Surf's Up

A very warm hello to all my fellow blog readers! My name is Megan Cormack and I am very pleased to be featured on this amazing blog – can we take a second to recognise the ladies who organise this for our reading? You guys are brilliant, and the blogs so far have been so amazingly beautiful and funny. So far being the key words I think lol, no pressure – right?

So I’m going to jump right in and be so honest with you which I think may make me sweat just a little bit – my Mum would always say, “Ladies don’t sweat, they glisten”. So Mum, I’m glistening writing this! My husband’s name is Stuart, you probably know him, but if you don’t, he is the love of my life, an amazing, thoughtful and attentive husband (well most of the time). I just thought I’d make that clear before we start this story….you’ll see why.

Stuart and I LOVE to travel, any of you who know us are probably completely fed up with our constant stream of travel pictures on Facebook, but we thank you for not deleting us! We would like to have children in the future but before we do we have made it our aim to travel and see the world while we can still afford to. Every penny we have spare goes to our traveling. So let’s get to the story, we were on a cruise, our first ever cruise! We loved it, and we were in Asia for the first time!! The cruise started in Singapore, travelled to Thailand for two days, then onto Vietnam and finally halted to a stop in Hong Kong. We were having a beautiful time, enjoying being the only ones on board born in the 90s, or 80s or 70s for that fact haha! When we went on tours, due to our advantage of speediness we were always first off the boat and into a taxi! Perks of being born in the 90’s never ends.

One of our favourite things on the boat was the surf simulator – We spent days surfing and mastering the massive, gnarly waves! Otherwise known as the tiny artificial ones, but I consider it real surfing – right?! Anyways we were getting to be pretty much pros, waiting for someone to scout us out for the next big surf championship. Somewhere in the oceans between Thailand and Vietnam the unthinkable happened….We went, as we had done countless times before to hone our pro surf skills but this day everyone was boogie boarding, so being as skilled as we were (lol) we thought we’d be great! Stuart took his stance, dived in on the boogie board and popped up to his knees like a well-practiced boarder!

My turn was next, I dived in, steadied myself on the wave and popped up to my knees, I was not as skilled it seemed as I got wiped out. I got to my knees in the waves and stood up only to realise my new bathing suit I’d put on that morning may not have been the quality I expected. My top was only protecting the modesty of my belly button and my bottoms….well let’s just say I was not best pleased. A kind bystander handed me a tower as I was manically smiling at all the people in the unusually long line beside the wave machine, pretending nothing was wrong, while everyone laughed ‘with me, not at me’. Nudity? It’s totally fine…not! Meanwhile inside I was literally dying, mortified. I made my way to the edge where Stuart was standing, all the while literally praying the ground would swallow me up, and when I reached him through my fake smile I whispered (as to not let down the persona of ‘totally fine!’) “We need to go right now”. His response I hear you ask? “No? it’s my turn? I’ve been waiting?” and off he went to once again perfect the boogie boarding ways, leaving me trying to sort my bathing suit under my newly gifted towel.

Just to be clear Stuart does care, later I realised he had been filming me but when I fell he turned around to put our camera away and missed the whole ordeal! To this day he wishes it had been on camera, to this day I am celebrating that it’s not.

When I think back on this story it always makes me laugh, but at the same time a very deep pit in my stomach arises, I was SOOO embarrassed! How could I not be? There’s many things in my life that I have felt embarrassed by, some that I have purposefully done and regretted, some situations others have forced me to live, and some, like this one, that have been by absolute complete chance (or a faulty/ill-fitting bathing suit)! Many of these situations in life have left me embarrassed, ashamed and most overwhelmingly, afraid. I suffered for years with my self-worth and my shame and fear of what could happen at any moment. I found myself obsessing over worst case scenarios. But how good is our God? Today I can stand and I can stand free! Maybe not as free as I was on that boat that day….but free indeed! I have learned that through all the embarrassment of life, all the things that unjustly cause me shame, and all the things that ignite fear in my soul have been defeated. I have learned that He has gone before me and that I will get things wrong but that doesn’t make His love for me any less, He will not walk away. I don’t have to be fearful of Him leaving me or deserting me. I don’t have to ask for Him to protect me, He does it because I am His daughter and His creation and He loves me! HE loves ME!

Throughout life I have found it so hard to believe that I’m loved and like a wave over me God has revealed this time and time again. No matter your walk, no matter your shame or embarrassment, He is constant, He is never-ending and true. He will not leave you and he WILL NOT forsake you. In a world where evil is ever present and around us, He is your protection and your shield, cling to Him in times of need for He will fight for you. The road to forgiving yourself is emotional and hard, the road to forgiving others, for me, is much harder but the road to God’s forgiveness is very short. You have it, you’re one sentence away, talk to Him and believe in His love for you, listen to Him as He whispers your worth over and over to you. You are His daughter, you are made in His image, you are loved and accepted by the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords and the Almighty Prince of Peace.

All my love,

​Megs xxx