Being in London has meant a lot of alone time. I have my own room and bathroom. I spent a lot of time in classes without anyone I knew. And on the days I had my internship, I was so tired that I would come straight home from work.
This has left me a lot of time to spend with Jesus. That being said, I definitely do not spend enough time with Him. If I'm being honest, I get into this cycle of feeling good on my own, getting wrapped up in my hopes and dreams and plans, and kind of forgetting that He's there. Nevertheless, He still welcomes me with open arms and continues to teach me. So here's what I've been learning. 1. A Garland of Crowns I was doing a plan with She Reads Truth on Job, and something about reading Job 38 this time around really got my attention. When I began, the page in my Bible was basically blank, but if you look at it now, there are countless notes and highlights and circles. By this point, Job has lost his children, his home, his business, his friends, and his health, and he's wondering why out of all people, he should have to suffer like this. Chapter 38 is God's response. I love how much authority is in all of the LORD's statements, that this is His final word, and there is no need for further conversation. Even though these questions are directed at Job, I feel like they're also pointed towards me and my controlling nature. Where was I when the earth was created? (vs. 4) Have I allowed the dawn and the sunrise to know exactly when they're supposed to happen? (vs. 12) Have I seen the gates of death, or walked the bottom of the ocean, or told lightning where to strike, or led forth constellations? Yeah...no. I love how these questions reveal how vast and grand God is, yet how detailed and observant He chooses to be. God asks Job if he is able to lead forth Mazzaroth in their season (vs. 32), which many scholars think is a constellation. It roughly translates to 'garland of crowns' and I think that is so poetic. (God's creativity really comes through in places like this and I am HERE FOR IT.) God is not a Santa Claus that we only come to when we want something or a teddy bear that we only pray to when we think we've been wronged. That is focusing too much on ourselves. He is so powerful, so wise, so expansive, incomprehensibly good and just and loving and so many other things that I cannot even put into words. I could spend this entire post just talking about adjectives of God!! Wow He is so good and so in control of my life, of politics, of my safety. It's something I need constant reminder of. 2. House on a Hill When I say that 'House on a Hill,' the title track of Amanda Cook's newest album, wrecked me, I am not exaggerating in the slightest. I sat at my desk crying my eyes out for a solid half hour. I really recommend that everyone listen to it. It was a much-needed reminder that God doesn't "put up" with anything about me. It was a reminder that He is everything I need, and that when I follow Him, everything else really does fall into place. He comes to our own personal houses on our own personal hills and meets us in our depression, our loneliness, and our embarrassment and walks with us as we deal with them. Um...hello?! What kind of all-powerful king and God does that?! Having the song itself be so slow and peaceful makes listening to it an act of rest. It's beautiful. 3. Sunday's Coming Since I've come to London, I've been attending one of the campuses at HTB, and I think it is my favorite church that I have ever been a part of. I am so sad to have to leave it!! On Friday, I attended the alternative Good Friday service, which was made up of worship, a message, and creative responses to the Gospel (including a dance, an acoustic version of 'Nothing But the Blood,' and the first half ( ;) ) of a video). I love pausing at Good Friday. It was such a traumatic and horrific event, that I think it's important for us as a privileged, Western church to sit face-to-face with it. Thinking about the horror of the cross, in a way, makes Jesus seem more human. It is the climactic event that most explicitly shows us just how much Jesus loves us. The Romans were the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the entire planet in 33 AD, and crucifying Jesus was the most entertaining and painful thing they could do to Him. He aligned Himself with prostitutes, outcasts, and the oppressed. He wasn't at all attractive. He was born to an unwed mother. And on top of that, He came to claim His Kingdom on a donkey, symbolizing peace instead of war. I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm not convinced someone like this wouldn't make me turn and walk in the other direction. During the sermon on Friday, our speaker asked how such a man could end up as the most wanted person in Jerusalem, hanging on a cross between two criminals in front of the whole entire nation, naked and beaten to the point of being unrecognizable. It makes no sense for an all-powerful God to let Himself come down to earth to do this, and it's scandalous for a King to choose love instead of power. But that's exactly what He did for us. For you. For me. But y'all. SUNDAY IS COMING. The Resurrection. OH BOY GET READY. The Resurrection makes me so excited. The pinnacle of our faith, the reason I choose to get out of bed in the morning. The reason I can smile after being made fun of for sticking with Jesus, the reason I have joy and energy and LIFE. WOW. Jesus rose from the dead, appeared to women before anyone else even though women in the 1st century were unreliable witnesses (He didn't care. What a dude). He appeared to His disciples and left the early church the Holy Spirit to guide us until He comes back. He constantly chose the dirtiest, poorest, shameful nobody's to do His work. I have never, ever wanted anything more than to be used by Him. I can literally feel myself getting more excited as I type this because, friends, this is the reason I am alive!!! This is the reason I WANT to be alive!!! I feel most like myself when I am doing His work. When you've experienced His presence, literally nothing else, not even persecution or even death, matters. Don't you want to feel like that too?
