5:47am

Hey! So to wrap up this year my friend Chloe's taking over the blog to review her year. Hope you have a blessed new years, good luck for all those resolutions and enjoy this post! X



It’s 5:47 am. The air is untouched, installing a stillness amidst the grandeur. Before me the first hint of sunlight spills out along the eastern horizon, gently erasing the stars. A dusky pink fills the expanse with the promise of a new day, while below waves crash at the shore frothing and foaming as unrelenting as the next. On mornings like this, there is a stronger urge than ever to sit here for a moment, and behold the unapologetic beauty and its creator.  
Unbeknownst to me is the connection between idyllic settings and reflective moments, but somehow I find myself caught in the happenings of the past year. And so I lay out the last 365 days before me like a photographer examining her film and begin.  
I recognise the day when I understood the gravity of perspective. I felt the strength of the magnetic field of circumstance and its ability to draw one’s all into its pull. Until all of a sudden, it is in everything you see around you, for nothing else exists beyond it. On those days I felt the unbearable heaviness of being. It was then that I realised I had lost my point of reference. So I searched for it, only finding it in the heavens as I look up, reminded of the sovereignty of the one who sits above. Only then, was it possible to detach, close my eyes, breath in — breathe out and look again. From there, it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore.  
There was the day I learnt about the art of listening. How in more times than not, silence is the most desired of replies. And after that, I realised something about silence, by how friendship is measured, through the way silence remains comfortable in another’s company. I also encountered a dissimilar silence - one that thrums, like an elastic band about to snap, bursting with words that could have been said, and should have been said. I learned how to calibrate words. I discovered their tangibility and their weight. Their capacity to bring about both destruction and beauty. How words can be a currency blunderingly spent. How an apology is always too late, but remains just as necessary. I discovered the extent of a sincere compliment - oh I would live off one for days. And in turn when paying a compliment, not once, I soon realised, is one’s own worth discounted in the process. I learnt about people too, about their basic need for love, only to feel my heart tear when I see some desperately grasping for anything, for something that it is entirely in front of them. 
Between those days, I journeyed on the path of self evolvement. I realised what it meant to live simply. To treasure that which ought to matter. And to not hold on so tightly to things that hold no eternal equivalence. I have learnt never to trade honesty for relatability. To always be kind. This world is a hardened place, and therein lies the infinite difficulty to remain soft. And above all, I arrived at the realisation that my human need for God is just as desperate on the good days, as it is in the fallible. 
I raise my eyes towards the horizon and take a deep breath. The sun glitters in all its glory illuminating each detail of creation. A beautiful start to the new year. 
- chloe