Tag Archives: England

January 17, 2010 · 2:58 pm

Tea: Morning, Noon, and Night

If there’s one thing the British love, it is a hot beverage.  Tea, coffee, hot chocolate – you name it.  The people love a hot drink.

Thankfully, as a lover of beverages hot and cold, I’m quite happy to take part in the near-worship of the hot drink as an institution.  Tea for breakfast, afternoon tea, tea after dinner: I’ll take it any time of day.  In fact, I’m drinking a cup of tea right now. I take mine with milk and a teaspoon of sugar, although Simon tells me adults don’t drink sugar in their tea.  I plead my American case: I’m an infant in my Englishness, and that’s my excuse.

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January 7, 2010 · 1:46 pm

It’s flippin’ freezing.

Eight inches of snow and eighteen degrees outside, and this Carolina Girl is freaking right out.  At the last minute, I had to pull the Snuggie my mom gave me for Christmas out of my backpack because it was taking up too much room.  I never thought I’d want that Snuggie so bad…

We’ve been in England two weeks now, (somehow it feels much longer) and, in a way, I find it frustrating that we’re now snowed in can’t go anywhere.  But the good thing is that we can walk just about anywhere – which is what I love about England – and we’ve been trudging around to Starbucks and the supermarket and friends’ houses on foot.  So really, “We can’t go anywhere” isn’t exactly true.  We can go lots of places.  And we do.

Here’s proof.

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November 30, 2009 · 12:44 am

It all becomes clear.

As I write this, I’m sleepy and nervous.

First, I have to apologize.  My posts have been a bit less than riveting lately.  But there’s a reason, I promise, and hopefully it’ll all make sense soon.  Ready for it?  Here it is:

I’m moving back to England.

Stay with me, I’ll explain.  My friend’s mom has this thing she does when she needs to make a big decision.  She just makes it.  And lives with it.  Kind of quietly for a little while, making all the steps that the decision requires, but just all by her lonesome for a while.  It’s a way of kind of testing the decision out, making sure it makes as much sense in the cold light of day as it did in the moment you chose it.

That’s kind of what Simon and I did.  Except, we’ve been living with this one for, oh, say, about four months.  Longer than that, really, if you want to get technical.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.  Or, at least, not at the end.  When we moved here in February of 2008, after less than our first married year in England, we felt quite strongly it was a temporary move.

I have to admit there was a part of me, upon moving here, that hoped we might change our minds, that we might end up staying.  But we haven’t.  Even while I was working for skirt!, I was frequently thinking about how long I should stay there before I quit and we moved back.  When I lost my job in April, it was a slap in the face – a moment to stop thinking about the what-ifs and start to really think about the when.  The following months brought a roller coaster of emotions and locations.  Our lease ran out on our cute little house, we moved in with my parents temporarily, visited Simon’s family in England (where he interviewed for a job we felt quite strongly he was going to get) and then, when he didn’t, we made the decision to move in with our friends Steve and Sarah, who’ve been tempting us with offers of their spare room and nonstop partying for over a year.

Again, when we decided to move the two and a half hours from Raleigh to Winston-Salem, we had thoughts of digging our feet in and settling down.  But we weren’t here a couple of weeks before that old familiar tug set in.  The thing I love about God, and the thing I hate, is that He won’t leave you alone, no matter how hard you try to ignore Him.  Truth be told, I love it here.  And this season we’ve spent here has been a season of rest, of relief, of basking in the glow of His Big, Bright Love.

But I feel the pull back to England.  The truth is, I’ve felt the pull for years.  Since 2003, definitely, when I met Simon and knew I was going to marry him.  And maybe, truthfully, longer ago than that.  Much, much longer.  Maybe I felt it at age 5, sitting on my Grandma’s brown plaid couch, running my fingers over the picture of Queen Elizabeth at her Coronation in a 1950s-era Encyclopedia Britannica.

That’s why my writing here may have seemed a bit distant of late.  You see, my mind has been full of the dreams and fears and excitement and pain of making this big move, and I haven’t been free to share it with you.  So I’ve written about other things that are happening – my new-found love of baking, my pregnant friends – but have left out all the parts about what’s really going on in this little heart of mine.  And I’m sorry.  Because so many of you have written to me and commented here and said that’s what you like about Great Smitten.  And that’s what I want to give you.  My wee little heart, full of its fears and sorrows and dreams and excitements.

