Louisa Wells

[louisawells]

Part Three: Wildfire...

Part Three: Wildfire 

I fully intended to write and share this part three much sooner than this; directly following part two. But, there’s something to be learned about waiting to write or tell a story while it’s still in process. 

I leave for New York in three days. My two and a half (or so) months in Copenhagen will be coming to a pause. I say pause, not end, because for all intents and purposes, it truly doesn't feel like this is the end. I don’t see my time in Copenhagen as coming to an end but rather this is the end for this particular moment in my life. 

From the moment God fanned the flame that he ignited in my heart to come here, as soon as I landed it was as if I was being propelled forward by a wildfire ever at my heels. I jumped right into life in Denmark: going on dates within a few days of my arrival, buying (not renting) a used bike, and becoming a regular at a church where the sermons are in Danish (no, my Danish is not that good to the point that I can understand an entire church sermon). There were so many moments within the first month that surprised me in the best way. Meeting people who would become friends I’d confide in in moments of true vulnerability, being able to dip my toes into the photo industry here, and seeing how God is building his church (God bless everyone who shows up when sometimes the congregation is but 10 people in total). 

There were also many moments where I was brought to my knees in humility and looking back, that first month was the third time I can recall in my life where, at a very low point, I felt God showing me where I was not seeing myself for who I was meant to be. 

Going on dates (for the first time after many months of hiatus) helped me to see that I am worthy of so much love. 

Feeling “alien” in a city where, yes, English is widely spoken but to truly be part of the culture, an entire other language is needed, helped me see my own vulnerabilities as a human and learn to embrace the uncomfortable. 

Not knowing anyone in Denmark before arriving helped me to embrace an attitude of “yes” – I was saying yes to meeting new people and visiting places I felt nudged to go because of the possibility of something great on the other side of my yes. 

Those first few weeks, filled with all of the aforementioned trials and tribulations, the darkness seemed to be closing in. But I had been there before, and being somewhere before helps you develop a familiarity and a tenacity. I’ve grown to understand you can either embrace that same circumstance like an unwanted, artificial support blanket, or you can learn to try another way. There’s a verse in the bible that I love to read: “know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow…”(James 1:3-4a)

I let flames of the wildfire of my faith spur me on. I knew that God helped me get here (and get me out of my dark night of the soul last year) and so he surely wouldn’t leave me this time either. That’s not who he is. 

Many people have asked me, “what’s next?” To which I reply, I simply don’t know yet. I want to stay (or rather, come back). I can genuinely see myself living in Copenhagen for some extended period of time. There are various obstacles and barriers on the horizon to get there, but I also know that whatever is to come, though it may not be easy, will surely be good (check out Psalm 84:11). I’ll be in NYC for the foreseeable few months after that, we will see. If I could do this, I’m truly excited for what else is possible for me and where else I can go.

To end, I wanted to share an entry from my journal that I wrote on a plane a few weeks before my trip to Copenhagen. I often journal my prayers and thoughts as a way to look back and see how God responded later or to see where my mind was at (I am frequently amused at how fickle I am). 

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Ellipsis

In the ellipsis, I wait for the answers to come. 

I step into the space from where and who I was to the ever-present becoming. In the ellipsis, I hold things with loose fingers, willing to trust that some items may slip from my grasp (truthfully, they were always God’s to carry anyway). 

In the ellipsis, I wonder if I’ve brought too much. Are my bags too heavy, did I overpack, overthink? I trust that as I move through the months, I can keep what needs to be kept close, say goodbye to the things that are ornamental, and still hold on to the questions that remain. 

In the ellipsis, I want my yeses to be yeses and my nos to be nos. With each pause and each breath, I become more authentically me. 

In this pause, I pause and rest. Simply because I can. In the ellipsis, I wonder how I say goodbye and hello. I recognize that some goodbyes will be periods while others will only be semicolons or commas. 

