Where Does Your Heart Lie?

Lately I've been asked why I decided to only shop second hand this year, so I thought I would dive more into this decision. 

The seed was planted a few years ago by my pastor who introduced our congregation to the documentary, "The True Cost." We watched the screening of it together as a church and it really rocked my perspective of the negative impacts our consumption has on the environment and to the people who are in third world countries working in the factories. The majority of the world is enslaved to the western way of living. We're polluting while we are also contributing to the mistreatment of our brothers and sisters around the globe working in unsafe facilities with low wages.

This discovery started to gnaw at my soul. I've loved thrifting since high school, but I never looked at it as a way of fighting against the system and our western way of consuming. 

I also wanted to take this time to reroute my heart posture. I am aware that God creates us uniquely for a reason and I don't take the passions that he's given me lightly, but I also don't want to walk the line of worshipping fashion and vanity over worshipping the one true God.

I could feel my heart being tugged at wanting more and wanting things I didn't need nor would fulfill anything in me and this constant tug for more was creating unrest in my soul. This lead me to the decision of spending this year rerouting this heart tug and re-centering my heart on the reality that I have everything I need and I have more than enough. By rerouting my desires, I have become more aware of the emptiness that comes from fleeting purchases and I don't want to ever encourage that negative thought process on my blog. Our clothes will never define us nor will they fulfill us.

This act of stopping and checking if my heart is pointing towards true north has been my main goal of this venture of shopping only second hand. 

With all that said, I don't want to ignore the heart beat towards fashion that God has given me and abandon my pursuits all together, instead I want to be more mindful about the message I'm writing with my life and the heart posture I have towards my clothes and things. 

The outfit that I styled below is 75% second hand. Everything but the beret and t-shirt came from either a thrift store or a consignment store. Enjoy some photos of me frolicking around downtown Riverside, wishing it was Paris, France. Also, can we just acknowledge that the color palette of McDonalds can be tastefully curated into a cute outfit, like below?

Thanks for checking out my blog! I hope it lights something within you to consider shopping second hand and rerouting your desires to something more.  

Unit next time. 
xoxo, 

​Jill