I was in the grocery store standing in front of the eggs. A beautiful light, a girl with wavy long hair was walking towards me. I could feel her energy before her hug almost knocked me over. We had met once....a few weeks before at an Indian restaurant where Heartworks was doing a fundraiser for two brothers, Zach and Kyle Ostrander who would die within 2 weeks of each other before 3 months of age of a rare skin disease called EB. (A story for another day) We had only spoken for a few minutes at the restaurant where she told me about the children in Liberia that she was helping, and yet when I stood listening to her in Shop Rite tell me about the child soldier she had waiting for her in the car, I felt I had known her all my life. Maybe this connection came from the fact that we had walked the same halls in grammar school, though many years a part. Maybe it was the restlessness that I saw in her...that something MORE has to be done...what the bleep was everyone in our well off  town doing??? We have roofs over our head...we have more than enough food on our tables....there was so much work to be done...what was everyone doing with themselves? But what I really think it was, and I found this out after numerous conversations in the years to come- is that we have both always felt like misfits until we found our causes and were given the chance to focus on something more than ourselves. I invited Katie to a Heartworks meeting..."come be with like minded women" I heard myself saying. She walked away, or should I say danced away, as she often does, past the containers of chocolate milk and I knew my life was expanding. I knew I was on the right track, that if my path would cross with someone so ambitious and so real, I must be doing something right. I was grateful that I was in a place that I could relate to her. That I understood her passion. I felt less alone in the world that night, standing there in front of the eggs with the young and beautiful Katie Meyler.

Katie came to the next Heartworks meeting...Where Katie met Katie Borghese and Kelly Kettersen...Both of which encouraged her to start an official non-profit. Both of which became members of her Advisory Board and both of which stood on stage with her last night when her organization More Than Me WON A MILLION DOLLARS from Chase Bank on the American Giving Awards.

Those of us who know her, and Im sure those who don't,  feel healed just by watching her tonight. I have a friend who wiped out on her deck the other night and smashed up her face. I know tonight healed her. A woman called me 2 minutes after the announcement was read, she knew a teenager who attempted suicide last week. I could hear in her shouting that she saw good in the world again. My girls watched Katie and understood that they sit in the same classrooms where Katie sat- where she struggled as a "looser" as she would put it- with her bowl haircut and hand me down clothes...I said - "Look at her girls, thats what a loser looks like"
I pray to have the courage to be a loser- to just be who I am without ego or concern for fitting in with the mainstream. If Katie Meyler sees herself as a looser...I want to be a looser too.

Things have been feeling very whacked out lately. Lately It feels like most everyone has lost their minds.  My friend Holly stated with great clarity that purhaps the reason for this is a combination of Hurricane Sandy, the recent election, the unemployment situation and people just feeling off balance in general. The energy was starting to whack me out a bit in the beginning of the week. Heartworks knows of  sooooo many families we could be reaching out to and it seems like there is crisis and suffering all around us. And the truth is that there is a tremendous amount of suffering going on in the world. But what we seem to miss at times is that it is the suffering that connects us.  Its what we all have in common, the collective struggle to find God, be at peace with our own brokeness and to love each other even though we are all going to have to say goodbye one day. And that day may be tomorrow. The uncertainty of things can paralyze us if we think to much about it. This is where the choice comes to allow the suffering to give us life or cause us to walk around in a fog of disconnection. Katie Meyler chooses LIFE. She chooses to be real and alive and authentic. I love her and love that she is at home on stage on national television and at home sleeping on the side of the road in Liberia. She is at home because she knows who she is. Thank you Katie for letting us know you too.
MORE THAN ME ROCKS! And so do the other 24 organizations Chase Bank honored tonight!