[louisawells]

Part Two: Embers to a (Candle) Flame

Winter 2023 

At the beginning of 2023, Copenhagen felt like nothing more than a pipe dream. What I realized (and am realizing still as I look back even now) is that through this experience, God was calling me to a level of faith that I had never known before. But, before I go further, I need to share the abridged version of my testimony. 

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Testimony: "to give one's story”; "to tell the story of how one became a Christian"

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I was raised in a Christian household. Generations of women before me, on both sides of my family lineage, prayed to and feared (stood in reverence of) the Lord. My aunt likes to share an anecdote from her childhood about my great-grandmother. She would stand in the doorway of her house in Abbeville, South Carolina, and pray this prayer: “Lord bless my children, and my children’s children, and their children’s children.” Quick math helps you deduce that that prayer includes me. When I hear that story, I’m in awe of how God planned, way before I was even born, to bring me into the world and into a family whose faith was as strong and mighty as the loblolly pine trees that stood like centurions guarding my grandmother’s house. I was raised to believe that I was created and loved by God (Jesus loves me, this I really do know). I was the little girl in third grade who carried her bible in her backpack and wrote prayers about her friends (and her grade-school crushes) to God. 

Somewhere along the way, the message of the truth got mixed up with other messages that seemed equally as enticing, and I started to look to other things to satisfy my longings – material things, attention from boys, and the need to be loved by all. At 18, when I went to college, I essentially walked away from my faith. My bible came with me to Nashville, Tennessee but collected dust as it sat on shelves being toted from dorm room to dorm for four years. At 21, I moved to New York and the God who leaves the 99 sheep for the 1 chased after me. I can describe this only as the move of the holy spirit. Sitting on my couch one Saturday afternoon, I quite literally said out loud “I should go to church.” Seeing as how I hadn’t been to church in over five years, and this wouldn’t be my naturally-occurring thought, I knew that it was God, working on my heart to open it back up and rediscover my belief in and love for him. And while I won’t share the full ins and outs of my story, what you need to know is that at the beginning of 2023, while I whole-heartedly believed in a God who was real, and all powerful, and full of love, I had never felt more distant from my faith in my entire life. 

This time, rather than my wandering being caused by a lack of understanding of the gospel, I was wandering because I was angry. Angry at a God who (I thought) was holding out on me. “Everyone” was moving away to new cities and moving on to bigger and better; “everyone” was finding their partners and getting married; “everyone” was living out their dreams while I was stuck on the sidelines, yelling “put me in coach!” (As we know, “everyones,” “alls,” and “nevers” rarely prove to be true). Where was this loving God I believed in, as I sat in my low-grade depression, numbing myself with tv, alcohol, and looking for love everywhere but the one place I could truly receive it to the full? I had carved out an island of solitude for myself, where no life raft could come in and no flare signals were being sent up. I felt like if I kept sharing my grief and anger, my friends and family would grow tired of me and “surely,” I thought, “God was fed up with my antics.” 

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I’ll pause here and say the one thing I truly want to share particularly with my dear friends reading this who don’t believe in God, much less a God who could be active and present when the world shows otherwise. Hear my heart in these words. 

I know, it seems like God doesn’t exist. There is so much devastation and destruction and hatred in the world. It seems like nothing will ever get better. And in many ways, this is true, the world as we know it is in fact wasting away. However, I wholeheartedly believe this: Walking with God, day by day, even when I’ve been at my lowest moments, he has always been by my side. Through words from a friend, moments of daily peace, bible verses that soothe like healing balm on the wounds of my heart, to name a few examples. Even when I’m left with more questions than answers, I have hope. Not the kind that daydreams of a far off utopia where there is no war and world peace. I believe in an real, living creator of the universe who cares about me and all of my comings and goings. What I learned most about God in this time is that he isn’t angry or ready to strike me down when I stumble. He’s there, ready and waiting with open arms, to help me back up when I’m the little girl who's just fallen off her bike as she’s learning to ride without training wheels (and he’ll do the same for you) To know that God, when we were destined to be stuck here with no hope, rescued us through Jesus; to know he did it by sending Jesus in our place, not because we did anything to earn it but simply because he loves us. It’s unfathomable sometimes, and yet fully true.

