Nostalgic Christmas Cheer

     As school ends (last exam was today!), I have more room in my head to focus on the more enjoyable things... like Christmas! And reading, and music, and photography, and crocheting, and selling Christmas trees, and family... all those things, too.  Christmas... it's been in stores since October, and in full swing for a couple weeks now.  Normally, by the time December 25 rolls around, I'm really kind of ready for the whole Christmas season to be done, especially the commercialized part of it. This year... not so much. I found myself singing carols before Thanksgiving (something I make a rule of not doing) and I haven't stopped yet. I'm enjoying the lights and the cheer and everything. We still haven't put up our tree, but I think that's happening this weekend. The Christmas concert is this weekend, the culmination of months of handbell practice. I decided a while ago what my presents would be, so I don't have to worry about that. I still don't like the whole presents vibe... gift giving is not my love language.  What to get, will they like it, what if they don't, what should I ask for, what if there's nothing I want, pretending I like it when I really don't... ugh. And that's self-centered in a way, but it's also not. I still give gifts. I would simply be okay if Christmas were less about boxes under the tree and more about family and Christ.  But! Back on topic! Christmas will be here before I know it!
     Before I know it... part of the reason I'm enjoying this season so much is because it's my kind of last. In nine months, I'll be in college. Sure, I'll come back to visit for the holidays, but there will be a different feel in the house.  This is my last year for really belonging to the traditions.  Childhood... is slipping away. Hence the hesitation in my thoughts. I've been mulling over memories the past couple weeks, pulling out old journals and family photo books, remembering the years and experiences I've gone through. I have not had a perfect life - far from it, with adoption and moving halfway around the world - but I have a had a good life, full of wonderful memories. I slowly turn the pages of the picture books, watching my documented years slip before my eyes. Even amidst pain, I have had a life of laughter and love. I have been given a perspective on life where I can know that struggles pass and contentment is possible as we suffer. And a lot of those memories are coming, not to the end, but to an end. To a beginning as well, but to an end, where my past shifts further into my past.
     I have just a few more months living in this household. A few more months of late night conversations with Teresa, a few more more months of building deep relationships with my siblings, a few more months of being part of this family's day-to-day life. I have to make the most of it. When Jonathon asks for help finding a tree or putting up lights, I need to drop what I'm doing and participate. Even when I should be studying for chemistry. What is an hour of chemistry to an hour of relationship? I want my siblings to look to me as their big sister, ready to talk to when needed, who loves them always. I want to build relationships that will last through years of both pleasant and tough times.
     So I participate whole-heartedly. I take them shopping when they need to buy gifts. I help blow tinsel on the tree. I bake chocolate peppermint cookies. I join them in singing random Christmas carols. When school starts again, I'll again be occupied by other things, but I hope I can do enough now and then to last through my leaving for college. I'll be back next year, but it'll be different. None of my siblings want me to leave.  They're all excited for me, but sorrowful, too. When I come home for any holiday, I'm going to brace myself before I knock on the door. It will be necessary.

 






  Life. Memories. Cheer. Happiness. Sorrow. Christmas. 

     Joyful Nostalgia.

Tell Me a Story

Windy colors

     My life is pretty full right now. Between school and work and college applications and ROTC applications and church and family, I don't really have much time. When I do have time, I'm probably reading or taking pictures or crocheting.  Maybe I'm just sitting, daydreaming; I don't get to do that very often. Okay, all of that to say I'm busy.  A couple days ago, I ought to have been working on an annotated bibliography for history... But I had a week left and after a really nice run through the gusting wind and gorgeously colored leaves slapping me in the face, I couldn't go inside! The colors and movement and light of fall was calling to me and making my shutter-button-finger itch.
     I grabbed my camera, didn't bother to change out of my now-sweaty running clothes, threw my fuzzy boots on, and headed outdoors. Backlighting and yellow leaves and wind blowing had given me some super nice artistic shots on their own, but as I was capturing beauty I was inspired by a story going on around me.  The treehouse, which was a huge renovation project for siblings and friends over the summer, had leaves up the slide and across the deck, the door was hanging off its hinges, and it had a look of abandonment about it.  Our swing set was swinging forlornly in the wind.  The driveway was covered in debris, untouched by bouncing basketballs and running feet.  Thus, I title this set of photos "Abandoned Summer."  It also has ties to growing up, I think...