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It may surprise you to know that I haven't done a lot of shopping since coming to London. So, since I've only had access to more of a smaller wardrobe, I've been getting creative with the same pieces. I'd thought I'd show you my go-to outfits for the spring, and I hope they give you some inspiration if you feel like you're in a fashion rut. In addition, I'll give you my #1 tip for never feeling like you have nothing to wear! (Also, I'm gonna go ahead and address the horrible setup of this lookbook: I'm too scared to take pictures alone outside, and I don't have a photographer SO this is what we're stuck with for now. I'll do one this summer that's better - I promise!) One of my favorite ways to make an outfit a little more quirky is to incorporate some fun socks. I'm pretty sure these are from Target but I can't find a link to give you! I like the pop of color that the turtleneck gives the first outfit, and having a cropped jean jacket instead of a baggier one makes it a little more classy. If you have a jean jacket preference, let me know! For the second outfit, the mock neck striped tank adds a little more visual interest than a regular top would. I can't wait to swap the jeans for high rise shorts. This turtleneck has become one of my favorite pieces. I literally wear it all the time. I really like wearing this satin tank over it to add another texture to the look, and of course, wearing funky socks ups the fun factor! If you're somewhere that's finally getting warm, you can switch the turtleneck for a tee shirt. I haven't been able to wear this one yet since it's still too chilly for short sleeves, but I'm definitely gonna wear it when the weather gets warmer. Super simple, also kind of patriotic. #Murica. These two are more girly options. Midi skirts are super popular right now, and pairing it with a tee shirt tones it down. I actually wore this to church last week, and even though it is more of a statement than I normally wear, the fact that I wore it and didn't care what other people thought made me feel so powerful.
I LOVE the color and the cold shoulder details of the sweater in the second outfit! You can definitely swap the skirt for jeans and throw a jacket on top if you want. I've been really into cooler colors since figuring out I'm cool toned, so I would add my green utility jacket. So...as promised, here's my favorite way to make sure going in my closet always feels like shopping. On my Pinterest, I made a section under my Fashion board called I Actually Own This, and when I know I love a certain piece of clothing, I just look up "black turtleneck outfits" or "midi skirt outfits" and save them to the board! So many different options come up and I've gotten so much inspiration. From there, I can see if there's a particularly trendy combination with pieces I already have, or it gives me inspiration for what to buy in the future! I hope you liked this! Tag me in your spring ootd posts, I wanna see them all. :) I can't believe my time in London is half-way over. More than half actually. I have really, truly learned to love living here and I can see myself moving back in the future. Mainly, my thoughts and feelings about this whole experience have calmed down a lot, and my view of London has become very similar to my view of North Carolina (which I guess is a good and a bad thing). I have my routines and my personal favorites. I can give people directions, and recommend restaurants, and I can get to many of the places I'm going without looking at the tube map. My favorite moments are those times when it hits me that I'm actually living in London, and I get that wide-eyed wonder all over again. And then that wonder turns into panic because I feel like there's still so much that I haven't done! This city consistently meets my expectations with how much I enjoy the places I always go and the things I always do, and with how much fun I have exploring to try new foods and routes. I love just getting lost and seeing how I can get home from wherever I am. (I mean, I always have my google maps, but for the most part I just wander.) I'll end on one last fun note. I started compiling these lists of things I like about England vs. North Carolina...what do you think?
It feels pretty weird that I can now say I'm in my twenties. I'll be saying that for 10 years! I know that I turned 20 more than a little while ago (my half birthday was less than two weeks ago actually), but it's still a pretty monumental event. So, in celebration, I thought it would be fun to share some of the things that I learned during my years as a teenager in classic mushy-gushy Chloe style. I was a teenager for seven years, so here are my seven lessons.