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In my numbness and anger (and many tears) the one prayer I could muster up outside of my anger and raw emotions was: “God, I know you will not leave me here.” Over and over again the words would escape my lips; even when I barely believed them. Microscopic seeds of faith being scattered into the air. 

That same evening back in October, when Camille and Leanne helped pour water on the seeds of a new dream planted in my heart, Leanne encouraged me to do something I’ve never done before, and it would require me to fully trust in God to provide financially. She said to me, “write down the number that you think you would need to get there, and share it with God.” 

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Faith:  “this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.”

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I’ve never done something like that before. I didn’t do things like that. But, a funny thing happens when we reach the end of ourselves; we’re willing to try. So I sat down one cold morning in mid-January and wrote down three numbers to present to God: 

The first was the number I’d imagined I’d need to live comfortably and have some spending money while in Denmark.

The second was the number I wanted to have saved for a buffer in savings when I returned from Denmark and would leap into the deep-end of my freelance career. 

The third was the amount of credit card debt I had racked up in recent years. 

“Lord, if you’re willing, make a way.” That was it. Those simple words, trusting that the answer would come back to me in some way (either a yes, a no, or a not yet). 

Over the course of that year, as I worked out a way to come back to myself emotionally and spiritually (started opening up to friends and family despite my fears of rejection, counseling, and starting anew in a church community) God, once again, was moving in the background. Photo opportunity after photo opportunity came to me simply from people reaching out, not by my own doing (truly!) Slowly but surely I was able to save up three-month’s worth of savings, then the amount I wanted to have while in Denmark, and then finally, the credit card debt was paid off. For brevity’s sake I’m keeping this part short but what you need to hear is this: 

This isn’t some prosperity, “believe in God and you’ll get rich quick” message. This is simply me, a woman who didn’t ever think to ask God for help in this capacity, laying down my expectations and ideas of what I thought was possible and asking for the impossible from an impossible God. And he answered. He can do it. 

At the beginning of this year, 2024, my faith and this dream to move had been fanned into a flame and I was inching closer and closer to this ellipsis, this suspension point or jumping off point, of something completely new ready to sprout up in my life. 

To be continued with the final part, part 3, soon.

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Footnote: 

I’m always open to sharing more about my faith in a private setting if anything in my story resonates with you or you have questions. Shoot me a note ([email protected]) 

[louisawells]

[louisawells]

[louisawells]

early evening light

[louisawells]

spring barbecue

[louisawells]

tulips at Tivoli, May 2024

[louisawells]

Part One: Embers

Fall 2022 

Like many in the wake of the pandemic of 2020, I found myself at odds with who I was becoming and who I wanted to be. The years of 2021 and 2022 brought so much change to my life and I hadn’t allowed myself (nor did I truly know how) to grieve all that I’d lost. 

Loss met me square in the face, screaming at me to pay attention to it, like a toddler in need of a parent’s warm embrace. It was the loss of close friendships and the loss of the life I had expected to lead. Seldom do we discuss how devastating these two types of specific loss can be. They barrel through your life, tossing you to and fro as you struggle to find your footing. Like the titans of Greek mythology (don’t be misled here in what I believe, they are simply that: myth) who tore their way through ancient lands leaving little behind but scorched earth. 

I was the scorched earth and I ignored and isolated my way into a corner where the loss couldn’t reach me. Numbing with television and takeout, alcohol and sometimes precarious situations with men I met at bars; this carried on for months. I felt as if I had nothing left to cultivate. Till my soil and no seeds were to be found (the pill of a lie I’d swallowed whole). These lies had settled deep within and I believed that no good was to come. I had no hope for the future and the idea of dreaming felt futile. 

