The world is in chaos - but you already knew that. To be completely honest, I think we often don’t realize the weight of things until we see them in our own universe, until they pop our own little comfort bubbles and force us into a new, exposed reality (another issue altogether). The Coronavirus has seemed a distant threat - at least to most of us bubbled Americans - until now, as the government issues a national emergency, gatherings are prohibited, businesses close, the stock market falls, and more. My Trader Joe’s line is around the block and my university has shut down classes until the foreseeable future. This is not at all how I envisioned my last semester of college, and I am actually pretty disappointed that I won’t get to finish out my education the way I’d hoped. There are worse things, I know, but we are all being hit in some wild ways. I did not expect an apocalypse at 22 years old.

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Change is strange. I’ll admit I am not change’s number one fan, and I have actually spent a lot of my life fearing it, holding tightly to everything. What I can control I can also contain, and I’ve often felt as though if I let things go or shape shift, they would become all at once unmanageable, maybe even just bad altogether. But I suppose if I really spend time thinking about it, every marker of big change in my life has come with a lesson in God’s faithfulness, every time I released my grip on what was in my tightly-clenched fists I’ve found more faith and provision than I could hold onto. 

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2019 was quite the year. I got to travel to fifteen cities and seven countries. I lived in three of my favorite places in the world - Paris, Washington DC, and New York City. My dad had scary surgery. We grew our organization internationally. I entered into and ended a relationship. I lost friends, I made new ones, I deepened old ones. I interned at a human rights organization and learned to live in the land between the promise and its fulfillment. I wrote my major and its curriculum and got it approved to graduate. I learned to give campus tours and answer any question on my feet and preach to kiddos and teach ballet and theater. I mentored students and oversaw residential life. I learned a new language. I laughed and danced and worshipped and cried more in this year than I ever have. It was a year where growth was eminent & change was obvious, a year I now exit believing whole-heartedly that God is exactly who He says He is. 

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It feels like moments ago I was boarding the plane to go to DC, on my way to begin a new chapter in a new city I adore, en route to work with the organization that had up until that point only impacted me from afar, but would soon come to change me up close. The phrase “life-changing” is a big and weighty one, and I am making a conscious effort not to use it so frequently, even though, when you think about it, every season is life-changing in one way or another. We usually can’t move as humans through periods of time without things changing in some way, physically at the very least, relationally most usually, mentally, spiritually. 

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If you ever get the chance to, go to Ireland. Go to Dublin and wander along the cobblestone and admire all the colorful buildings and the lively music wafting out of most of them. Visit some old castles and old libraries. Take a big charter bus out to Galway and explore little seaside towns. Drink Irish coffee and dance in a pub. Drive through the countryside and listen to an Irish tour guide tell you a few too many Irish puns. Most of all, get out to the Cliffs of Moher and probably bring an inhaler because they will take your breath away. 

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Twenty-Two. This time last year, I went home the weekend before my birthday and gathered with my California friends around a huge table for dinner & laughter. Back in New York I spent the week visited by a dear friend and my mentor, and the weekend at my first real bar excursion. I remember feeling that 21 opened up many new things, but the wisdom was found in learning that just because something is open, doesn’t mean I always need to go in. While that week was lovely and celebratory, the season it fell into was hard & dark. I thought for a while that I would certainly not be coming back to New York (a story for another time maybe?), but now, I ache for the city & can’t wait to return. 21 taught me to wait out the storm and assess the wreckage after. Sometimes the damage is incredibly fixable, but we never know if we let the storm force us out entirely. 

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I did some research on peaches, and found that it not only needs the pit in order for it to grow around, but that very pit gets planted when that former peach is gone, and goes on to bear more fruit. How crazy is that? What we see as hard or difficult or disastrous, is often the very thing that makes everything else that much sweeter. 

I think most things have a pit if we look hard enough. My pit in this season of my relationship was of course the vast distance and lack of communication, the ache to speak to someone you cannot contact. But then there was such sweetness in the fruit around it. The letters I have now to hold onto, the sweetness of the surprise, the appreciation of what once was so small. 

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I suppose I am a product of my generation. I get a dopamine hit from seeing a notification on my phone, receiving a comment on a photo, or garnering responses to instagram stories. It’s almost addicting isn’t it? Gratification at our fingertips? The thought that a post can be an immediate antidote to the feeling of loneliness or exclusion or self-doubt. But like any addiction, there is a crash after a high, and we come back wanting more and more, consistently and dangerously unsatisfied.  

I like to write. That is the whole purpose of having this blog, that I may be held accountable to writing, keeping a live, online log of what’s going on in these seasons, figuring out what my style and tone and voice even is. I suppose it’s expanding to become my wanting to share what I am learning, and it hope that you, reader, are maybe comforted or encouraged in some way - I do believe in purposeful presentation. But in all this I am learning to watch carefully where I place a delicate possession of mine, called Value.

