Hello friends and Merry Christmas! First of all, I want to apologize for taking such a long break from blogging. I had so much to do with school and travel plans and have been going THRU it with emotions and anxiety, but I am back now! So this post is going to be in a very similar strain to my last one on Thanksgiving, very word-blobby and candid.
So as many of you will already know, I have been living in the UK for the past three months studying. This past week I spent traveling in Spain with some other NAU students who are studying in the UK. We went to Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, and Alicante and it was beautiful. I will be posting blog posts on each of those cities as well as a vlog series on the trip, so watch out for those! I am now in Edinburgh, Scotland for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and a couple days afterwards. I chose to come to Scotland for Christmas Day because I had heard that Edinburgh was an amazing city for Christmas and Christmas markets. So my new friend Celsa and I went straight from Spain to Scotland. This is the first time that I have spent Christmas away from my family and I am definitely not stoked about it and I don't intend to make it a habit. It is really stinkin' hard. I have been super homesick the past 3 weeks and being away for the holidays makes that homesickness and loneliness like 1000000x harder. I miss watching Christmas movies with my mommy. I miss listening to my daddy read the Christmas story in the Bible, Matthew and Luke, on Christmas morning. I miss baking Christmas cookies with Real. I miss visiting Jackson at Dutch in December to get my hands on a festive drink. I miss spending my favorite time of year with my favorite people, my support system, my family. (I also really miss Peppermint Mocha because the UK doesn't know what that is and honestly it's pretty depressing to miss out on that wonderful holiday drink for a whole year). Even though this has been very hard emotionally, God is still so so good and He has been watching over me and protecting me on this whole trip. He is always with me even when I am feeling so alone and homesick and anxious and that is insane to think about. How amazing is it that the creator of the universe and everyone on earth cares enough about ME to comfort me in my loneliness and reassure me that He is with me? That is such a huge blessing and on days when I can't seem to find joy, I know that I can depend on the promise that He is with me. I was talking to my friend Mallory (Insta: @malfredosauce) and we were talking about being away from family especially during the holidays. She just got finished spending her second 6-months in Australia doing AMAZING mission work in Australia and Papua New Guinea. I was telling her about how I feel guilty in feeling anything but ecstatic about being over in the UK because so many people would kill to be doing what I am doing. Before I got here I would have been in that boat too, thats why I am here! She told me that there is no reason to feel guilty for being homesick because what we are doing is not easy, and it is not normal; I mean we moved across the planet at age 20! But, while I shouldn't feel guilty for being sad, I need to also remember that I have a very special opportunity and there is so much adventure in what I am doing! She helped me to remember that there is something to be joyful about in everyday, even if that is only your morning coffee! So yeah, I am not really sure what the vision of this post was supposed to be, or if I had one at all, but I just wanted to update everyone on my personal life and emotions lately and remind everyone that you are NEVER EVER alone because God loves you so fiercely and He is always there for you. He says that He will never leave us or forsake us and you can hold Him to that promise! I am sorry that this was a blob of text that is not eloquent or thought out, but I hope that everyone had a phenomenal Christmas and I hope that everyone has a spectacular new year! Watch out for my new travel and fashion blogposts as well as many more youtube videos and vlog's coming in the new year! Thank you for reading my ramblings and I hope that it reassures at least one person that they are never alone! Love you all Truly, Taylor
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Hello friends and welcome back, or welcome for the first time! Today's blogpost is going to be a very candid, word-blobish post about the reality of being away from home during the holidays. Today is Thanksgiving in the States and it is the first time that I have spent this holiday away from my family. Not only that, but there is no "Thanksgiving" holiday in the UK, so I'm away from the holiday in general.
