27 & another spin around the sun. This year has flown one into the next and as I begin this one, I can’t help but be oh so grateful for this beautiful life. This year has been wildly steady in many ways, while also a complete uprooting in others. To feel somewhat steady even amidst the circumstantial change feels like a massive growth - this has not been the case for most of my years. 

A few weeks ago, a new and now dear friend of mine asked me if I would be on her podcast - a series about the highs and lows of being in your twenties. While at first I felt massively unqualified to speak at all on how to navigate anything, I decided it would be a good idea to get out all of my journals from age 20 onward — shoutout to young me for keeping them well marked and heavily detailed as though they’d be kept as public record one day — and see what I had to teach myself about what I have learned. (Meta, I know.)

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The best way to move on is straight through the wilderness. Trying to find a way around just makes the journey longer — 

I penned this in a journal of mine, and it eventually made it into a blog I wrote after a particular season of big life change and heartbreak. A week ago, a friend of mine told me he had saved the blog article this was from, and used this line to help create a mood-board for a new film he’s working on now. He told me this line helped put words to something that even now he’s still processing, and creating art around.

I wrote that four years ago. 

It was funny he told me this, because while I was in Paris, I kept stopping to photograph the streets you could see through a corridor, the brick archways, the Eiffel tower on a street far away, through buildings, etc. These through-shots would make me stop in my tracks — I couldn’t help it. I kept thinking about this line, about the light on the other side, and about how long it’d take me to go all the way around the street, vs through. To get to that bright, sunlit street on the other side, you have to pass through that dark corridor — but it beats taking the long way — and albeit unnecessary way all the way around.

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For the first time in at least a few years, I don’t feel as though I am concluding the year in a cloud of disappointment. Most years, I have sat on the beach, as I do to end and begin the new year, to reflect on the things that I had to let go of, the things that were taken, that didn’t turn out the way I though they would. This of course is mixed in with the sweetness of the good in that year — but it is most typically outweighed. 

This year though, as I sat and watched the  sun sparkle on the waves from my perch atop a hill of sand, all I could think about is the good. This year has been undeniably sweet. Not every moment has been easy, and actually this year held a lot of waiting, wrestling, painful healing, praying for things to come to pass. 

But what I see in this garden is fruit. 

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at the start of last year, my golden — 24 on the 24th of April — I felt hopeful. I had thought it would be the sparkly kind of golden, the kind that catches the light, valuable and beautiful and esteemed. in many ways however, this year was one that was hard and painful, things broken off and broken down and lost, heavy emotions and deep hurt. I was on the move for most of it, seeing new sights, breathing in the atmosphere of new area. for the latter part of the year, I didn’t spend more than a week and a half in one place. I did a lot of travel alone, spending more time with myself and my own thoughts than ever before. but while it was beautiful and wild and adventurous, I was carrying a broken and tired heart along with my little pink suitcase, and when back in the City, life didn’t always feel sparkly and good. that’s the thing about life though, it can be beautiful and momentous, right up against painful and hard. they run along the parallel sides of the same track.

all that to say, as I looked back on this year, I started to get frustrated — this year didn’t feel sparkly at all. it wasn’t shiny and brilliant and full of gold-medal-type wins the way that the golden year seemed to promise.

then, a few days ago, I came across an article about the processes by which gold is refined. gold straight from the mine doesn’t exist in its pure form naturally, it actually has to be removed of its impurities if it can be used. the means by which are pretty extreme — you typically refine gold through acid or fire.

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2021 was something. When I sit and think about it all, last January seems like ages ago, and in many ways I was almost entirely different. I spent today as I usually do, on the sand with my journal and Bible to reflect and be still, to process and dream. It’s a tradition I’ve kept for the past serval years, one that I intend to keep for many more.

Last year on the sand, a few miles north from where I sat today, I felt the Lord lead me to Isaiah 58, speaking it over the year to come. It instantly captivated me, beautiful imagery, things that resonated deeply.

My favorite part comes in verses 10-12, “I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones, I will satisfy your desire in scorched places. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.”

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I had really only packed winter things, and I know only un petit peu of French, and but the South of France had been a dream destination for as long as I could remember, so when I found a $30 plane ticket to Nice, I decided to roll up my pants and wear my dresses without tights, and go to what would become the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I travel a fair amount, and I’m used to being alone for a bit when I do. But usually I travel alone to meet up with others, to attend an event or a wedding, etc., not with the intent to be alone, alone.

