Xo,

   Em

Feels Like Summer

I’m not going to lie to myself.  I had been wondering about Lucas for the past month.  I had wondered where he’d gone, or if he’d gone anywhere. I had wondered if we simply kept crossing paths and missing each other. But, I also wondered why I wondered so much. The day I met him, I had tried so hard to play it cool, to convince myself that I wasn’t interested in the slightest. To my discontent, the more I tried to talk myself out of him, the more I talked myself into him. But, seriously? It had been a month since I’d seen the guy, today was the day to let it go...or so I thought.  As I spent the morning walking down Main Street, continuing to talk myself in and out of being interested, my thoughts were abruptly interrupted as I felt someone literally run right into me. I’m sure I looked as if I’d just seen a ghost when I realized it was Lucas. Sensing that I looked a little bit too surprised, I toned it down slightly, which meant pretending like I didn’t recognize him.  Then, he acted in a way that I didn’t expect. Just as I had toned it down probably more than I needed to, he went the polar opposite direction and appeared ecstatic that we had run into each other, remembering my name and everything. You can only imagine how this affected my whole “play-it-cool-I’m-not-interested” charade. After he not so subtly showed his excitement, I figured it was okay if I simply acted as if I had just remembered him. Little did I know, this may have appeared a little too forward considering the whole ordeal led to him asking me out to a concert that one of my favorite artists happened to be headlining. Like I said before, I can’t lie to myself...part of me was really excited that he had been so direct, that he had just put himself out there and asked me. It had been quite a while since I’d actually felt pursued. As I walked away with a plan to meet Lucas for the concert of a lifetime on this fine Friday night, I couldn’t help but smile, but not just because I was getting ready to go out for a night of great music, but because I couldn’t help but feel like this might be the start of something beautiful. And with that thought, the song “This” by Ed Sheeran started playing in my head, as if it was playing in the background of a movie about my life, as if everyone could hear it, and they, just like me, were anticipating what would come of this.

1 MONTH LATER...

Now what? It’s been exactly one month today. One month since what I thought could have possibly been the start of the rest of my life. But how could it have been, seeing as I haven’t seen Kate since that day? Over the past month, I’ve “wandered” into the record shop where she works eight different times, and every time, I’ve missed her. Maybe I read into things. Yeah, that’s exactly what I did. Because ever since that day, everything that could possibly go wrong in my life has gone wrong. In fact, since the moment I left the store that day. Walking back to my car, the owner of Soundroom called me and told me that we were not getting the response from the music world and the public in general that we had hoped for, therefore we were giving the magazine one more issue in order to try and grab their attention one last time. Then, the next day, I woke up only to find that my water was turned off, due to the fact that I forgot to pay the water bill, much less get it out of the mail. And every day since those abnormal couple of days, it’s simply been the little things, like tripping over every single crack in the sidewalk. Or Starbucks messing up my order every time even though I order the same thing every day (as snobby as it sounds, it just added to the list). Or running out of gas...twice. Maybe God was just preparing me for the miserable month ahead by giving me one good day ahead of time. That was the only excuse that I could conjure up, in order to talk myself out of believing that my meeting with Kate was a Divine appointment, a meeting that would lead to more meetings, and meetings that were more than just meetings, a meeting that would lead to time spent together. Or...maybe I’ve just been watching too many chick flicks on cable lately, and I’m starting to become too sensitive. So here I am...walking the streets of downtown Charleston once again...thinking, thinking too much. And just when I begin to convince myself of my own made-up excuse, I trip over yet another sidewalk crack. But this time, I didn’t just trip, I ATE it. As I tried to catch myself, I felt my body jolt against somebody else. Before I even had the guts to look up, I knew it was going to be one of those awkward situations. Mmmm...I’m not a fan of moments like this.  Here it goes. I absolutely couldn’t believe it. I had literally just run into Kate. Let me lay it out...it was one of those When Harry Met Sally moments, you know, the moment where they first run into each other again in the airport, five years after their drive to New York together? Except, she was Harry, and I was Sally. Kate and I didn’t exactly spend eighteen hours in a car together, but I couldn’t have forgotten her if I tried. By the look in her eyes, I could tell it wasn’t the same situation for her. Although, strangely enough, I had no feelings of disappointment, I was simply determined. I had waited a month for this moment. 

“Kate! Hey!”

“Umm hey...I’m sorry about that, I need to watch where I’m going!”

“No no, not at all, my fault completely...”

I clumsily tried to figure out a way to get her to remember...so I pointed at myself.

