putting it into perspective.

I was sitting and talking with a friend yesterday, well, basically venting to a friend. A week without my husband and a day of running around with a couple of kids all over town was enough to put me into a slump. I don't know if I can say that my eyes were open or that they were just looking through a pessimistic lens but at the end of the day I just wanted my husband with me and to be living somewhere outside of society...on a farm somewhere. Somewhere where time isn't wasted in a car, where the majority aren't having a bad day and wearing it on their sleeve. Somewhere where an accident is seen as just that, a mere mistake and not as evil intent to be repayed in full. A place where work would take my husband only as far as the field in the backyard. I've been craving the simplicity of a by gone era for a while now and am hit everyday by the evil in this imperfect world I'm living in. I want to run away from all of the busyness and all of the distraction and to just slow down. Then in the middle of my sulking I realized, like a fool, what it was exactly, that I was longing for....this 'farm fantasy?'...my eden...my paradise. My reality?...a fallen world filled with an uncountable number of people, all in some way or another, longing for exactly the same thing. This place doesn't feel right because it isn't. As C.S. Lewis wrote: "I was created for another world." And while that didn't make yesterday feel any better, especially when I was living it, and while, as long as life endures, injustice, hate, and the effects of sin will endure, there is a small but steady sense of peace knowing that whatever this life throws, my God is bigger than it. And that, in reality, as I've been trying to soak in from Ann Voskamp, "ALL is Grace."

I ran across this video a month or two ago and it really put things into perspective. What a sweet and powerful testimony of Grace!

This was grace

by Andrew Laparra

http://vimeo.com/11560198

fleeting moments.

I'm sitting here at midnight, my head full of thoughts...emotions, all swimming around in chaos. 'Where does the time go?' The age old question pops up again and again. I'm trying so desperately to hold on to these moments, or at least I think I am, only to wake another morning where I find myself stepping once again into this race called life that most everyone seems to be in. I have a mind I cannot slow, a body I cannot still, a house I cannot maintain, and relationships that I somehow lack the time to invest in. I think I'm not alone.

Today my family celebrated a little girls' 4th birthday. Our sweet n sassy Gianni girl. :) And I wanted to soak in every last detail. I'm always torn when it comes to manning the camera. Do I sit back and observe capturing the moments in my head? Do I actively participate becoming a part of those moments? Or do I pick up my canon and capture each moment on camera? See, I love taking pictures! It makes me think creatively and I love looking for angles and cementing each moment in time. More so, I enjoy looking back on those moments that jog my ever fleeting mommy memory and allow them to stir up such wonderfully vivid emotions. But in doing so, in grabbing that little peice of technology, it almost feels like putting on a mask. You see, once my eye is behind that lense, I'm no longer a part of that moment. I'm outside of it, looking in.

It's been a long time since I last took pictures. But the memories from that last time until this are just a blurr. Time that has literally just flown by. So today I picked up the camera, that little peice of technology, like most other peices of technology that I have a love hate relationship with, and I documented a small part of a story, our story. And you know what?...it felt good...or feels good now. Looking back...slowing down...doing whatever it takes to hold onto these moments. Making memories. Feeling blessed. Thanking God for days like today...everyday.