'Come, why don’t you run wild and free with me?’ Schoenmaker will most likely be unpacking what she perceives to have been a ‘Divine invitation’ for a long time yet, if not the rest of her life ....

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COVID-19 had just hit South-East Asia when Lottie found herself in a place of deep disturbance, unsettled by the awareness that she was studying English at University College London only because she felt she had to. We’ve all been there, right? The empty search for fulfillment in academic achievement is a widespread one, and it’s not going away anytime soon. “I repeatedly found myself playing mute in seminars, acting like one who knew close to nothing about the subject matter. It was strangely unnerving. But there was something in me ... something of a fearless inner voice (who I now know to be the voice of Jesus) beckoning me to believe that there was more for me beyond this realm of misguided people-pleasing activity, and that’s when I first started to question the ‘why’ behind my university course choice”. She continues, “I was convinced there was more for me and I needed to choose it before indifference became the deciding factor in what felt like a really key moment of my story”.

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And when this questioning culminated in what was yet another seemingly God-ordained invitation to hear Church-historian friend Sarah Williams speak at St. Mellitus College in West London on March 2nd 2020, things only got clearer. Schoenmaker listened with great intent to what has become a kind of theological mantra for her - a talk aptly titled, ‘A Theology For A Rebellion’. “It was as though the speaker was talking directly to me; almost everything she said hit home in a profoundly resonant way”. She goes on, “It was a deep-calls-to-

deep1 3 3 kind of moment, one that I would never forget for the rest of my life”.

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Indifference certainly did lose its voice. Lottie decided to drop out of university just as the pandemic hit London, and this was a choice she made with a confidence she didn’t know she possessed. “I think it was the boldest step I’ve made in my life so far, and one I have no regrets making,” adds Schoenmaker.

 

Now living and working back home in Redding, California - a place she holds very clear to her heart - Lottie continues on her unique quest to find that which she firmly believes belongs to her as a child of God; an embodied experience of freedom beginning on the inside and emanating outward. To this day, this quietly unrelenting longing for a redemptive outworking of creative ingenuity is alive and well within her, and Schoenmaker’s vision for Volume One is not just to call to life the core needs of the human heart for unconditional love and connection, but also to illuminate the unrivalled joy that true homecoming brings.

 

Welcome to the world of WILD AND FREE, a freedom writing series that will hopefully become a shared source of literary solidarity for an up and coming generation of freedom-fighting revolutionaries like YOURSELF. The best is yet to come.