“It’s me, Lucas! I came into your shop not too long ago...I bought the Avett Bros. record?”

“Oh yeah! How are you doin’?”

“I’m great, I’m absolutely great!” 

I couldn’t help but smile, because everything that I had felt when I had met Kate a month ago came rushing back.

“Good, good,” she replied kindly, “Well, it was good running into you,” she giggled as she said it, and began to walk away. I couldn’t let this moment just pass me by. How do I hold on?

“Kate, wait! I don’t know if you’re into music...well, I guess you are, you work at a record shop...ummm...anyways...I have to go to this concert tonight, it’s this guy named David Ramirez...”

“I LOVE David Ramirez!!!”

“Seriously?! Well, I have to go for work, and I have an extra ticket, so I was wondering if you’d wanna tag along?” She could tell I was struggling.

“Haha, sure, that’d be fun.”

“Awesome! So do you want to meet me at Starbucks, and we can ride together from there?”

“Um...how about I just meet you there? Where is it?”

“Oh yeah! Okay...it’s actually in the building where the offices are that head up the online magazine I work for... the address is 1021 Birdsong Ave....oh! And it starts at 7:00!”

“Great! So I’ll see you at 7?”

“Perfect,” I couldn’t hide the smile on my face. Sure...I had asked her to ‘tag along’, which I totally regret saying...I could’ve just asked her out like a normal person would...and yes, I had asked her to ride with me after just meeting her...it probably seemed awkward. The whole thing probably seemed awkward to her...but the point is that it was happening...I was spending my Friday night with Kate, and that was more than I could ever ask for.

I know it sounds crazy...it sounded crazy to me too, until I actually followed through with the idea. Then it didn’t seem so crazy, it simply seemed Divine, which can sometimes be misconstrued as crazy. This morning I woke up feeling anxious, but not the bad kind of anxious. The kind of anxious that is the sweetest surprise...the kind of anxious that had not yet overcome me several hours before when I first went to sleep, yet came out of nowhere and swept over me this morning. The kind of anxious that tells you, “Ready or not, today holds something beautiful for you, something unexpected, yet something you’ve been waiting for.” Well, to be completely honest, before this moment now, walking down Main Street, treading on the colorful leaves that had recently fallen, breathing in the crisp, Autumn air, the anxiety wasn’t speaking so clearly...all I knew was that I was about to come across something good...it could’ve been anything. I went about my usual morning routine...wake up, brush teeth, throw on clothes, run my fingers through my hair a time or two, and then head out for most of the day. My first stop was Starbucks, of course...at this point, coffee was more of an addiction, rather than an actual aid in keeping me awake, but it was an addiction I didn’t mind sticking to. I quickly made my way to Starbucks, ordered a grande Americano, the regular, and then headed to an outside table to get a little bit of work done. The anxious feeling was still there, and I was impatient to find out what it was for. As I opened up my computer, I pondered what it could possibly be...maybe it had to do with work, maybe I’d finally heard back about the worship leader position that I had been interviewed for. Yeah, that had to be it. As soon as my desktop screen appeared, I scrambled to check my email. To my surprise and slight disappointment, there was no e-mail from the church I had interviewed with. Well then, it must be something else, but what? If you couldn’t tell already, I’d say my biggest weakness is impatience. But it’s also something I’m trying to improve upon, so I did my best to stop wondering and simply live. I work for an online music magazine called Soundroom, actually, I have been graciously made the Editor-in-Chief, so as I sat outside of Starbucks in the middle of downtown Charleston, I did my best to research this week’s charts, check up on the interviews that were scheduled and supposed to be going down, and making sure all of the planned articles were ready for the magazine’s end-of-the-week update. All in all, I spent about three hours laying out this week’s issue and went through two more Americano’s. Work finally came to a close, and I was amped on caffeine, so I decided it was a good idea to take a walk. I had been down Main Street hundred’s, if not thousand’s, of times before, and although on a normal day I would have chosen to walk down Main Street for the 1,001st time, today my feet led me down a side street I had never been down before, Alos St.. There wasn’t much here, but for some reason, my feet kept moving, and my mind wasn’t telling them to stop and go back. Instead, they brought me to the front of a building that had never quite caught my eye. It was a small, white brick house with a red front door that had been converted into a record shop called Into the Mystic, no doubt named after Van Morrison’s hit. Being the music buff that I was, I headed up to the front door and walked inside. A bell rang as I walked inside, and as a result, I heard someone greet me from the front counter. I quickly turned to give a courteous reply, and was caught off guard. Standing behind the counter was a girl about 5 foot 3, with long, strawberry blonde hair, brown eyes, and wearing a vintage Willie Nelson t-shirt. I can’t really explain what took place inside of me the moment I solely laid eyes on her, not in the physical sense, but in a spiritual sense. As cheesy as it’s probably going to sound, it was as if God had literally placed a giant neon arrow sign pointing down from heaven right above her head, as if to say, “This is it! This is what you’ve been waiting for not only all day, but all your life! This is her!” I’ve had people tell me that it took years of dating to figure out that the person they’re married to now was the person they were supposed to marry. I’ve also had people tell me that they met and got engaged within a month. So the reality of it is, I really had no clue up until this point what it would be like or how it would feel to just know.  Well, now I knew. I was a mess as I made an attempt to talk to her. She asked if she could help me with anything, and the quickest thing I could think of were the charts I had been staring down for the past three hours. The first thing that popped in my mind was the Avett Brothers. Their new album had been on repeat in my car for the past two weeks and they had just peaked at number two on the Billboard Folk Album chart. Therefore, in the two seconds I had to figure out what I was going to say, I concluded that that was a good start. She led me over to the section of vinyl that they carried and quickly pulled out a vinyl copy of The Carpenter, then led me back to the counter to pay. Although she was quiet and really good at averting eye contact along with the conversation I was trying to make, I knew that she wasn’t just anybody. I was overcome with a desire to know this girl no matter what it took. Like I said before, it sounds crazy considering I’d never seen her in my life, but like I said before, sometimes Divine appointments are confused with craziness. I walked out of the shop knowing that I had found, or rather, been led to the ‘something good’ that I woke up hoping to find. It, or rather, she, was a girl named Kate.

