It took a while for you to find me, but I was hiding in the lime tree.

I have resolved that there is no better smell than the smell of cheesecake baking. It’s almost as if you can drift away on its light, sweet, vanilla-scented cloud into a world where everything is lovelier. 

Yesterday, I baked my very first cheesecake. Call it a celebration cake or simply the product of the kind of Saturday morning I hope to have more of in the future, but the whole experience was delicious. 

My favorite mornings are always the ones where my house, or whichever one I’m staying in at the time, is quiet and peaceful. The kind where you can hear the birds chirping and watch sunlight streaming in as you mix ingredients together. On one such morning in Napa a couple of months ago, I measured flour and sugar for pancake batter while dogs hovered at my feet and Amos Lee, Jack Johnson, and Trevor Hall played nearby. It was perfect. 

Lately, I’ve been trying to create space in my life to make room for moments like these. The moments that are quiet and still. There’s a woman, and author, that I admire who has a small ranch in Carpinteria, CA. She and her family have no Wi-Fi, opting only for a limited data plan on their phones. They take their laptops to the local café when they need internet. They spend time alone and together, reading books in sun-soaked rooms, cooking food, writing stories, and playing games. They surf together on the weekends and sometimes on weekdays. They travel and explore new cultures, then return to their nest. They invite people over, using their home as a vessel for community. They tend to their land, care for their animals, and share the fruits of their labor. Their home is filled with worship and praise.

This is the kind of life that I want to lead.

I’ve shared before on this blog that, dramatic as it sounds, turning 25 felt like I was dying because my dreams had only ever extended to that point. I was lost because those dreams hadn’t come true and I was lost because I had nothing beyond them. Societally, it felt like I was quickly losing relevance (a strange time we live in) and, biologically, it felt like I was losing time. This feeling of lostness and stuckness, irrelevance and wasted time have persisted, compounded by life circumstances. It’s like I’ve been coated in the coal-black ashes of death for years, but now someone has taken a wet rag to my skin and is starting to reveal the flesh-toned human beneath. 

I am beginning to dream again, dreams that feel sparkly and new. And, in all of these dreams, I long for a life that is simple and purposeful, one punctuated by raucous fits of laughter and long, quiet pauses. A life that is connected, relational, active, joyful, and present. I want my days to feel so alive that you can almost feel them humming with energy.

Ten months ago, in the depths of my stuckness and desperation to be transformed by God’s love, I decided to stop going to church. This might seem counterintuitive, but stick with me. After years of showing up every Sunday and doing all the “right” things (serving, getting involved in small groups, etc.), I realized I did not feel more connected to God. The fruits of my life, namely feeling ungrateful, self-protective, and apathetic, did not point to a thriving relationship with Christ. How could it be that I was showing up in all the spaces I was supposed to be and still feeling empty inside? So, I stopped going.

Instead, I began spending Sunday mornings on my couch with my Bible and a good cup of tea. I read and then I prayed and sometimes I sang. I created space to digest my own food instead of relying on someone else’s pre-digested teachings. Those moments felt alive and exciting. Surprising, even. They challenged me, confused me, convicted me, and encouraged me. I walked away from them feeling whole. 

My Sunday mornings soon turned into every morning. In January of this year, I started waking up at 6am to read and pray before work. My mom decided to join me. For almost five months, we have faithfully woken up in the early morning hours to spend time with the one who loves us most. If you all know me, you know that I am not a morning person. For years I’ve struggled to roll out of bed by 7:45 with just enough time to throw on some clothes and open my laptop. This has not been an exercise in willpower, it has been an exercise in creating space to see how God moves. Just as I have been faithful to seek him, he has been faithful to open my eyes every morning and urge me out of bed. Some days, I’m half asleep. Others, I’m buzzing. But I keep showing up and he keeps meeting me there.

I believe in the church. I believe in the community that it provides. I believe in our faith being strengthened by spiritual leaders and each other. And, soon enough, I will return. But I’ll do it differently. For years I thought that if I started with the doing, it would lead to the believing. But now I’m realizing it’s the reverse. You have to create space to learn and see and know what you believe and the doing will flow from that. 

The more space I create, the more space I want to. A few weeks ago, I went on a hike fairly early on Sunday morning. I was the only one on the trail for a while so, periodically, I stopped, pausing my gravelly footsteps, to bask in the deep silence. I was interrupted only by wind rustling through the trees as the birds sang. The stillness was intoxicating. It felt like dipping my hand in a cool stream. A week or two later, I was walking on another trail when a lone deer crossed my path, pausing before finding shelter in the overgrowth. My phone was a mile away in the car. I wasn’t distracted by music or the anxious compulsion to capture the beauty around me. Instead, I stood there for a moment, taking it all in – just me, the deer, and the forest. 

This past week was a big one for me (more on that in a moment) so, in keeping with the theme of creating space, I decided to fast from all personal media use. I could work, check calls and texts, and watch a show with my family in the evenings if they wanted, but nothing else. That meant no music, no podcasts, no internet, no videos, no bingeing TV. I knew that to truly create space, I had to get rid of everything. Otherwise, it would be too easy to fill the space with something else.