Forlorn swingset

Look of abandonment

     I love fall, so I wanted to share some of the beauty I captured.  This set also provides a nice intro to what I actually wanted to write about today.  Stories... A week ago (maybe two?) I was driving to the bus stop and the rain drops slid down my windshield, my wipers going swish-swish-swish.  I sat at a red light, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel in time with whatever song was playing on Air 1, when it hit me: I love stories.  Whoa!  Huge revelation!  Not so much... but it truly wasn't a thought that had occurred to me before, at least in this sense.  Yes, I've always loved books with good story lines; I've been an avid reader as long as I can remember.  My love of stories extends further than that, though.  My favorite music is that which tells a story, either through words (Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera, or more contemporary music that doesn't simply repeat words over and over) or through the complexities of the music (classical or jazz).  History is one of my favorite subjects because it's just one huge story, and millions upon millions of stories contained in that one story.  I try and reveal stories through my photography.  I have a love for life because, well, life is a story to which we don't know the ending.  I love my job because I get to work with people who have had a long time to develop their stories.  Maybe one of the reasons I love photographing children is because they are an empty book with so much potential for future stories.  I think a lot of my life revolves around stories!
     God is the writer of perhaps the biggest and most important (to us) story of all - the whole of the one we're in right now.  He's totally in charge.  But He's given us free will to help write our own stories.  How am I going to shape mine?  By taking that free will and surrendering it to God.  By abandoning my own ambitions to the knowledge that God's goals are so much better than mine.  By choosing each and every moment to give it all to Him, and to make that all my best - be it in taking a  chemistry exam, warming up before singing for the children on Sunday morning, being authentic with a friend, in making breakfast for my family, in preparing for whatever future He has in store for me, in photographing His creation, or in serving the residents at the retirement home.  And in taking time to enjoy the beauty of the what He's set around me.

The Choice of Love

        This post took a long time to write and a really long time to start writing.  It’s a long post dealing with a large topic, one of which I can only barely brush the surface.  It’s such a big topic that even with the little part I’m trying to touch on, I’m not sure I represented in the most organized manner.  It’s controversial, in many ways, and open to much discussion.  Love is such a huge part of the Christian life, yet we tend to shy away from in depth talks about it.  I really don’t know why.  Maybe it’s just me and that’s an inaccurate reflection.
        Over the last year and a half, one of my main topics of meditation has been love. As a child, I knew love more as others loving me.  I grew up knowing the Bible verses: God is love, 1 Cor 13, love your neighbor as yourself.  While I would say I loved my parents, my siblings, my friends, it was never a truly deep love.  Love is unselfish, caring only and fully for the other person, and I’ve never lived up to that.  I still haven't (how could I, an imperfect person, experience perfect love towards others?) but I've gotten closer through practice and God's grace.
I want to start with a definition of love that has influenced a lot of my thought processes these last months.  Love: intentionally and intelligently choosing what is best for the other person.  This is the definition given at Oasis last year, and it stuck with me a lot more than I expected it would.  It’s a definition that can be applied to all relationships: friends, enemies, romances, and family.  It crosses great distances, differences, and divides.

First I want to go through some of the qualities of love that have stuck out to me the most, either by example or by study.  By demonstration, a good friend has taught me that love is unconditional – it is caring and understanding, it listens without judging, without thinking less, without disapproving, and it is so because it is full of God.  Love is patient, and, often, that patience is only possible with God’s help.  Love is also not always spilling-over-joyous love, the gooey love our culture associates with romance; it is often a deep-seated honoring love.  As Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, we love by being patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not prideful.  By honouring and looking to the other’s good before our own.  We try not to be angry and irritable, and we keep no record of wrongs.  We forgive and forget.  We always protect, always trust, always hope, and always persevere.  These qualities we choose to try by God’s grace.  But love isn't always easy.  Just because you hold knowledge of what it's supposed to look like in your head doesn't necessarily mean your actions will always reflect that.