But this time, I felt like I needed to. It had been a long few months, three significant changes and shifts that had put three of the most major areas of my life in a bit of a free-fall. And while I’d been feeling calm and faith-filled in all three, I knew I needed some time alone to process it all.

I saw seven of its cities & two countries. I drank approximately seventeen cappuccinos & ate my weight in croissants, but also walked an average of thirty-one t h o u s a n d steps per day so I feel like that equals out? French came back like a childhood memory - familiar and warm, but still hard to fully articulate. Blackberry gelato on the sand as the sun tucked itself behind the cliffs. Running every morning on the water and eating fresh fruit from a market next to the sea. Local art from a sweet old woman who had painted for her entire life. Meeting locals who sat with me while I drank wine or aforementioned cappuccinos & wrote, each of them asking something about my journal or my Bible. Laughing out loud to myself like a crazy person many times because I just couldn’t believe the beauty. Allowing myself to get gloriously lost so I could find the sweetest little backroads & hidden paths.

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last week, I packed up the last of my things and moved from the place I’ve lived the longest in New York, which is funny, considering that when I moved in, I only intended to stay for three months. now, everything is wrapped and boxed and put in storage for me to bop around New York and the world for a bit and I find my self thinking about how funny is is that spaces can hold so much more than just tangible things. that this apartment, this corner of the city, holds so much for me. moments when I couldn’t stop smiling, similar moments, but with tears instead. running in the crisp, Fall air through Central Park, biking the avenue in the dead of winter - alternating one of my hands in my pocket at all times to keep it from freezing off entirely. sweet, late-summer, rooftop dinners with tables made of palettes stretched out on the ground & decked out in lights & dried flowers & seasonal taco ingredients, surrounded by my favorite people. anxiety on my little gray rug, a full year of working from home in isolation, brilliant morning sunlight & the cutest sliver of the Ward’s Island Bridge that I could see from my window.

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The DC Metro is far cleaner and a million times less chaotic than in New York - the NYC subway system is a wild place. When I first moved, I was entirely unprepared for how to navigate the giant silver cars, both in regards to the direction they moved, as well as what happens inside of them. The things I’ve seen on these cars…the people I’ve met getting off of them…I could write a novel. When you board the train in DC, a strip of lights flashes to indicate the approaching car and to remind you that there is a gap between where you are, and where you’re stepping. They do this in London too, in a beautiful little British accent that you can’t help but want to listen to - “please mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about these gaps. Not necessarily the space between me and the trains I take, but more-so the space between where I am, and where I want to be. That frustrating, sometimes agonizing but ultimately good-for-us gap between who we are now, and who we want to become. Between what we have and what we want. Between the promise and its fulfillment. I’ve been really minding that gap, and right now, it feels very, very wide.

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The sun was barely showing as we drove through the city that morning, eyes half open, too little sleep, not enough caffeine. We had decided to go somewhere new, somewhere by the water, somewhere with less noise and people and buildings, more breeze and green and quaint homes. It was our one year anniversary, and we could think of no other way to celebrate than to do what we both loved most, travel, explore, meet new people, create, capture. So we took turns sleeping in the passenger seat until the sun climbed higher and we winded through tree-lined highways and rolled across two long bridges, upright over the brightest blue water you’ve ever seen, speckled with white boats and itty bitty islands. As P slept next to me in the passenger seat, I thought to myself “I’ve always underestimated Rhode Island.”

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Life comes at us fast. Fast like the delivery man on an electric bike who you have to swerve to miss. Like the emotional break-down or break-up on the side of the road you were not prepared for. Like the heart attack of someone you love. We don’t see these things coming, and that’s kind of the whole point.

Last month, I felt like I’ve had a series of “just missed” things. Things that almost happened, crashes and burns and losses that threatened to come suddenly, and then, didn’t come at all. Things that felt like they were about to end, and then…didn’t. The thing is, you don’t actually want to lose or crash or break, but the whole experience gives you a certain kind of whiplash that leaves your head spinning and your heart hurting. You now have a bruised leg to deal with after you end up on the sidewalk, and a heart or two that needs to work again properly.