It was at this time that one of my cousins made the choice to study abroad in Copenhagen for a semester. As one does with one of her favorite cousins when you’re locked in for life, I made a promise to visit her while abroad. I like to travel and this gave me an opportunity to visit a new country as well as make a stopover in one of my favorite places in the world, Uppsala, Sweden. This was the city my dad and mom lived, bravely taking a leap from “smallville,” South Carolina, to live a life abroad for two years. It was my fun fact I always shared growing up. The “two truths and a lie” ice breaker that somehow always ended in me needing to explain that “no I’m not Swedish, my parents just lived there.” A fact I proudly clung to. It made me swell with pride to know my parents forged a new path; had done something against the grain – especially for Black folks in the late 80s. For a young black girl in the midwest, there was nothing I wanted more than to feel a little special. 

So, in October of 2022, I made good on my promise to travel back to Scandinavia. When I arrived in Copenhagen, I had expected similarities to Stockholm. What I found instead was a place where the embers of my soul started to flicker. Signs of life deep within. 

It didn’t happen all at once. The embers flickered as I walked from my AirBNB in Østerbro to meet my cousin in Enghave Plads (a place I now am much more familiar with) for pizza at a cozy place I’d heard about. 

The embers flickered when, one night as I returned home, I was struck with a familiar smell of laundry that reminded me of a small apartment complex my family once lived in while my dad was finishing his medical residency. The streets were quiet that evening and as the cool October wind hit my face, I was overcome with what I could only describe as an intense feeling of familiarity and comfort. The holy spirit of the Lord whispering “a place you could call home.” 

The embers flickered even when, deciding to stay in rather than exploring the city one evening, I settled in with some homemade pasta, candles flickering and illuminating the glow of this beautiful loft apartment, and my favorite movie, “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” queued up to play. (Little did I know at the time that the art for this film was inspired by Miyazaki’s first trip to Scandinavia). Kiki’s most poignant observation (for a precocious 13 year old witch) rang aloud in my mind that evening: “without even thinking about it, I used to be able to fly. Now I'm trying to look inside myself and find out how I did it.” The embers flickered, but the lies of the weed-filled soil in my heart snuffed out any further thought on the matter. 

Upon returning from my trip, not much had changed within me, or so I believed. A few days later, I was off to Los Angeles to visit some close friends who had moved from New York in the great western migration. Sitting around the table with Camille and Leanne, my friend Camille asked aloud, in a way that I love so much about her, “what are we dreaming for in the next year?” 

There I sat, silent. As I listened to their responses, I was excited for them, but the darkness I felt in my soul wouldn’t allow me to see beyond what was right in front of me. I was a woman without hope. When it was my turn, I started to cry. Nothing was bubbling up but my grief. I choked out that I couldn’t think of anything. Camille and Leanne listened with grace (so much grace) and then gingerly pressed me for more. Then Camille spoke. “What if the holy spirit was trying to tell you something about Copenhagen? You really lit up when you spoke about it!” I sat for a moment (embers flickering once again) and replied, “maybe.” 

But, the Lord I know is nothing if not persistent when he is leading us along the path set out for us. After cleaning up dinner and as we sat chatting some more on the couch together, I pondered the thought more, and the embers flickered. When Leanne and I got back to her apartment and as she was in the bathroom getting ready for bed that evening, I sat at her dining room table and wrote out a prayer to God (as I often find this practice a way to solidify my prayers and thoughts and to be able to look back and remember): 

“What if I could dream again? What if I could travel to Copenhagen? Lord, what would it look like if I could go to Copenhagen?” I closed my journal. 

That’s the thing about embers; in the right conditions they can be used to relight a fire long after it has gone out. 

To be continued. 

[louisawells]

[louisawells]

[louisawells]

[louisawells]

[louisawells]

Copenhagen, Week 2 - April 2024

[louisawells]

Copenhagen, Week 2 - April 2024

[louisawells]

Copenhagen, Week 2 - April 2024

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Copenhagen, Week 1 - April 2024

[louisawells]

Copenhagen, Week 1 - April 2024