Now I’m going to expand on something I’ve touched on a couple of times in the past two paragraphs: love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice.  Josh McDowell defines love this way: to nurture (bring maturity to) and to cherish (care for and protect).  His definition is probably the result of many years of study and reflection – it’s certainly much more developed than mine is.  Maybe 50 years down the road I’ll get around to defining love.  For now, I’m starting with the idea that love is a choice. Society today has really tried to alter love to only include the feeling part of it, and that definition is probably a cause of many of our problems.  How can we love our coworker if we really don’t like him?  Well, my parents always told my siblings and me that we always had to love each other, even when we didn’t like each other.  In fact, I’m going to paraphrase C.S. Lewis here.  I’ve just been reading his book Mere Christianity, and I think he explains this much better than I ever have.  I am told to love my neighbor as I love myself.  Well, how do I love myself?  I certainly don’t love myself because I’m always nice, always good.  In fact, I love myself in spite of being a rather awful person at times.  So love isn’t based on liking a person.  C.S. Lewis says love is wishing your neighbor good – I say love is a choice.   Choose it or not.

What does this choice look like?  Because love is a choice, it applies to those whom we don't want to love as well. Even when we carry hurt against someone, we cannot abandon him or her in favor of a grudge.  Love is about the other person.  What is best for him?  How can you best serve her?  What does the other person want and need?  It is with the Lord's help that it can be all about the other person, from our hearts to our heads to our actions.  Even through hurt and distance and separation, we can and should still make the choice to love.
Love, in many ways, is simply deciding to put the other person first.  This journey of love started for me first by observing love in others, then by deciding to choose to love one person, then by gradually applying the concept of love as a choice to more and more people.  Some people have been harder to love than others; some people I haven’t gotten there yet.  I ask God to change my heart, show me how to best love a person, and a couple of times He has done so in bigger ways than I was expecting.  In other instances, He’s still working on my stubborn, sinful heart.  I imagine, though, that He has great works of love in my future, in one way or another.

It Doesn't Take Too Much to Get Me Talking Photography

      It's been 5 weeks since I've written anything.  It's not as though I'm lacking ideas, I just haven't gotten around to actually writing them out beyond a couple descriptive sentences (I've made a habit of doing that because too often I don't have any ideas). Why haven't I written?  I don't know. But I keep up with this blog because I enjoy it, not because I feel obligated to. When I feel obligated without enjoyment, then it's time to move on.  As of starting this post, I'm not even 100% sure what topic I'm writing on today.  Maybe I'll just bounce around; that would pretty accurately reflect the status of my mind at the moment.  But... I think I would confuse everyone, so I won't do that.
     I think I'll talk about photography.  It's a topic that (you should have noticed) I love and will very readily talk about.  I'm still learning, and sometimes other photographers introduce topics that are completely, genuinely, honestly, truly NEW to me.  Best learning experiences ever... or at least, they have the steepest learning curve. 

Heidi, sunrisephotogh.com

      I've been truly blessed this summer by Heidi Stephens at Sunrise Photography (sunrisephotogh.com) allowing me to follow her and teaching me some of her trade.  Connections with other photographers are really important, even if those connections only started because I used to babysit her boys!  Because of some of her mentoring, I've really found a desire to improve my photography further; one of my goals is to do one portrait photo shoot each week (I have enough siblings to do so) because portraits are one of my weak points and one of the most commonly requested shoots. I may, even, in the future, throw out an offer of portraits if someone will come be my model for a little while... when my siblings start rolling their eyes at my picture taking requests. 

