Hello beautiful people and so welcome in my Travel Blog about these next 11 months on the World Race!
I am Simona and I am 33. I currently live in London but I grew up in the countryside, in the South of Italy, surrounded by beautiful views and landscapes: the mountains behind me, irregular and fun-shaped hills all around and the Mediterranean sea up ahead! I remember spending my days out in the woods, exploring, playing, running and almost flying around in the elements like a sort of butterfly (at least in my head!). It made me feel free and “compelled” me to dream big and fantasize. I was enthralled by the amazements around me, the stunning variety of colours, details, creatures, sounds, smells, noises, scenes. For it me it was all about magic and I was feeling inspired to truly unleash my childhood imagination (and I had a really vivid and wild one!)
Now I am simply blessed to be well aware that such a perfection and spectacular harmony can only come from and be planned by an ever greater and perfect being: God, who orchestrated everything with a superlative and undeniable intelligence and creativity. Perfection cannot create itself and more and more scientists now agree that there must be a Creator. Isn’t amazing that the more we dig into science, physics, biology and psychology the more everything seems to point in the same direction, God!??!! (please check out this blog, sooo good! It sums up so much I agree with and I strongly feel: https://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html)
The Gospel of John in chapter 1 says:
“in the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
2 The Word was with God in the beginning.
3 Everything came into being through the Word,
and without the Word
nothing came into being.
What came into being
4 through the Word was life,
and the life was the light for all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.
I have always believed in God deep down but my relationship with Him was more “platonic” and it didn’t really have an impact on my daily life despite I have always been what they call a “moral” person with a good values system.
I come from a big family: I am the 3rd of 5 children. All in all, I had a nice childhood and adolescence era. Althougth we didn’t have a lot of money and we went through difficult times and we lived for many years in a house badly hit by a earthquake, I was happy and having a great time!. My parents are good and simple hard working people who taught us the value of love for family and the importance of unity, of sharing, of being there for each other, supporting one another and never giving up on someone you love.
When I turned 18, I moved to Rome to University where I studied Literatures, Foreign Languages and Translation. It was a great experience and there I made some good friends who I am still in contact with. I learned a lot at Uni and not only notions, but how to study, how to be independent, how to properly read a book with a critique and analytical mind, how to always go to the source before getting some conclusions or assumptions. It was also there that I developed a very “individualistic” and “philosophically-driven mind”. This led me to become agnostic and atheist for a while but…God had obviously in mind to catch up with me later on in my life, always there watching over me through my errancy!
After graduation in 2009, I moved to France and Malta for a few months to get some job experience and improve my language skills. Between 2010 and 2011 I landed in London and I fell in love with the capital straight away! So extravagant, so vibrant, so alive! I started to go to parties, events and meeting with people of different cultures. I was having fun and discovering new things! However, I also experienced the “bad” side: how here in London, for a foreigner, everything almost seems “temporary” and how difficult can be to build and especially maintain close friendships. I knew a lot of people but didn’t have “true” friends and felt lonely for quite a long time at least until late 2012 when I met my real first love, M., who became my 2nd family and played an important role in that unforgettable season of my life!
At that time, God wasn’t really on my mind nor Christianity. I just wanted to be focused on my future personal selfish goals, on my relationship, on my needs and on my own little world; I just wanted what I thought was “freedom”: I wanted to be free to spend the money I earned for myself, for my own pleasure, without feeling guilty or ashamed; free to spend weekends having fun or just choosing to be lazy; not pressed to give or worried to help the homeless or engage in other volunteering activities. At the same time, I wasn’t feeling “free” at all, I had this “hunger”, this need to know the “truth” of life. I don’t know why but I became relentless in the pursuit of a deeper understanding of how and why things and people all around “just” happen to exist. I refused to believe that my being on earth was an accident and I was meant to grow, get old and die, stopping to exist. All my emotions, feelings, dreams, thoughts and the depths of love and pain were too special and complex to just be random or generated out of a “big-bang” explosion!!!
And now, looking back, I know that, amazingly, God was listening to all my questions and He was getting ready to answer them later on in my life through practical experience, revelation and knowledge of Him and His Word, the Bible! He never let me go, He continued to keep me close to Himself even in that self-centered season of my life and now at the bottom of my heart, there is nothing I desire more than knowing Him more so I can love Him more, worship Him more, serve Him more and honour Him more.
My life started to change drastically in October 2014, a few days before my birthday through a little tiny cheap flier. It was a Saturday afternoon, I was returning from food shopping, totally immersed in my own world, when I heard someone at the door. Reluctantly I went and open but there was no one there, just a flier on the floor. I picked it up and noticed it was an invitation for a “urban gospel concert” taking place that very evening less than 1 mile away from where I was living. It happened I was alone at home that day and didn’t have other plans (aside from movie and pizza in bed!), so I decided to go but once there, I felt somehow embarrassed to just be by myself and went straight back home without even entering the location or listening to the music. I don’t know why or how but during the night I picked up the flier again and noticed there was a website at the bottom of the page. I went straight online and found out the concert was actually organized by a local Church. I was intrigued by the unusual pictures and videos of young adults I found there, sharing their personal stories and telling about their love for Jesus and how this had changed their life. WOW! I wasn’t used to that at all! These people were talking like they KNEW JESUS PERSONALLY, on an intimate-spiritual level! It wasn’t just a “theological concept”, a historical figure or a nice loving character with long brown hair and blue eyes! HE was REAL for them! HE was in their life, in every day! How was it even possible!!?? So the following day, which was Sunday, I went to their afternoon Service at 3pm.
I need to say that I have grown up in a Catholic environment so for me churches have always been very “traditionalist” and people in there all put together and somehow careful to hide their emotions. You can then imagine my surprise when I found all this crowd of people clapping, dancing and singing with passion to God! That night something happened inside me. It wasn’t dramatic or theatrical but it shook me up and made me re-think about my perception of faith and God, what impact it had had on my daily life and what it had meant to have a relationship/friendship with the Lord. I understood IT WAS NOT ABOUT RELIGION! About being Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical for example. It was about knowing GOD, living for HIM and with HIM, following Jesus, abiding in HIS LOVE and teachings, communicating with HIM and accepting HIM as Lord and Saviour of my life (I will write a blog soon about what it means for me to be a Christian, stay tuned!:)
That was my first step into a new wonderful but challenging journey of discovery of God and His Character. in 2015 I joined my current big spiritual family, Jubilee Church London, which helped me a lot to grow as a disciple and to connect with other Christians on a deeper level. I feel now part of a community and not alone anymore in this overwhelming city.
Now I invite you all to come with me and support me through this season of my life and great Race. I know it won’t be easy but God will surround me and His Love will follow me wherever I go:
“If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will take hold of me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,
And the night will be the only light around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139: 9-12