“Well I have a proposition for you...”

“Really now?”

“Yeah...how about if I give you my name, you give me yours?”

“Haha...smooth!”

“Haha, cheesy, I know...my name is Lucas...you can do with it what you will.”

He gave a playful grin and patiently waited for some sort of reply. “Alright, you got me...I’m Kate. But there’s really not much you can do with a name now, is there?” “Well I can know what to call you next time I see you,” he seemed to have a good reply for everything. “Is there gonna be a next time?” I asked, somewhat surprised by his forwardness. “I sure hope so,” he smiled and turned to walk out the door. As he walked back to the beautiful day outside, he turned around one last time. “See you soon then, Kate.” 

I woke up this morning with a heavy heart yet again. It shouldn’t surprise me. I guess I figured that there would eventually come a day when I would wake up and the feeling would just have simply disappeared. I’m still waiting. So here it goes...let’s get through this day.  I hate saying that, I really just want to get excited about living again...but it’s hard when someone takes your heart, somehow wraps it around their own and wraps it so tight, to the point where they almost become one, therefore making your worlds collide. It’s even harder when that someone decides to detach their heart from yours in such a casually cruel way and attach it to someone else’s when yours is still holding on. Despite all of this turmoil that my heart is drenched in, I’m doing my best to make the most of the day. It’s supposed to be beautiful...the sun is supposed to shine, the leaves are slowly changing colors, the air is supposed to be crisp...it’s supposed to be the perfect day, and I refuse to let him turn my sunny skies gray. I walk out the front door, breathe in the fresh air, hop in my car, and embark on the day ahead.  My first stop is Starbucks, of course, my body has become accustomed to surviving off of coffee. As I walk in, the cashier waves me away, as if to say, don’t worry about it. Free coffee has also become a somewhat normal occurrence, due to the fact that I’m in here every day, and have therefore become best friends with the baristas.  As I sit and wait for my drink, I hear someone call my name, and it’s my friend, Jane. She and I moved to the city of Nashville around the same time. We met here in Starbucks one day and have been great friends ever since. She had been back on the East Coast recently for about a week, so she hadn’t been fully updated on the current situation between me and him who shall remain nameless. Now was the perfect time. I laid out the whole situation, and she sat there, jaw dropped, a look of horror on her face.  Jane is the kind of friend who is tender-hearted, but would dropkick anyone who tried to hurt anyone she cared about, and this was one of those instances.  The first thing out of her mouth was that she wanted to punch him. It made me laugh, but part of me wished she was serious. But, what made me feel better wasn’t that I had a friend to defend me, but a friend who related, because she had been through the exact same situation.  She sympathized with me and reassured me that God had an amazing man who would love my heart more than I had ever known, a man who wouldn’t even dare take a chance on losing me. He wouldn’t be perfect, no one is, but he would know my heart and love it better than this previous man who had hurt me so, ever could. As comforted as I was by the fact, it didn’t lessen the hurt that my heart had been caused. I said goodbye to Jane and walked across the street to the record shop that I work at five days a week. But, I can barely call it work, because I love it so much that it doesn’t feel like it. I’m the only girl, so I’m kinda like the sister of the group. I walk through the door, and I’m greeted by Dane, Joe, and Matt, who are already hard at work in the back, doing inventory and ll of that fun stuff. I haven’t worked here that long, so I still have the position of running the front, interacting with customers, etc.. After making a couple of rounds through the store, making sure everything is in order, I sit at the front counter and begin writing down all of the lyrics that have been flooding into and running around my head. I was scribbling down the last line of a chorus I had been humming, when the door opened with the first customer of the day. My mouth uttered the typical welcome that we were instructed to give each person that came in, but as soon as I looked up, my heart skipped a beat. I had never met him, but somehow I felt like I had known him my whole life. He responded to my welcome with a warm “hello”. Just as quickly as I had raised my eyes to him, they darted back down to the lyrics I had been working on, and I read and re-read the last line I had just written... “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Ok, so let’s begin by reintroducing ourselves...my name is Emily Reeves (aka “Em Taylor”).  