Watching Grandpa

     That being said, someday I want to work without posing. One of my strengths is detail work, capturing the details of a place or event, and I prefer event shoots to portrait shoots; it's always good to challenge oneself, but it's also good to work within one's strengths. So, eventually, I want to capture life as it is (see my blog post: Now and Then) - especially the hardships that society, with its short attention span, often forgets.  One of the photographers who most inspires me is John Warren, the World Vision photographer (http://blog.worldvision.org/author/jon-warren).  His photos are not only beautiful, they're meaningful!   

Another's Life

     Overall, to improve, I'm working on portraiture, on different composition and editing techniques, and on keeping my eyes open for those real life, hard, easier-to-ignore situations that must not be ignored.  Anyway, I can see photography being a huge part of my life, no matter where God leads me (I still don't know where that is, but so many people ask me that I'll probably devote a single blog post to it).  I ended up bouncing around a bit anyway (seriously, between college now, college future, job now, job future, church, photography, home life, free will vs the sovereignty of God, Anne of Green Gables, and all the other parts of my life, I'm surprised I was able to be cohesive at all), but not nearly as much as I could have been; I stayed on one topic!  And I didn't address every aspect of that topic that has occupied my mind the last couple of weeks.
     I should stick some pictures in here and publish this and be done.  It's not going to get any more cohesive through more editing.  Oh!  I've definitely appreciated all of the praise for the photos that I've posted on Facebook.  This is a collective thank you, too - I intend to go somewhere with my photography.  Okay.  Enough said.  Stop typing.

Talking To My Phone

     I've noticed lately a habit that I don't like.  It's a common habit, I think, resulting in some unseemly conduct, especially among younger generations.  I have termed this habit "Talking To My Phone."  When I'm texting someone, or messaging them, or commenting on something, I've taken to simply talking, rather than talking to him or her, to that person specifically. 
     Now, this does mean each of my messages very accurately conveys my thoughts and, in a way, my tone of thinking.  Actually, it's very similar to the way I write on this blog.  For other people, who perhaps don't have a cordial "tone" of thought, this may produce rather nastier texts.  I think this is why we're always warned to conduct deep conversations, or conversations that are possibly hurtful, in person, because it is so much easier to say rude things over the internet.  Rude messages, in my opinion, arise from people not censoring their thoughts as they would in person; people don't censor as they would in person because they aren't in person, they're talking to their phones.
     However, I would go even farther than "make sure you don't say rude things over the internet."  I would say we need to consider how we're talking to each person using our electronic devices, even when the conversation is light and pleasant.  When we speak in person, we alter our behaviours depending on the other person's personality.  Not that we wear masks, simply that we may be more talkative with one person, more reserved with another.  Yet this gets lost when we aren't face to face.  Perhaps that's a good thing - we get to see different sides of one another - but I think it takes with it some of the individuality of each relationship.  
     I've decided to try (no gaurantee on success, this is only a few weeks old) to imagine each person as I text him or her.  I can often visualise a person's facial expressions, even call to mind what someone would sound like in speaking the words of the message.  When I remember to do this, it has, thus far, made a significant difference in my final sent message.  Perhaps it's also because I'm taking more time to devise each text, but I think I'm responding more to the person than to the words on my phone.  And I think that's a good thing. 

The Best Vacation Ever

     So I'm about halfway through my summer vacation, now, and I've pretty much decided that this is the best summer I've ever had and that this summer probably will hold that record for a while.  I'm not saying it's perfect, with every day better than the last, but I seem to have struck the balance between busy and relaxation that works for me.  Below is a list of what I think makes this a beautiful summer:

     1. Get a job/be productive.  One of the things I think ruins a vacation is boredom.  Vacation boredom is why I love the South African school schedule we were on: 3 months school, 1 month holiday, repeat.  However, if you can keep yourself busy with a good summer job (especially if it's one you enjoy) that boredom will be a lot longer in coming.  As for being productive, this is around-the-home stuff: college/scholarship applications, cooking, cleaning, organizing, community organizations, etc.  
     2. Be lazy. That said, vacation is supposed to be relaxing.  Only allot yourself so much to do that when you feel like being lazy, you can be lazy.  Obviously, this is in lesser amounts.