This is the first time that I can remember not waking up and running to turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the first time I can remember not smelling the delicious scents from the kitchen all morning, and the first time that I can remember not dressing up and sitting down for the best meal of the year with my family. Instead, I am currently sitting in a busy coffee shop on my university campus trying to upload this with crappy wifi and there is no scent of ham or turkey in the air. But, nevertheless, I want to take this day for what it is truly about. Yes, it is hard to be away from my family and it is hard to deal with the fear of missing out on all fronts. I mean 9 months is a long time to be away from family and familiarity. In the same strain, this day is about reflecting upon the things that we have to be thankful for and responding with a heart of gratitude. Today's YouVersion verse-of-the-day is particularly fitting for this festive US holiday. It comes from Psalm 100:4 and says, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name!" So today I want to enter the gates with Thanksgiving! I am thankful for this opportunity. I mean for four years I dreamed about living in the UK, and now I am doing that! Not only that, but the Lord has blessed me so greatly through this whole process. I am thankful for scholarships to help ease the financial burden of spending 9 months in another country. I am thankful for the Lord providing a church that I immediately felt at home in. I am thankful for the friends that I have made here through that church, for the friends that know that it is hard for me to be away from home and do their best to comfort me in moments of homesickness. I am thankful for my family and friends back home. I am thankful that I live in a day in age where I have technology that allows me to talk with the people that I love and miss. I am thankful for the people who are continuously checking up on me and the people that are striving to keep close to me while I am away. I am thankful that I have such a PHENOMENAL support system in my parents and siblings. They have been so uplifting and encouraging about this whole process and they are continuously reminding me that I can do this and that God is with me when I am not with them. For example, I woke up this morning to a message from my little sister telling me all the ways that she is thankful for me. Yes it made me cry because I miss her like crazy, but it is such a blessing to have family that reassures you that they're proud of you, that reassures you of your gifts, and makes sure to include you in family traditions when you can't be there in person! I am thankful for health. I am thankful for the health of my family members and myself! Even this year, my Grammie beat cancer! How incredible is that! How incredible is the Lord that he wiped this horrible disease out of her system! I am thankful for the opportunity to travel and see new places! Within the next month, I will be going to London, Spain, and Scotland! I mean thats incredible! The fact that I have the opportunity to explore the Lord's creation so easily and see all these new places that I've dreamed of seeing! The list could go on forever, but I want to end by just praising and thanking the Lord for his handiwork in my life and for being there next to me so that I am never alone! Thank You for the sacrifice of your son so that I can be saved and remain in fellowship with You for eternity! Thank you for your goodness, your grace, and your mercies! Thank you for loving us and thank you for blessing me so greatly! So yeah, to close I just want to say, yes homesickness is very real and it is even more real during the holidays, but how on earth can I be sad when the Lord has blessed me so greatly. So instead of being sad today, I am going to be thankful and celebrate this holiday to it's fullest potential and I would encourage everyone reading this to reflect on the things that you have to be thankful for today, whether you're celebrating Thanksgiving or not! Truly, Taylor PS- I am totally still having a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with some other Americans that need to satisfy their turkey and sweet potato cravings too!
Hello friends! Welcome back to my life! Autumn has struck the English countryside, and yes I do mean Autumn. I have gotten a couple of strange looks and have been told off if I call this season fall. Whatever it's called, it is simply beautiful! Coming from Phoenix, Arizona, this season does not change the landscape for us. I got a glimpse of true fall in Flagstaff last year, but I have really experienced the full glory of color changing leaves this year.
My school is situated in the middle of nationally protected countryside. This provides me with a beautiful landscape to call home! There are so many beautiful leaves falling on the ground and although it might be a pain to clean up, it sure is pretty! I feel like this is God's artwork on display for all to see!
Today, I was early to one of my lectures and I noticed that the field in front of the next building was completely covered by this autumnal foliage. So of course I went over to try and get a good selfie laying in the leaves.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how we are defined as people. I feel like in today's society, there are so many definitions and labels and it can be hard to choose which ones we want. I struggle with defining myself by my academics. For so long, I've defined my personal success by my grades. Growing up I was not particularly good at sports, so I focused on becoming "the best" at my school work, always trying to have the highest grade to make myself feel accomplished. Try as I might as I grow up, I still define myself by my worldly successes, I still focus on may GPA. Now I am not saying that grades and academia are not important. I try very hard in my classes and I think that is important. You should always give your 100% best effort in everything, including school work. The important thing to remember is that nothing in this life gives us our definition. The only definition that we have is the one given to us by our creator. The same God that created these beautifully changing leaves, designed us to be just as unique and beautiful. That is our definition.
