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Monthly Archives: April 2013These images were taken on a rare weekend recently where we “didn’t do much” It was so relaxing to not have anything planned and take the day “slow” that I was shocked when I looked at the images and saw how much adventure the day still held. Funny thing is right before these images were taken we had gone to the archery range and hiked around a bit also, so this post isn’t even the full day… It’s a lot of action but I love my crazy guys.
4-13-2013 . 40mm pancake . VSCO1 Portra400+
When I was young my parents would send us on a Bible verse scavenger hunt on Easter. We’ve continued this tradition with our kids. Each egg holds a verse which leads them to the next. (a verse about the tree of life for example makes the kids think to look at their favorite tree climbing spot) At the end of the hunt there is a basket with something for their spiritual growth and a chocolate bunny of course. This year they got their very own big boy Bibles. I remember the magic of those hunts and am thankful that they enjoy them as much as I did. Sometime during the day we always read some favorite picturebooks relating the resurrection story. The part of our Easter celebration not pictured here is sunrise service and breakfast on the beach, and then a fresh fish and veggie dinner in the evening. Even though I try not to make this day about candy, we felt compelled to scatter a few eggs filled with jelly beans for the baby so we could watch him freak out over them. Easter seems to come at the end of a long season of holidays and birthdays for us and more than any other traditional celebration I don’t want it to be about material possessions and consumption. I love the idea of a scavenger hunt because without preaching at the kids, I think it suggests to them the idea of searching, hunting for the prize of knowing God. Looking for gifts freely given – freely given but nonetheless revealed only in the searching. When my husband and I were young our parents didn’t have a lot of money so we remember our moms being creative and crafting many special gifts and moments by hand. I think I went through a period of reacting against that as I grew up. I wanted to be the same as other people, to feel like a success, to stop searching and making and scraping things together. I looked for control and satisfaction in stores. I wanted the easy solution, a purchase. The more I bought what the world told me to, the more I was actually losing control and the more I lost touch with the gifts that only He can give and that can never be purchased by our human systems. I’m thankful we didn’t fall too far into this trap. As a parent it gets exhausting to try and keep up with each day on which is deemed that we should buy something to provide the correct childhood experience for our little loved ones. Each festive season recently we have edited back and think we have found a place of focusing on what is truly important. The next season we find there is even more editing to be done. Not in the getting rid of everything and living in a van way (although that has been discussed), but in learning to buy things that are real, and accepting and treasuring the free gifts given in blooming flowers, tree branches spreading, a sunset’s brilliance or our joy together. We are under no delusion that we know enough to perfectly consume with zero harm to others or that all of our energy can be focused on this. However we are waking up to the fact that what we do with our dollars today shapes the future our children will live in. Every penny spent on fairly produced goods and real and healthful food is a silent but powerful vote. My husband was trying to explain to my son why rare stones and metal sell for so much money. “People really enjoy owning what other people can’t have” I know our hearts are far from free consumerism and materialism, but we are trying to learn how to help our children value the free gift given that all can enjoy – in nature, in eachother’s love, in His grace. 3-31-13 . 35mm . VSCO1 Fuji160C+ . pictures of me taken by Jesse
They always create colors and textures I never could have dreamed up 3-27-2013 . 35mm . VSCO1 Portra400++
A friend recently posted a quote from a favorite author, Donald Miller – “If the people who have what we want aren’t happy, let’s want different things.” That cut right to the heart of where I’m at right now. Having those words running through my mind feels like a curtain being pulled back, laying bare and asking me to see the truth, acknowledge it. What do I want? I want a little house by the beach in Leucadia. I want a few acre homestead in the country. I want a home on a mountain. I want to say forget it, sell everything, call it quits on my husband’s job, live in a camper and see everything I haven’t seen. I want security. I want to fly away to the ends of the world but still have a family to come back to. I want to make time stand still and live in the moment where nothing matters except nursing babies and growing toddlers. I want community, I want to do my own thing. I can’t make a single one of my wants happen and they don’t even match up. I’m a mess of conflicting emotions and so I get up everyday, do much the same thing and search for contentment. Our disappointing search for a home last year left me heartbroken, and then it left me free. Free of mortgages, free of needing to own. Free of feeling like I had everything under control. Free of caring exactly where I live or defining who I am by what surrounds me. Free to find power and beauty wherever I might be, to desire knowing Him above all else. Free to wait. To dream and be satisfied. I’m not sure my husband has felt the same. Reality is you do need a roof over your head and for ten years he has been going to work everyday to provide for us. He strongly wants to protect his family, to provide a good now and future for them. I know a man likes to have something to call his own, to make a mark on the world, every week or two I hear his new plans . . . and I know we can’t just stick our heads in the sand but still I wonder what we should want . . . so I lean into quietness, strain my ears for the answer, and pray that my husband will listen and hear also we fumble together toward meaning, towards those different things . . . “To pray is to listen also, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say. But if I pray only when I feel like it, God may choose not to speak. The greatest moments of prayer come in the midst of fumbling and faltering prayer, rather than the odd moments when one decides to try to turn to God.” – Madeleine L’Engle and as I drive home watching the sun slip through muted colors into grey behind the sea, it strikes me how completely unable I am to pull it back from it’s watery bed. The essentials of my life, light and dark, this spinning globe, the rhythm of the air I breath are beyond my reach and still I play at control. Maybe all I should want is to truly believe down through the depths of me that He knows the beauty and trial each day needs.
9-2012 . some random guys on a roof in Leucadia that let me take their picture . Canon AE1 . TriX400
“Perhaps art is seeing the obvious in such a new light that the old becomes new.” – Madeleine L’Engle 8-2012 . Canon AE1 . Lomo400 + Ilford XP2 |
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