So now that you know, I’m free to tell you all about it.  About all the packing I have to do before I load 20-something boxes of kitchen utensils and Christmas decorations onto a ship on Friday.  About the way we’ve been praying for my Visa to come back from the British Consulate in time for our flight out on December 16.  About how I’m looking forward to public transportation and good Indian food and pubs with fireplaces.

I want to share it all with you, and I hope you’ll follow Great Smitten as I rediscover the land that gave this blog its name.

I love America, I love North Carolina, and I love Winston-Salem.  I won’t follow that with a “but.”  I love it here.

I’m being led now, to a country where the Lord has plans for me.  And I’m doing my best to follow.

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June 30, 2009 · 3:43 pm

Sweet, sweet home.

For nearly a year, I’ve been waiting.  

Waiting for it to have been a year since we left England, so that we could go back, shamelessly.  Desperate.  Homesick for a place that, by all normal definitions, is not my home.  If we could just wait a year, we could say we really tried.  That we gave America a fair chance – that magic number: One Year – and it just wasn’t for us.

I missed the trains, the bakeries and the Saturday markets.  I missed our house group, our church, our tiny little flat that was once a Post Office.  Our life there had been perfect.  That’s what I told myself.  

I interviewed the owner of a well-known restaurant in Chapel Hill before Christmas, and she told me she’d moved here from New York for love, and that it had taken five years for it to feel like home; for her to let go of the notion that she was just visiting, and would return to her city any day.  

I felt sick.

And so, when we went to England on June 3, I was prepared to scope out London neighborhoods and job opportunities.  Simon even had an interview.  

But we had only been there a few days when we started to realize that we didn’t want to slot back into our old life.  Things are different now.  We’re different.

2008 was, quite possibly, the worst year of my life.  Because of bureaucratic nonsense, I was separated from my husband for four months, and forced to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary during a weekend jaunt back to England.  My faith suffered.  My health suffered.  Anxiety and depression assaulted me at every turn.  

But it’s not America’s fault.  And maybe that’s why we need to be here now, to see that God is good to us on both sides of the world.  To see that home has become something new.  It is not the town where Simon grew up, or our 500 square-foot flat, or my parents’ white farm house.

Home, for now, stands alone.  It is independent of a city or street – it is the cloud of love, of friendship, of community, where we make our life together.

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June 28, 2009 · 3:16 pm

Pack your bags, we’re headed west.

I’ve got to get something off my chest: three weeks ago, I was preparing my heart to return to England.  

But things change quickly, and if I’ve learned anything this year, it’s not to fight it.

We’re moving, alright, but not overseas.  We’re not even moving out of state.  We’re just moving west: toward the mountains, toward the cooler weather.  Toward trees that turn red and gold in the Autumn, and where there are hills to sled down when it snows – which it does more often – instead of miles and miles of flat, flat cotton fields.

We’re moving to Winston-Salem.  To the home of tobacco –  (I went to college up there on a Reynolds’ Scholarship, my student mantra: “Keep smokin’, folks.  You’re payin’ for my education.”) – and Moravian stars, and Krispy Kreme.  

We’ve been talking about this possibility for over a year.  We’ve got amazing friends in and around Winston, but now it seems right.  And it’s funny how God can bring you full circle, back to something you already considered and ruled out.  It wasn’t the wrong place, just the wrong time.  Our hearts weren’t ready yet.  

Now they are.

And so I covet your prayers: for a house, for jobs, for a church, and for a community where we can feed and be fed.

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June 7, 2009 · 11:51 am

England is brilliant.

We landed in London bright and early Friday morning – thanks to everyone who prayed for safety!  I took a 3-hour nap when we got in, and haven’t stopped partying/visiting/reuniting since then.  

Friday night we met up with friends at the Queen’s Head – my favorite pub in Chesham.  It’s in the old part of town.  You know, the part with the cottages and tiny doors.

