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the way of grace

September 13, 2011

For when you are tired of coming up with a plan, might you be willing to simply come? I’ve thought a lot lately about this space created for souls to breathe and the true meaning behind it. To chat at the sky is to recognize that we have a Creator who sees and cares and notices. He will not come undone. He remains un-overwhelmable. So what does it look like when grace and art and worship mingle together, sweet?  Here is a taste, however small.

It looks like the way of the light coming up from the bottom of an endless sea,

the way of her eyes, deep brown and dancing

the way of a sister who brings out the beauty

… and the way of a woman who knows she is loved.

“There are three things which are too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.”

Proverbs 30:18-19

Would love to fill the comment box with the way of grace today. What are the things too wonderful for you, things which you do not understand — whimsy things that bring a little bit of awe and a whole lot of wonder? The way of …? 

Tagged Filed Under a photographer, art, breathe 70 Comments

for your weekend

July 9, 2011

May you have some moments this weekend to untangle your thoughts, not in a teeth gritting, must-figure-this-out worry type of way, but in restful surrender. May you receive the gifts of summer like porch waves from an old friend – let the fruit refresh, the sand delight, and the sunset remind you of your smallness. And also, your belovedness.

Filed Under a photographer 14 Comments

for the last week in june

June 28, 2011

May you truly see this summer: the yellows and blues and the watermelon reds. Soak them all up with the sun and the water. Laugh with your sister, drink the morning coffee, and remember it’s better with a friend. Celebrate the days of marriage, release your tight hold on familiar, and fly a little. May you embrace the important, have less emergencies, and breathe in deep this daily grace.

Filed Under a photographer 25 Comments

for your weekend

June 10, 2011

May your weekend be filled with shiny floors and country drives, with needed rain to wash the dirt away, with lunch on the back porch and stories from all those years ago. May you enjoy the long days without school and the chair beside you, both when it sits empty and gives you quiet and when it sits full and gives you company. And if you are headed away from home for a time, give yourself the freedom to step into a new story with joyful abandon. You won’t regret it.

Filed Under a photographer, faith 13 Comments

the colorful mess of joy and grief

June 8, 2011

I’m sure you would expect this post to be coming next. I’m busy doing all the regular things: washing the clothes, planning the meals, counting the days ’til the last day of school. I’m also doing some not-so-regular things: caring for family members who aren’t well, preparing our guest room for a last minute visit, comforting our girl over some unexplained anxiety. All the while, there is a cloud of sadness that I can’t explain, but I understand.

And I’m learning, again, what it means to abide in Christ in the midst of the same and the not-so-same. I’m thinking of them and of us and of all the land and water in between. I’m shocked at my ability to compartmentalize. I grieve it. And yet, I question if that’s what this is. People here need me, and so I carry on. But I do not forget. This foggy sadness tells me so. Music helps a little. Prayer helps more. I wash the dishes and whisper short pleas, small longings, and lots of questions into the silence.

As I continue to process, I’m sharing with you a little piece of happy today. These photos are from the wedding I shot before I left for the Philippines. You know, the I-can’t-hold-it-together-so-I’ll-just-pray-over-the-SD-cards wedding? That one.

I look at her lovely face, at the way the light hits her just so, and I think of new beginnings, of life just starting and keeping on, of a God who offers hope and a future. I think of every good gift coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, and how marriage is a good gift.

I think of the posts I’ve written on art, over 40 of them by now, and I consider how pursuing our art in some ways feels extravagant when you consider the mother living from meal to meal in a one room shack.

But we don’t stop living simply because others live hard. Seeing them could shut us down if we let it. Or it could open us up. It is not for us to feel bad about where we live, what we were born into, what we have been given. But it is for us to reconsider the gifts, that perhaps they are just that: gifts. Not entitled, not owed, not earned. But gifts.

They have gifts too, ones called grace and mercy and forgiveness and love. Sometimes those of us who have much have to dig through all our provisions to find peace and contentment sitting small in the bottom of the bucket instead of holding grace with simple hands, embracing the nothing, and feasting on Jesus.


Life keeps right on, and we celebrate because there is much to celebrate. We swallow down joy in big, breathless gulps. We must. And then, we grieve when it all gets to be too much, and that is as it should be.

But if the grieving begins to linger too long, it can be good to circle around to the gifts again; to whisper thanks, to receive the blessing, and to turn ourselves outward. Grief closes us in. Gifts spin us around to thankful, and thankful opens us wide for the giving.

I have to keep coming back to that, the life raft of thankfulness. I have to believe in a God who knows things that I don’t, in a faith that is bigger than the shadows it casts, in the simple beauty of life–even when it’s hard. And I pray with open hands for the Lord to use the art of words and pictures to spin you and I back around to His goodness, ready to give however He may ask.

Filed Under a photographer, Compassion Philippines, inspired 59 Comments

for your weekend

May 20, 2011

May your weekend be filled with fluffy white clouds, young friendship, joy overflowing. May your work be blessed, your rest be full, and your imagination be set free to dream the impossible. And do take some sweet time to consider the mystery which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Shared with Dawn on this beautiful Friday.

Filed Under a photographer 6 Comments

for when you can’t hold it together

May 16, 2011

We anticipate the ceremony, the cross-country move, the long trip, the last goodbye, the first hello, the final destination. We wait for it and ruminate about it and cross off calendar days with joy or fear or love or a mess of all three. And in the waiting, we stand in the bullseye center of high expectation. The weight can be knee-buckling.

The wedding engagement comes with suitcases lined up and filled with lists and planning, and soon your fuzzy someday dreams are outlined in black and white with pink hearts in the margins. The new job comes with a desk filled with papers that belong to you, and now you are being paid to make a difference. The new house has rooms filled up with hope and possibility, and you get to pick out the paint. Still, there is disappointment when you can’t afford the reception you wanted, when your boss expects the impossible, when your roof springs a leak and the grass won’t grow.

I took photos at a wedding this weekend. I’ve been anticipating it for months, and in the looking forward, I got tangled up in fear. What if my camera breaks? What if I miss the kiss? What if I forget something? What if she hates them? The morning of the wedding, I woke up a wreck. I knew I could get good photos. I just wasn’t sure I could breathe in the process. Turns out I am not cut out for the pressure.

The bride and groom are responsible for the promise. The pastor is responsible for the charge. The parents are responsible for the money and the planning, the friends are responsible for the celebration. But me? The photographer is responsible for the story. In the photos, all the planning and the money and the promise and the celebration blend together to make one beautiful, complete, almost human personality. And those tiny cards that would be hanging out in my camera all day carried within them the DNA. I desperately needed them to work.

In a moment of overwhelming worry of all the technical equipment deciding to take a day-long nap, I grabbed the photo cards I had for the wedding, placed them in the palm of my left hand and covered them over with my right. I prayed for beauty, for blessing, and for peace. I prayed for God to give me a creative eye, a heart tender to the quiet moments, a bigger picture. It may seem ridiculous to you, praying over tiny SD cards. But to me, it was freedom. Because that’s when I remembered this verse.

“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17

Every day is the same to Him, loving morning and faithful evening. There isn’t one that stands out heavy to Him. They all rest weightless in Him, held together safe. And so are we. Is there something you need to place in the palm of your hand and cover it over with beauty, blessing, and peace?

Filed Under a photographer 60 Comments
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