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There are so many ideas swirling in my brain, waiting to make it to a page, but they're still so clumsy and undeveloped, like baby birds fledged too soon. I sometimes hate this stage of mental processing, when there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to my thoughts and yet I know that somehow they all interconnect. But I have also begun to get used to it, begun to accustom myself to flailing a little, to taking the time to slow down and listen and breathe and wait for God to clarify and redirect. I have started to appreciate the in-between period when I can both see the hand of God in the process of working and wait expectantly to see the result.

God has been teaching me, and this place of learning is such a delightful and refreshing place to be. For awhile I thought I was utterly isolated, irredeemable; I know what it is to panic in the pitch-black and feel irrevocably lost. And I think that's what makes this awkward time of idea-fledging and humble re-learning so sweet: just being able to see again a shaft of light, and know that the Truth still reigns and that whatever I have been or failed to be, I am not alone.

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I spent lazy hours in silent sunshine by the creek, watching a moment of my own childhood from a strange third-person point of view while Amy and Dad caught rainbow trout. The first cattle drive of the year crested the ridge on Hill Road, and I thought how in an alternate existence I might have been a cowgirl, following the plodding herds up to their summer range in the mountains on early Saturday mornings. I breathed the chilly west wind and felt orchard grass heads slapping my elbows, cold irrigation water spraying down my back. My horse tucked her head into my chest for one of her sweet hugs when I left, and I gave her white star a kiss.

time hurts

 

I wish I could bottle up that smell, that beautiful combination of tilled earth and fruit blossoms, of prairie winds and fresh dew. It’s the smell of walking to the irrigation field at sunrise and of jeans wet to the hip from trudging through tall hayfields. It’s the smell of crisp blue skies held up by white mountain pillars on every corner. It’s the smell of home, a smell that transports me back to a strange amnesic state in which the last several years are erased—in which I fully expect to open the front door and find all four of my siblings still at home, Amy still a toddler, and Lenny still alive.

Time hurts today.

grace, weekly // 5

 

i. those eleven-degree mornings when the world is silver-plated and diamond-studded in sunrise light.

ii. the wonder of learning and developing as a photographer.

I’m in the middle of a distance-learning professional photography certification course from the New York Institute of Photography right now, and though some of the reading can get a bit dense, I can’t believe that I get to call it my job description to seek out beauty and portray it honestly for hungry eyes.

This is a photo I took for my first course project. I don’t consider it representative of my style at all—I think it’s the first time I’ve ever consciously stopped my aperture down to f/32! But part of learning is trying new techniques from every angle.

iii. opportunities to teach.

I am beginning to realize that along with a love of learning, I find tremendous joy in teaching. On Sunday night, I spent an hour giving a presentation to my church about my experiences in Israel, and my favorite part was teaching about the culture and Biblical history there. On Monday, I got to take my little sister riding and teach her how to control my horse. And this morning I got to teach her how to diagram sentences in English while Mom was gone. :)

iv. horses—pure power, beauty, and speed packaged in a form of delicate legs and huge muscles.

v. quiet, lonesome morning walks.

I walk every day—because I can’t not. It’s when I get time to breathe, to pray, to think—without having to be doing. It’s the time when I can, for three-quarters of an hour, just be.

vi. words:

I found these words tucked inside this gem of an article. It was a timely and convicting reminder.

vii. music:

Listen, and breathe in the reality that He can redeem you from anything.

viii. Bible:

Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5

In all honesty, this has been a hard post for me to write this week. Some of the blessings I’m listing here really were “wow” moments, but as the week wore on they faded into a noisy background of stress and worry and fear.

Fear. It is the antithesis of trust, the opposite of joy, and the father of many wicked children—discontentment, worry, covetousness, and the horrific stress that they cause. It is the subconscious statement of the heart: “I do not believe that God is with me, that God cares for me, or that God is in perfect control of my life.”

And there it is.

Reading between the lines of my anxious heart, I find a painful truth.

The reason that I so desperately want control over my life is that I truly do not believe that anyone—even God—loves me as much as I love myself.

Ouch.

 

 

 

<center><a href="http://halliejophotography.blogspot.com/search/label/grace%20weekly" target="_blank"><img alt="Hallie Jo Photography" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs8JQp9aHkWjN873iY-8FzwCZI8UjVHW7geUKwXxz5Kd12zTgtDJo0sriNWjVzsGlV6s8xbpbR8U53_tj67EvMZmSPTQBx6sacRqLPNITCDC8IkUGEX8o8byBQZYvW9jNLUhpR7W6ldKo8/s207-p-no/" /></a></center>

i remember

It’s been almost a twelvemonth since I sat at my desk in the corner of my dorm room and cried while I wrote this. I wonder often how time passes so quickly, how something that once seemed interminable has fled in a blink, never to come back.

I remember that time painfully well. I had a gnawing hollowness in my chest, missing home with every facet of my being. But that day was a turning point, a point in which I chose to break free from self-pity and pour myself into my God-ordained circumstances with all of my strength. And, as I suspected, my only regret looking back is that I didn’t reach that turning point earlier.

I wrote then that I wanted to remember. That I wanted to live intentionally, treating each day there like the gift it was. That I wanted to breathe in the humidity, memorize the sound of the creaking floorboards, sense the love and warmth of a Spirit-filled church body, and be washed in the awe of God’s incredible Story.

And I did. I remember.

I remember coffee and homework at Brewster’s, and the roar of Aaron’s pickup before he got his muffler. I remember anxiously checking my homework grades, feeding baby Trinity her bottle, and enjoying Ms. Dottie’s delicious pasta. There were midnight pizza runs, movie nights and apple pies at Ethan’s house, and good times over hot Thai food at Boon’s. Colin and Hannah made up crazy stories while we canoed on the lake at the Imsdahls’; Ashley was always ready at the right time with a hug; Luis could be found in the kitchen frequently, presiding over Top Ramen or the rice cooker. We used to get unbelievably excited over a home-cooked steak dinner at the Watsons’—even myself, though I was practically raised on beef—and some of us gladly received an extra dose of delicious Watson-Schroeder cooking on the long, mild, lazy Sunday afternoons at Granny’s.

Nothing good comes of wallowing in the past or fretting about the future. That’s bad stewardship—a waste of precious time. Looking beyond the definite hardships, last year I lived a beautiful gift: the gift of one year free to devote myself entirely to the study of my Lord. And this year and the years that follow will be no less a privilege to walk through, so long as I am walking beside my King.

amy elizabeth

 

Two horse-related portrait shoots in a week is almost one too many, but Amy was dying for pictures with my horse, Drem, and even though Drem was a grouch (she hadn’t had her dinner yet) I think they turned out alright. :)

the lady autumn

 

Seven a.m., and the world is bathed in gilt edging from a liquid-gold sunrise. Every color in the valley is a few shades brighter, as if God gave the world a fresh paint job in the night, His brushstrokes still damp with dew; the shadows of the trees seem to stretch all the way to the western horizon in the low angular light. I breathe in, and I can smell the subtle sweetness of Autumn’s beautiful cruelty—threatening ever colder as the nights go by, and severing leaf by pale yellow leaf from its life-giving tree.

Lady Autumn is not a modest season. No, she is everything that is bold, daring, and dramatic—yet with a softness that cleverly disguises her ruthlessness. She is beautiful, even irresistible. I know that she brings death, that the world’s new vibrance is a mere cover-up for the monochrome veil she is about to draw. Yet I am entranced, I am bewitched—for she takes my breath away.