The best of 2018

2018 was possibly the happiest year of my life.

In January, I began the new year watching the fireworks over Edinburgh castle and feeling so much hope and promise it almost felt painful, in the way a heart bursting with joy is painful. I ceilidhed on the streets with Alex, and danced to Bohemian Rhapsody and the Lion King with Emily in an odd club called The Shack. This year I watched fireworks over an Austrian lake from Nat's house in Zell Am See and wondered if I could have a year so wonderful again .

The last months of Cambridge: 

I had cosy movie nights with Alex, early morning essay practices with Becky, slow Sunday mornings with Jacob and loping Saturday runs.

I wrote an essay with the line 'unlike Ellie, Scarlett refuses to eat the carrots of reality', which to this day I am not sure whether to be proud or ashamed of. (I was definitely proud of that essay as a whole though.)

I decided to join the rowing team, if only for the chance to have my overnight oats in the sun by the boat house.

I fell sick, and realised how much blessing existed in the smallest of things like going for a walk, and birdsong, and peas. 

I finished my dissertation, which I was really happy with, which I learnt so much about God from. 

Perhaps the most glorious day of the year - the day I jumped into the Cam with Harriet and Jacob, then rode on the back of the bike while Harriet pedalled so we could make it to our respective evensong rehearsals, then sang Noble in B minor as a sun ray came through the chapel window and warmed my face, tried to get ice cream in the break (which didn't happen, but the thrill of trying!) and then sang with my heart brimful of joy - God is so good.

Exams were terrifying but also such a good test of trust. I prayed with a group of Christian Englings before each paper, and emerged out of the first two feeling dissatisfied, the Visual culture one feeling jubilant, and the final postcolonial one feeling satisfied and oh so relieved. Always there was the knowledge or the timely reminder from people around me that it was all in God's hands. 

I graduated with a first, and my family came to be there for it. It was so happy and so sad - a high way to end three years of study, but then again I didn't want it to end. Not because I didn't feel ready for what was to come - in the graduation speech that Juliet Foster gave she used the same picture Miss Tan had shown my Junior College class when we graduated (Quentin Blake's Finale) and I felt full of confidence and hope for the next year. Cambridge certainly left me equipped with more knowledge, more assurance of what I know (and of what I don't - but balanced with a curiosity to find out), and more happy memories than I can count. (I know this isn't every person's experience, and Cambridge was certainly hard at times, but overall I was incredibly blessed in that place.) 

Choir tour followed - my first time in America. I meant to write about this, but never got round to it. As usual choir tour was a strange, bubble of space in which everything is so present, and events so vivid one moment and already the next day they've attracted that strange, blurred quality of memory. Lots of my memories of America are either coloured blue or orange - so many sunsets (from a still beach in Cape Cod, from the Staten Island Ferry, from the High Line) and so many bright, afternoon walks in a place where everything, even the sky, seems bigger.

The end of student life really began after choir tour was over - I remember having a few days back in Ixworth, which was like a small oasis. I went for a walk daily, in a field near the house, just myself and audiobooks. I watched hares and deer that had been nibbling on the crops bound away as they heard my footsteps, and saw calm sunsets. Life settled back into a step by step that wasn't going anywhere in particular, but was going.

Those steps soon took me up 16 hills in the Lake District with Becky. A different kind of step by step - sometimes quite difficult when the going was steep - but always incredibly rewarding. The quietness of the hills, the husky labour of breath and occasional deep, winding conversation were such luxuries.

“Oh, how can I put into words the joys of a walk over country such as this; the scenes that delight the eyes, the blessed peace of mind, the sheer exuberance which fills your soul as you tread the firm turf? This is something to be lived, not read about. On these breezy heights, a transformation is wondrously wrought within you. Your thoughts are simple, in tune with your surroundings; the complicated problems you brought with you from the town are smoothed away. Up here, you are near to your Creator; you are conscious of the infinite; you gain new perspectives; thoughts run in new strange channels; there are stirrings in your soul which are quite beyond the power of my pen to describe. Something happens to you in the silent places which never could in the towns, and it is a good thing to sit awhile in a quiet spot and meditate. The hills have a power to soothe and heal which is their very own. No man ever sat alone on the top of a hill and planned a murder or a robbery, and no man ever came down from the hills without feeling in some way refreshed, and the better for his experience.” ― Alfred Wainwright

Back home for the shortest summer, in which Jacob came too and my two worlds or here and there, home and home, collided and thankfully both welcomed the other. In first year I remember returning to England feeling like I was two different people, daughter me at home, student me in Cambridge, but at the close of three years those two people have made friends and become one. Seeing the people I love so much - Emily and Christy, Weixin and Ellis, Claire and Luk Ching, the board games group from church, the class, Cheemeng, Ben... it was a blessing to know that though I am so absent so much of the time, our friendship has deep roots and stays.

In a kind of chiasmus my return to the UK was marked by more hill walking - this time in Wales, with Jacob. They were higher hills, and more fightening -- 'as we reached the summit, the winds picked up, whipping against our exposed faces and hands till they were numb, tugging at the hoods of our raincoats [...] cold, wind, howling, storm, tempest. At points the wind was so strong it was physically difficult to lift your leg against it to take the next step [...] 'God, please keep us safe,' I thought over and over, hoping I could cover this mountain with a cloud of prayer to counter the cloud we were stepping into which obscured all view and seemed to transport us into a different dimension, black and merciless and entirely elemental [...] There were large steps, a giant's staircase, to reach the highest point, and in a surreal vision I felt like Jacob and I were small children, fightened and desperate, ascending to the throne of some mighty but severe God [...] only to reach the throne and cling on - and it was empty.' (excerpts from my diary)

In October I began studying in SOAS. I remember one day feeling that London was too much, and saying to myself 'this is possibly the hardest thing you've done, but you're doing it. Maybe you aren't doing it well, but you are doing it and that is good enough.' It was hard, but I know I can do hard things. In November I did a hard thing with Jacob and ran 10 kilometres in the South Downs, but it didn't feel hard but glorious. I finished my first term with a lot more knowledge about Buddhism, and a lot more love for the bible and God. People have asked me how studying different religions impacts my own faith, and I think by juxtaposition it makes me thankful for the unique parts of Christianity, and by similarity it makes me wonder that so many various people search for God or meaning - even in Buddhism where there is no 'God' really, since there is no enduring self (and the Buddha was a human), there is still a yearning for the things we attach to God - perfect peace, the end of suffering, and that is inevitably represented in a identified, deified figure.

I began this year wondering if I'd used up all the joy last year, but realised that the grace shown to me in every turn is proof not that grace is limited but that it is sustaining and freely given. Assured of God's graciousness, I know he will give grace for this new year because he doesn't change, and doesn't run out, and doesn't hold back his love from those who love him.

In the next five minutes, you will receive sustaining grace flowing to you from the future, and you will accumulate another five minutes’ worth of grace in the reservoir of the past. The proper response to the grace you experienced in the past is thankfulness, and the proper response to grace promised to you in the future is faith. We are thankful for the past grace of the last year, and we are confident in the future grace for the new year. (Grace for the New Year, John Piper)