The biggest lesson I learned was probably that my lifelong, unrelenting feeling of never fitting in actually serves a purpose. That was so type 4 of me I'm so sorry. During my senior year of high school, I was working on my portfolio for creative writing and listening to one of my Bethany Dillon CDs. (Definitely check her out, I love her). It is fairly important to note that my project was related to Narnia, which is a detail I actually just now realized. I was kind of zoned out as I sketched, but the last line of one of the the songs caught my attention: "I've always known this wasn't home." I knew I had to replay it. Long story short, 10 minutes later, I was crying my eyes out and my mom was really frustrated because they had to wait for me before we could all eat dinner. As followers of Christ, we are foreigners on earth. So it was like, all of a sudden, everything made sense: how ostracized I felt, the time I cried myself to sleep because of loneliness, all the times I felt a punch in the gut because my friends made plans and didn't invite me. Even though these things weren't world-ending, they felt like a reflection on me and I didn't know how to fix myself. Surprise! I don't need to fix myself. These feelings are all just reminders that my home is in Heaven. It's why Ecclesiastes 3:11 ("He has set eternity in their hearts") has such a deep, inexplicably important meaning to me. It's why I've been obsessed with Narnia and the idea that we have a greater destiny elsewhere since before I could understand the Gospel. This truth has brought so much beauty from pain in the last four years. I've learned how much I love my sister. She truly is my best friend (she also hates gushy stuff hehe), and I am so appreciative of how much she puts up with my crap, my endless talks about Marvel, and how much she supports my creativity. She is the smartest, funniest person I know. She is persistent and self-disciplined and has literally had to do physical therapy for, like, seven years and doesn't skip any days, even if it means she has to give up all her free time at summer camp. She's gone through way more than I did when I was her age and has handled it way better than I would have. I realized what I want to do with my life, and in turn, have had to figure out what it means to be in the world and not of it because wow guys, the fashion industry is a broken and hurting place. I learned that it's possible for a guy to be the right guy, just not for you, and that breaking things off doesn't make you a monster. Or (as my mother said), for the guy to be the wrong size of the perfect shoe. I learned how much I value kindness in a man, and that it's not selfish or snobby to have the self-respect to know that I deserve a heck of a lot. I have also started looking at this "perfect shoe" thing in reverse, and I consciously tell myself that I am somebody's perfect woman, I just haven't met him yet. Or have I???? (husband where you at?) Side note: this ties my job and my love life together, but I am so excited to write and live in a city and wear fancy dresses, and I have never been more satisfied with my life. I definitely have a deep, feeling-beyond-words-bring-tears-to-my-eyes desire to get married, but the reality that it may not happen until later than I've always wanted no longer terrifies or depresses me. That is very liberating. I learned that grief does not come as you may expect, because grief cannot be boxed into any one definition. When my grandpa died, I sobbed every night in the shower, but was totally fine the rest of the time. Even though I was emotionless at his visitation, I still stand by my opinion that that night was the closest to Hell I've ever experienced. True beauty has come from his death in the form of me spending more time than ever with my grandma, who is a ROCK STAR and I love her. I am tied with my cousin Josh for most literary and historical grandchild, and my grandma just gave me my grandfather's old copy of Jane Eyre at New Year's. I almost cried. I cannot wait to read it when I get back to North Carolina. It took me literally five months to tackle the balance between God being good and terrible things still happening in the world. I'm not saying I understand it because I will never understand it. I'm saying that I'm at a point where I can admit that they're both true. Hurricane Michael last season destroyed a ton of my family's belongings and has proved to be a terrible inconvenience. When my housemate got diagnosed with brain cancer sophomore year, I was suddenly faced with the difficult reality of my God telling me that He keeps His promises of life and victory, and yet we still had to see her go through treatment and all its ramifications. This whole phase of life without a DOUBT brought me and my housemates closer together than anything else would have because we didn't leave each other's sides for a whole week. It also had its own theme song, Yes and Amen by Housefires, because for some reason, I heard it every other week for those entire five months. It really added to the whole "God is good? But life sucks?" thing happening in my brain. I have learned how much I love my many homes and my many families, and how thankful I am for each of them. My FCA family, my hobbits, my actual biological family: I love you all more than I could ever hope to express. Black Mountain YMCA Center (rip UNCW), Chapel Hill: I love you. I even finally learned to love the Outer Banks, who EVER would've thought that would happen? So, there we go. A lot happened in these seven years. I know a lot is going to happen in the next ten. But how do we deal with that? One day after another until it's time for "What I Learned In My Twenties." |
AuthorI am a September baby, which may be the root of my love for fall. I love dark chocolate, popcorn, and I do actually like brussel sprouts. I'm the kind of person that listens to a Christmas song in September. (But only one. I don't want to ruin the ~magic~). Archives
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