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I’ve never been to London. It was definitely a city under consideration when I was choosing where I wanted to study abroad. But God was pretty clear on Paris, so I ended up there for the Spring and London for the weekend. 

After a night with an elaborate bus ride, a ferry (which was legitimately a cruise ship with 7 decks consisting of bars, restaurants, & slot machines), and a train, I made it to London at 8 am. 

The weekend was lovely and full, and with a little planning and about 40,00 logged steps, I was able to see the sights I wanted to see all in a matter of three point five days. 

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I’ve never done this before. And by this, I mean write about someone, or my relationship with someone, and expose some of the vulnerability in doing so. But, in honor of Valentine’s Day (a rather arbitrary holiday I know, but still one that reminds us of love and relationships and gooey things - and one I admittedly quite enjoy) and the fact that some of you have been asking me to - I want to share some thoughts and feelings from a place a little different than the norm. I hope maybe it’ll bring comfort or encouragement to some of you in some way, and if not, at the very least, relative enjoyment.

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I am adjusting. Slowly, this week, Paris has begun to feel more like a home. I have found my grocery store, the best boulangerie nearby, my running path. I have my route to get to school and back, my favorite little stops (so far, at least) and some new, sweet friends. And somewhere between setting up my little French coffee maker and hanging pictures on the wall - I found myself thinking about this concept of home - the difference between living and visiting. 

I still feel like a foreigner and a tourist, which I suppose I am and will continue to be for a while, but I also have a little apartment here and a monthly metro card, so this earns me some sort of squatter's rights, oui? Last week, amongst a slew of particularly cheerful texts from friends and family about how much they love Paris and how pretty it all is and how exciting it must be, how much they loved it when they came - I felt my stomach hollow a little. Because it truly wasn’t all as lovely and picturesque as everyone was telling me it was for them. And I thought about the way in which when we visit a place, we pick and choose, we decide to go see the good, but we don’t stay long enough for the bad or difficult. 

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P A R I S - dreamy & colorful. full of warm bread & pretty architecture & lights & romance & art. These are the things we think of when we hear the name of this iconic French city, and while I’ll admit, the aforementioned description is pretty accurate, Paris is more - and less - than I expected. More to the point of this blog, it is not picture perfect, despite the fact Instagram may say otherwise.

When I arrived, Paris was covered in fresh, white snow, and no one quite knew what to do - as Paris doesn’t often receive such a cold gift. Imagine if you will, a jet-lagged, over-bagged, stressed out me, with too much to carry, not enough French in her vocabulary, and hardly a clue where in the city she was. For a New Yorker, cities all seem relatively doable, somewhat similar, and they all seem conquerable. When you live in the concrete masterpiece that is NYC, you possess an adaptability, so feeling lost and uncertain and overwhelmed is somewhat unexpected - yet humbling. 

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I’d been thinking a lot already today about the things we carry. I arrived at the airport when it wasn’t yet light out, with my two massive suitcases filled with all that I needed to move into a Paris apartment, and clothes for the next few months. I had another overstuffed carryon bag that went on my shoulder, and a pretty heavy backpack. At first, moving through security, it’s doable, you know? Carrying all that. But the longer the day went on, the more gates I had to get to, and terminals I had to enter, the more I regretted bringing my heavyweight companions. 

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grace. It’s a word I’ve always thrown about, without really ever pausing to consider its weight. But the other day, I was hit in the face with the question of what it would really look like if my life was under grace’s authority - if I submitted to grace rather than my feelings or predispositions or desires. Romans 6:14 says we are not under the law but under grace - a beautiful, chain-breaking freedom, but one that I’ve heard so many times I’ve desensitized myself from it. If we really think about it, the authorities we operate under affect how we act, what we do, what we don’t. Under the authority of traffic laws, I don’t drive on the wrong side of the road, I don’t run red lights. This authority shapes the way I act, it informs my conduct. 

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The Lord has been speaking to me about closing the gap. There is a gap sometimes, between what I say I am going to do, and what I actually do. Things like throwing around that catchy phrase “I’m praying for you", and then not actually adding that person to my list when I’m on my knees. Saying I want to get coffee with someone and never making a plan. He is teaching me to close that gap -- that intention without execution is really, truly pointless, and a missed mark altogether. Jesus didn’t just say He’d give Himself as a sacrifice, He actually did. And had He not, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

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I woke up this morning feeling the same. This came as somewhat of a disappointment, as I tend to hype up my birthday as a day where I wake up feeling new, changed, another year wiser - just all around better than I was in the hours prior. Although this has rarely been the case for the majority of the past 21 years, I still get hopeful every year that it will be different.

Maybe that’s the problem though. Maybe we tend to see change and renewal as only when a new year rolls around, a new birthday, a new calendar year, a new semester. And maybe this is what prevents us (or me, at least) from making change and renewal and redemption and growth a reality. I am renewed each day by the love of Christ. I am met with new mercies each morning. Yet I rarely let this renewal wash over me unless it’s a new year or season.

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