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This past weekend, I had my golden birthday. Colloquial for when you turn the age you’re turning on the date with the same number - 24 on the 24th - we decided to celebrate with a golden-themed weekend upstate. We designed a menu of golden foods, planned activities, and settled on a guest list of some of the sweetest people in my life. We danced through our days with sweet gold cocktails in our hands, we exchanged stories over buttery, gold chicken. I beamed looking around one night as my sweet friends laughed around our little wooden table and stuffed powdery, gold lemon bars into their mouths, and I said so many silent prayers of thanks for these people as we hiked to a waterfall just as golden hour greeted us on the day of my birthday. I can’t believe I get to do life with such people, be served by the deep well of creativity and thoughtfulness of my person, and receive the generosity of staying in the beautiful home of my dear friend. But as I planned and prepared, as I sat up late at night watching the shadows dance on the hills around the home, I began to think about the meaning that gold has in my life, wanting the weekend to encompass more than just glitter and gold-painted flowers.

A few years back, God had spoken a word over me about being a “miner”. Miners go into dark places and extract things to be used and refined. In a similar way, God had told me that I was to do the same - see the gold in people, call it out, and help it be used. I’ve always loved sparkly things, the way they catch the light, the kind of beauty that rests in something that can bounce the sun off its surface, but to be honest, I don’t think much about what things are like, or what the process is before they are sparkly.

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We all feel it, the heavy sigh of recognition at the way this year has bent and broken us, pushed and played us, taught and tested us. In one way or another, no one has abstained from some kind of pain this year. Our country faced a reckoning, with its own history and the still-functioning prejudice that poisons a population, with injustice at some of the highest levels. We learned about isolation and retreat, foreign concepts to a world that sees big as better, especially when it comes to busyness and gatherings and company size and power. We were united in the commonality of something, a threat no person on Earth was entirely untouched by, and I think about how wild it is that the entire population faced something together. That is no small thing. And while part of me wants to sit only in the grief and complaint of it all, I don’t believe this is any way to end one year and start another. And even amidst a year of collective tragedy and defeat, there was victory and joy.

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mona was standing on a street corner, waiting to meet her sister, when I ran up to her and told her I loved her outfit. she, dressed as a suffragette, informed me that this was her voting attire, and she was just returning from the polls. she proceeded to proudly reveal to me the bright, white tennis shoes she was wearing underneath, remarking “they didn’t get to wear comfortable shoes when they fought for us, but now we get to walk in their footsteps.” as she walked away, I was struck by thoughts of Jesus, about walking in the shoes of others, and about the frustration I have been feeling in the current moment when I see the well-intentioned but somewhat dismissive nature of some sentiments among Christian community.

I have been seeing the sentiment repeated and rephrased, something along the lines of “Jesus is on the throne no matter who wins, so it doesn’t really matter.” and while yes, He is on the throne, and yes, our hope doesn’t have to lie in the rule or regimes of Earth, I never want to use this to dismiss the very real pain, plight, and experiences that many are facing in today’s climate.

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I graduated from NYU last week. Like many big accomplishments, it was the product of the influence of many great people, a great amount of faith, a great deal of support and a LOT of hard work. Parents who provided, a church family that raised me, a new church that changed my life, an organization that blossomed so beautifully, friends who championed me, and a school that provided a global, diverse, and wonderful education. The past 5 years (2 deferred and 3 in New York) have taught me many things. Among them, the process & pain in the building of resilience, the importance of an open mind & heart, and the crazy things that bold faith can do. I graduated from my dream school with honors in a major that I created, wrote, and got approved after a two hour presentation and a massive thesis — in international human rights, public policy, journalism, and media/communication — and I am so grateful to all of you who have contributed to this journey in some way. It would be remiss of me not to thank you.

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This birthday has not at all been what I thought it would be. But it was also lovely and beautiful and full of rich video chats and beautiful text messages that reminded me that love doesn’t give a care in the world about the medium it takes to get to you. And I spent this week thinking about the people in my life who have loved and influenced and championed me, overcome with the realization that it would be remiss to celebrate these years of life without also celebrating the people who have gotten me through them and made me who I am. We are impacted by many things, but we are largely a product of people.

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I’m upset. And I’ll just acknowledge upfront that I know there are so many worse things happening in the world, and my heart and prayers are with all who are suffering, made jobless, homeless, or a slew of other things by this pandemic.

But I think it’s also okay and healthy to acknowledge something else a lot of us are feeling. The same way that we wouldn’t tell someone not to be happy because someone else has it better, I also don’t think we should say that someone can’t be sad because someone else has it worse.

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