Saturday, we hit up our friend Russell’s birthday party.  I swear, Russell and his wife Ellie throw the BEST parties – always themed, always all-out on the costume front.  Russell’s birthday a couple of years ago had a pirate theme, Ellie’s last birthday was a masquerade ball, and this one was a Cowboys and Indians party.  I, being from Benson – home of Mule Days - didn’t have to do much.  I just put on a plaid shirt (which I always wear) and cowboy boots (which I always wear).  Unfortunately, cowboy hats don’t travel well; neither do guns.  Yikes.  

But we’re pretty cute, no?

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Here I am with Ellie – she’s an Indian, obviously, but we put our differences aside for the party’s sake.  Kind of like Thanksgiving.  

 

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This morning, we visited our old church, Broadway Baptist, and I got to hold my friends’ Simon and Christine’s new baby boy, Nathan.  

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After church, we – quite controversially – went for coffee with all our friends at Starbucks.  We used to go to Caffé Nero after church every Sunday, but apparently The ‘Bucks is much better now that our favorite barista has moved over.  You may remember him from this post, and I think you’ll be pleased to know he remembered my order – a soy chai latté – AGAIN.  How does he do it?

It’s great to be back with all our friends, in the community where we started our married life.  It’s weird to be here, but mostly it’s weird because it isn’t weird.  

In a way, it feels like we never left.

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June 3, 2009 · 10:29 am

How low can you go?

This isn’t the first time Simon and I have been in limbo since we got married, and certainly not since we started dating.  I can’t count the times God has drawn me to a place of complete and utter dependence on him: no idea where I’m going, certain only of Who is taking me there.

We moved everything we own into a storage unit over the weekend.  It’s odd – and freeing – when all your worldly possessions are in a 10×10 room.  We’re staying with my mom and dad (and whoever else will take us) for the few days we’re around over the next two months, and we’re committing this time to praying for our future.

Desperate to plant ourselves, to start our family, we are trying to enjoy this season of uncertainty while it lasts.  I get the feeling that one day, I’ll be looking back on this time and missing the way God showed himself to me, the way we just had to let go of worldly securities and trust in His plan for our future.

We fly out to England tomorrow, and we can’t wait.  We haven’t been back since last September.  I think that’s a record, even for me.  Since 2003, the longest I’ve not been in England is, I think, about 8 months…

I’m looking forward to meeting our friends at the pub on Friday night, having a drink with Veronica and Laura and Beshlie and Sophie; to sipping a coffee at Caffe Nero and sitting by the big window so I can watch people walk by; to praying with Simon’s Auntie Anne; to holding my friend Christine’s new son; to enjoying the gray coolness after North Carolina’s sweltering heat.

I plan to update here at Great Smitten while we’re abroad, so please stop by and get a taste of England through my eyes…

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May 28, 2009 · 12:47 pm

Here we go again.

Since Simon and I got married, it has been our constant prayer that our life would glorify God, and that it would never – ever – be boring.

There are days, like yesterday, when part of me would like to take that prayer back.  

We told our landlady back in April, when I got laid off, that if she found someone who’d like to rent our house, we’d move out before our lease is up at the end of June.  We thought we could move in with my parents for a couple of months to save some money and figure out where we’re headed from here.  We hadn’t heard much, but then two nights ago, when we returned from helping our friends Steve and Sarah settle into their new home in Winston-Salem, we had a message from her saying she’d found someone, if we were still interested.  

Our first reaction was, “No, that’s too soon.  We’re not ready.”

But then we thought about it.  We’re going to England for two weeks in June, and to the beach with friends for a week.  Three weeks out of June we won’t even be here, and then we’ll move out after that – so what’s the point of paying rent?  Not much.  

In the meantime, we’d decided next week would be the best time for the visit to England we’ve been craving.  So now we’re moving this weekend, and leaving for England on Thursday.  We’re having a good clean-out and throwing loads away.  And we’ve got friends coming in from out of town this weekend (to watch the FA Cup Final), so you’d better believe we’ll be recruiting them to pack boxes after the match.

Yeah, it’s pretty chaotic.  

But we asked for it.  

Ever prayed a prayer you wanted to take back?

(ps – Interested in buying an organ?)

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