It reminds me of a verse in Matthew 12 that reads, “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” 

If I create space, but leave room for it to be filled with some other meaningless or damaging thing then I will be left worse than before. But, if I create space and fill it with the things of God that are lovely and noble and pure, then there will be no room for anything else to creep in.

As of this writing, it has been almost two weeks living away from the noise of technology and I have truly enjoyed it. Detoxing from overstimulation is interesting because it's made me feel totally drained and totally refreshed. It’s like being hit by a truck of mist. Of course, by the time you’re reading this, I’ve flexed in some capacity (tbh, probably just to share this writing and then disappear again), but I hope that I’ve held true to at least some of these new ways of being.

Instead of decompressing with reality TV, I’ve been reading books (Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl is my current favorite). Instead of mindlessly scrolling during a break in the day, I’ve been going on walks. Instead of staring at my computer screen and resenting my coworkers, I’ve closed my laptop and prayed for them and about the things that have been bothering me. Instead of throwing a meal together just so I can get onto the next thing, I’ve been cooking intentionally, reminding myself why I love being in the kitchen. Instead of dipping into the same murky pool of knowledge as everyone else, I’ve learned of current events through others and have been able to ask questions and hear new perspectives. Heck, I've even stepped out of my socially anxious bounds and have been trying to make eye contact with neighbors and passersby so that I can smile at them or have a conversation.

And, most delightfully, I’ve gotten bored. Many times. 

I remember boredom as the dark looming creature of my childhood. The one that made everything miserable on an otherwise promising day. But it turns out that boredom is awesome. Obviously, boredom doesn’t feel awesome, but I do think it’s highly underrated. I have been more creative and clearheaded in the past week than I have been in years prior because I haven’t simply been able to turn my mind to fuzz whenever I’m momentarily unoccupied. I’ve been forced to connect to myself and with others and that has been a beautiful thing. Even my friends and family members have noticed a difference. 

I was dreading beginning this journey and now I am dreading returning to the life that we’ve all justified as normal. 

Sometimes it worries me how we settle for the facsimile of real life when we live through the internet. It looks the same, it sounds the same, it maybe even feels the same for a moment, but eventually, the consequences of living this way catch up to us. All you have to do is Google “loneliness in America” to know that’s true. It reminds me of guacamole. I was in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago and had the best guacamole of my entire life at Barrio Cafe. I mean, I can confidently say it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten... it was that good. When we came home, my mom and I tried to find a recipe online to duplicate it. We made the recipe and it was good, but it wasn’t as good. It will never be as good. There was something about that moment with that chef, eating that guacamole as it was designed, that made it feel like it was covered in pixie dust. Apparently, life imitates guacamole or, perhaps the other way around.

I'm surprised that I don’t miss any of the things I’ve given up, at least not enough to bring them back yet (ok, except for music – that’s the first thing to come back). I want to continue feeling as present, engaged, and unhurried as I am in this moment. Quite frankly, I didn’t know it was still possible to feel this way in our overly disconnected world. And, as a side note, it has only sought to confirm my old lady view that smartphones make everything immeasurably worse. I’m even considering purchasing a record player so I can listen to music, savoring the gift that it is, without also feeling compelled to check the news…

So back to my big week and the reason for the cake (though, do you really need a reason for a cake?). This week I took the ultimate step in creating space by submitting my notice at my job. My last day will be at the beginning of August.

I will be temporarily moving to London for a few months in the fall. And, as of yet, I have no plans, no housing, and no job. I do, however, have a deep, faith-led conviction that this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing and God has been so gracious to me. This idea first fluttered across my mind seven months ago after watching a movie set in London. Since then, countless individuals from London have crossed my path. I even connected with one person in the UK who just so happened to be from a neighboring town to the one I grew up in and was friends with my childhood pastor. This is an opportunity for me to practice trust because I have nothing else to hold onto and I am very excited (and also totally scared) to see where it leads. 

After I told my bosses that I was leaving, I went out to my backyard to plant my very first garden. Make of that what you will, but it feels symbolic to me.

This fall, I hope to sit in cozy coffee shops listening to the rain while I write. I long to meet new people, gathering around tables or in gardens drinking tea and eating pastries. I’d like to venture to hidden markets to try new foods from around the world (ok, so far everything involves food, but I am me after all…). I want to spend lazy afternoons wandering through bookshops. I hope to feel challenged and stretched, growing in ways that I can’t yet comprehend. And I want to serve because if God is putting me there, he’s not putting me there just to receive, but also to give. 

I don’t know where my time after London will lead, whether back to Oregon or elsewhere. I’ve been inspired by community gardens lately and am pondering establishing one of my own, but we’ll see. I do know, however, that I will be imperfectly pursuing the simple life. The whole life. The life with white space. Because that is exactly what my heart needs most. 

I hope you read this and pictured yourself lounging with a book in a garden of ivy or taking a long nap in a room bathed in sun. I hope it made you think of the cookies you want to bake or the friend you want to call. If it made you think of any of these things, then I’d encourage you to act on that thought. Go create space. Go be connected. Go feel something. And please, dear friends, have fun while doing it.

Until next time ~

Abbey

Titular Song: The Lime Tree by Trevor Hall