It’s been a while, so I just wanted to start fresh again. :) This past six months has been absolutely crazy in the hardest, yet best way.  Looking back on it, it was a beautiful time of transition into a new season, but it took a very rainy season to get here.  Over the past half year or so, I have moved to a new city, and embarked on a passion that has always existed in my heart.  I have walked through open doors, and run into closed ones.  I have peacefully walked with God, and I have wrestled with Him.  I have gained, and I have lost.  In the midst of all of these ups and downs, God has remained so consistent in who He is and proven Himself so faithful, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts.  But, despite all of the beautiful lessons He has taught me, one has remained a constant struggle that much be constantly overcome, and that struggle is letting go of what others think.  The concept sounds so cliche, and I always thought that I had it down to a tee.  Man, was I wrong.  Up until now, I never really realized how much I have allowed different people to influence my life.  As a result, I have encountered beautiful friendships that have done nothing but encourage my heart to press on, yet I have also trusted others far too easily and been let down.  Therefore, I have been built up and filled by the the Divine ones, yet my heart has felt beaten down and worn from others.  You would think that I would look at the positive relationships in my life and make them my core focus, but because the devil knows my weaknesses, he somehow brings my heart to a place of heaviness through thinking far too much on the negative ones that have brought me down several times.  Here’s the thing, I became sick of waking up every morning with a heavy heart.  I was done feeling like less than who the Lord created me to be.  Basically, I was finished letting other people’s actions, words, and ways of life affect me in such a way that it brought me down with them.  As hard as it was, I had to make the decision to make different friends, not BETTER friends, for no one is truly good, but simply DIFFERENT.  Friends who were confident enough in who they were in the Lord, that they were able to build me up in who God made me to be and vice versa...THAT, my friends, is true friendship.  True friendship is rare, and truth is found only when sought out in the Lord.  C.S. Lewis explains the simple beauty of friendship in the body of Christ through this question... “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”, also stating that “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” All of that to say, allow the Lord to guide you in the friendships that you choose to trust and maintain...choose wisely, and wait patiently for those who believe you are worthy, and believe themselves to be worthy in the eyes of Christ, all the while, knowing we are all a mess and loving each other despite ourselves.  You all are worthy to be loved.

Xo,

   Em 

Ahhh it's that beautiful time of week when work/school is out and it's time for the long-awaited weekend...so so good. This week has been pretty busy for me (which I will expand on in my next blog post!), so today was a day to simply clean up around the house, do a couple of errands, make some tea, and relax in the country. :) With that said, today's fashion post definitely shows a what a more casual day looks like...it's not quite sweatpants, but definitely something just a little bit simpler. I hope you all have had a wonderful week and that you enjoy this sweet weekend ahead! God is good all the time. You are loved.

Xo,

   Em

Top: C&C California (www.nordstromrack.com), Bandeau: (www.nordstromrack.com)Pants: Jolt (www.nordstrom.com), Shoes: Dolce Vita (www.nordstromrack.com), Necklace: Giving Key "Triumph" (Philanthropy)

Daytime Perfume: Daisy by Marc Jacobs, Eye Shadow: All That Glitters by MAC

My FAVORITE lip gloss/balm!!! Baby Lips by Maybelline