     3. Exercise.  You should do this year round, so don't slack off in the summer.  Much.  For more than a couple weeks at a time.  And have fun with exercising!  Don't use that machine every day for 30 minutes... borrrrring.  Pick up a new water sport, or run outside, turning down whichever side street you come to!
     4. Spend time outside.  Summer, unless you live someplace ridiculously hot, is a great time to go outside.  I've pretty much taken over caring for my mom's herb garden, and even the normally tedious chore of weeding is made 100x better when I'm out soaking in the sun.  Read outside.  Nap outside.  Work outside.  And exercising outside is so much nicer than exercising inside.
     5. Do what you love.  Spend time really filling yourself up; for me, this means I take my camera and play.  I read good books (this summer our family is reading classics), I paint, and I spend time in the kitchen.
     6. Build relationships.  This means seeking to hang out with friends, to spend time with siblings, to connect with parents and peers.  Be sociable.  I'm an introvert, so sometimes this is difficult, but it just means sometimes I need to have a day to be antisocial. 
     7. Keep traditions.  For as long as I can remember, my extended family has congregated at a cabin on a lake in northern Minnesota.  I know each of my cousins and aunts and uncles because of this, and I love the lake.  I wouldn't trade this time for anything. 
     8. Start new traditions.  Just because you have good old traditions to keep does not mean you can't start new traditions.  I always wonder when people say one mustn't do something because "it's not tradition."  Tradition had to start somewhere.  So, once a week, have a game night.  Rent a jetski and visit a local body of water.  Something.
     9. Explore.  Going hand in hand with starting new traditions, summer is a perfect time to find new places.  Visit a new restaraunt.  Hike unknown trails.  Take a road trip to wherever you end up.  Or, explore your own town a little bit more. 
     10. Spend time with God.  Most importantly, as always, spend time with the one who set an example for resting, who created the places you'll explore, who is a working, hands-on God, who wants a relationship with you. 

     This summer does have a bittersweet aspect to it.  I turned 18 back in April and, looking back over the last few months, it's almost as if I can feel childhood slipping away.  It's not something I can stop, it's not something I wish wouldn't happen, it's not something I want to hurry up.  People say my entire life is before me, but, more accurately, my entire life is behind me.  The rest of my life is before me.  This may very well be the last summer I can spend in the way I've just described.  That aches, but I've a restless excitement for what comes next, what God will do next.  

Note: it does help to speak to the weatherman and ensure that the summer weather is spectacular.  I've hardly had one ugly day in the last 8 weeks and 3 states.

An Excuse of a Mission Field

     How many times has someone told you, "you are in a mission field, wherever you are."  True.  God puts us in specific places with a purpose in mind, and we don't have to travel to the ends of the Earth to find a mission field.  So... we're missionaries.  Now tell me: why do we not act as such?  On a daily basis, the ones we call missionaries, those who have given up a comfortable home life in the country of their birth, act differently than we do.  They struggle.  They serve.  They share.  They step out of their comfort zones.  Yes, they eat, sleep, and laugh the same as we do, but they have a purpose, an intention of being a missionary.
     When you're not a labeled missionary, different things occupy your life.  You go to school, you work your job, you raise your kids, you socialize with friends.  But all of these are part of the labeled missionary's life, too.  So it's not that we're being missionaries in a part of the world that's closer to home, it's just that we're being in a different part of the world; I think we're missing something.  When was the last time you picked up a stranger who was walking down the road, no matter how little room you had in your car?  When was the last time you intentionally served everyone around you, every day?  When was the last time you... shared your faith, even if through actions more than words?
     We shouldn't use "we're in a mission field" as an excuse to continue with our relatively comfortable, suburban lives.  We should be the missionaries we are called to be.

 "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you...you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." 

Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 1:8