At 28, Meg Loney — formerly the drummer for folk-rock trio Wildwood Kin — has taken a dramatic recent direction in life.
Last 12 months she joined YMCA Exeter, a Christian charity working with young people prone to homelessness.
Today, Meg devotes herself to supporting a few of society’s most vulnerable youth. But her spiritual journey has been removed from straightforward and this wasn’t in any respect where she expected to find yourself – actually, quite the other!
Although she grew up in a churchgoing family, she stopped attending on the age of 13, across the time her parents’ marriage was deteriorating.
Initially drugs and truancy were an escape but even these began to feel empty. The lowest point got here when she was 17 and had just come out of an especially unhealthy relationship. It was a dark time when she felt like she couldn’t even trust her friends.
“Everyone was just using one another to get money for drugs. I felt like I had hit all-time low,” she said.
But an unexpected turn of events happened when she stumbled across Red Moon Rising by Pete Greig.
“I’ve at all times loved to read. I’ll read anything,” laughs Meg. “There was a book lying in our house that my Dad was reading. I believe I’d run out of the rest to read, so I picked it up and commenced reading it.
“It was amazing. I began reading about individuals who were following Jesus, living selfless lives, focused on prayer and experiencing miracles. It was honest. Gritty. God was changing lives. It made me begin to imagine again that perhaps the world can change through God.”
Reading their stories inspired Meg to select up her old youth Bible again and as she read, she continued to be transformed.
“As I started to read, I discovered there was life within the Bible and it was relevant,” says Meg. “I started to feel a way of peace that I just didn’t understand.”
Not long after, Meg joined her dad at a 24/7 prayer meeting. It was a big moment in her life.
“I remember attending to the 24/7 prayer room and walking in,” says Meg. “People were lying on the ground. Some people were crying. Others were playing tambourines. It looked just like the house parties I used to be used to, but nobody was on drugs, as a substitute, there was this overwhelming sense of affection and peace.”
A bunch of elderly women got here over to wish for her.
“They had never met me before and there was no way they may have known anything about me,” says Meg.
“But they began prophesying that I’d make music that may exit to the nations. Something in my spirit resonated with their words.
“I started to think that if God is chatting with them about my life, he must care about me. That was the beginning of my return to Jesus.”
Gradually she left behind the party and drug culture from her past, and immersed herself increasingly in her faith.
Around that point, she and her cousins formed a band, Wildwood Kin. It started off as a little bit of fun but after they landed a record deal, it led to international tours across the UK, Europe and US spanning eight years.
But just when life seemed good, heartbreak got here when she learned in 2016, while on tour, that her brother had taken his own life.
“It was incredibly intense and hard,” explains Meg. “I believe the music industry is sort of unforgiving to grief. I carried on for one more 4 years within the band but began to feel increasingly unsettled.”
When the lockdown got here in 2020, the restrictions meant she couldn’t tour with the band. But ultimately, the forced break was exactly what she needed, giving her the space to grieve and process her brother’s death.
She also threw herself right into a theology degree and she or he relished the possibility to learn with others in community.
In 2021, she moved back in along with her dad in Exeter and spent the following two years as a youth employee at St Basil’s Church. Her return to her roots was unexpected to say the least.
“I believed God was going to place me someplace else. Ever since I used to be 18 I’d been saying to God that he could call me anywhere but Exeter!”
But it was her time with St Basil’s Church that gave her an actual heart for vulnerable young people.
“I just felt so sad that there are young people on this world who haven’t been told they’re loved and cared for,” says Meg.
“I’d always pray that God would bring people to serve these young people. Two months before the job got here up at YMCA Exeter I discovered myself crying every night for young people in Exeter.”
YMCA Exeter provides a supportive, inclusive community where young people can thrive. Meg now serves as a support employee — a job that brings together her passion for ministry and heart for young people.
Despite not being what she planned for her life, she will see God’s hand in it.
“When I got the job, I knew it was God’s doing. Pastorally, this role could be very much like a youth employee. But I felt God clearly tell me this could be a stretching time and it definitely is,” she says.
“I like how the support here is so people-focused and led by the residents. It’s all about adapting to the needs of residents, listening to them and understanding what interests them.
“When I hear what residents have been through it amazes me to see their resilience and listen to them bravely share their stories. You see incredible breakthroughs in young people’s lives as they start to open up and trust again.”
Meg has experienced each the depths of despair and the transformation of religion in Jesus. She hopes the young people she works with can know that very same life-changing power.
“My testimony was finding safety within the Holy Spirit and my hope and prayer is that residents get to experience that too.”