I think that is so amazing to think about! I mean the God who makes the leaves change from vibrant green, to stunning gold also made us! It says in Luke 12:28 "But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you" That is so amazing and so encouraging!
We are defined by an amazing and loving God! He has our best interests at heart and He, in spite of all the times that we mess up, will never ever abandon us! This truth has been so apparent to me in these last (almost) 2 months of living out of the country! I am having the time of my life and I am so grateful for this opportunity, but it can feel very lonely. And when you're in a new place meeting all new people it can be a bit overwhelming trying to constantly show the best version of yourself. I have been really trying to pray specifically about remembering that who I am is only defined by our loving God!
So yeah I don't know! This may have been a little weird life update, but I guess I am just realizing more and more how amazing the Lord is, how creative and artistic He is, and how much He cares for us! So yeah! I hope that maybe this provided you some encouragement and a little bit of renewal as we head into this weekend!
Thank you all for sticking by me! Much Love Truly, Taylor Hello friends and welcome to a new page on my blog. I wanted to start a page that was dedicated to anything rather than just fashion. So I decided to break up the blog pages by content so that it was more organized to find things. So welcome to the lifestyle page. I will be using this page to talk about my life and how I am finding living in a new country. This page will be much more casual and will probably be a word-blob of feelings and emotions. So for any of you who didn't already know, three weeks ago I moved across the globe to study in Brighton, England for 10 months at the University of Sussex. I've had it in my mind for the past few years now that I was going to study abroad in college and it was going to be in England. So that is what I did. It's crazy to think that my high school self's "dream" is coming true right now. This has been a very surreal and difficult past three weeks. Now don't get me wrong. I am very glad that I am here and I feel very at peace that this is where the Lord needed me to be right now; but, that doesn't mean that it's not hard.
No matter how fun the new adventure is, it's hard to leave everything that you know and everyone that you love and know that you won't be able to hang out with or hug them for 10 months. So in the face of loneliness and fear of the "new" there is really only one direction to turn to. This move made me aware of how much I need to depend on the Lord. Thankfully, He daily shows me how much I need Him and He daily reveals Himself to me. I am so thankful for the relationship that I have the privilege of with the Lord because frankly, I am not sure what state I would be in if I didn't have Him. Probably a lot more anxiety over this new adventure in my life! Now to bring the mood up a bit, this new adventure is very exciting! I have met a lot of people already and I am living in a flat with an Italian, a Bulgarian, a Brit, a girl from Egypt and a girl from China. I am getting to immediately experience 5 different cultures! It's crazy but also so interesting. In fact, my Italian and British flatmates and I spent about an hour the other night discussing what words we pronounce differently. It was hilarious. So far, I have gotten to go into London, which I will talk about in my new Travel section ;). I went in for the day with my dad when he was here dropping me off and it was so cool. I have also gone into downtown Brighton many times and will hopefully begin to find unique spots to sit or work soon. I am still on the hunt for a cute coffee shop to set up camp in and while I am trying my best to like tea, I am definitely still a coffee person! I will say, however, that I have tried Earl Grey a few times with milk and sugar and it's not half bad. As far as craziest story to happen so far, that would have to be when my flatmates and I, none of us British by the way, missed our bus stop and ended up 5 miles out of town at a bus stop called "Lewes Prison Road". We then realized that the bus to take us back to campus wasn't coming until 6:30 the next morning. Uber wasn't working, and the three taxi companies we called were not picking up. By the grace of God, a random taxi sped by and we were able to flag him down and he brought us back. Needless to say, it was the most frightening 20 minutes of my time here so far. But no fear! God is good and he protected us and got us home!! I also just wanted to thank all of my family and friends for their prayers. I think the power of prayer is so powerful and I can definitely use all the prayer that I can get! I love and miss all of my family and friends at home and I am so glad that I live in an advanced age of technology so that I can contact people from home easily! I love you all and I hope that you like this more chilled page of my blog that is just dedicated to my life and what is happening over here across the pond! Truly, Taylor |