Photography

I don't have anything really profound to say about photography, I just really really love it.

I love the flexibility it gives me, and I love that I get to play with the cutest babies and kids all the time while I photograph them and their families.

 

I sort of fell into it accidentally, working for other photographers as an assistant while I looked for a permanent job in ministry. Finally one day it clicked... If I start my own photography business, I'll have the freedom and flexibility to do ministry in whatever form the Lord leads.

So I started my business about 6 years ago, and have been trying to figure out how to grow this thing ever since! Moving to three different cities hasn't helped, but now that we are finally in a more long-term living situation I'm excited to finally grow a client base that I can stick with.

These are just a few highlights over the past year or two, if you know me at all or follow my photography blog then I'm sure you have seen most of these already!

 

If not, and you love looking a pictures as much as I do, please check out my photography blog here! I try to update it often depending on the season. 

I hope these pics brightened your day a little! :)


For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
(Psalm 139:13-14 ESV)

        

Church Planter's Wife

When you think "pastor's wife", what pops in your head? For me it was always some weird June Cleaver/ Ann of Green Gables type image. Granted, I didn't ever actually meet a pastors wife until college when I started following Jesus, and even then I was at a traditional Southern Baptist Church and our pastor was pushing 70, which didn't really help my stereotype much. So naturally when I met Jeremy I told him no way did I ever want to be a pastors wife. I mean, I felt called to ministry, not to sitting at home while my husband did all the real hands on stuff! I wanted to be in the thick of it, serving and doing something that really mattered. This posed a problem, since Jeremy was in seminary preparing to be a pastor at the time...

Luckily, he probed further before running for the hills, and helped me to see what a narrow and incorrect view I had of what it meant to be married to a pastor. He gently explained to me that being a pastor's wife could be whatever I wanted it to be, that there was no mold I would need to fit into. That, along with the Lord working on my heart, helped me to warm up to the idea, and by the time we were engaged I had embraced the idea that I would soon be a pastors wife.

After we were married for a few years, Jeremy began to feel called to plant a church, which just means starting a church from the ground up. For those of you who aren't familiar with this, let me tell you it's a whole other ball game. We moved to Austin to get trained for a few years, and then moved to Norman Oklahoma about a year and a half ago to start Providence Road. No staff, no money, and only a small handful of people. And just me and Jeremy (and more importantly the Lord of course) to make it all happen. What's that? You said you wanted the "real hand's on stuff"? You want to be "in the thick of it"? Well, here you go.

So what does my life look like as a church planters wife? Well, when you begin with a staff of one, and that one is your husband, you kind of have (ahem, I mean get) to do a little bit of everything. We had no money, so we got to fundraise together. We had no accountant, so I learned how to keep track of donors and donations. We weren't technically an official church at first, so I did hours of paperwork and filing with the government so we could be a 501(c)(3), among other legal registrations. We had no building at first, so for the first year we met in our house, which meant extra cleaning both before and after we gathered. We wanted to create an atmosphere of community and family, so I cooked. A lot. This hasn't changed. We have people in our home constantly. I help with the nursery on sundays. I help set up and tear down each week. I do a bit of graphic design for business cards and such. I hang out with girls. Jeremy and I counsel couples together. Do you get the picture? Hands. On. Ministry.

So there you have it. I can't tell you what a church planter's wife looks like, because it's different for everyone, and even for me it's different every day. So far it's been crazy hard, but equally amazing and fulfilling. If this whole idea of church planting intrigues you, stick around. You'll hear a lot about it here.


Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20-21 ESV)

Real Food

Food has become a recent obsession of mine. Well, that's not entirely true... I've always been a little obsessed with food, and not in a good way.

 I've seen people make food into an idol in two ways. Some let food control them by obsessing over every calorie they touch. They want to control something, maybe their appearance or level of fitness, whatever it is food becomes a god that can get them what they want. When they feel out of control in this area, their joy, sense of worth, etc. is gone. Then there are the people, like me, who have no control when it comes to food. They see a cookie and they just cant be satisfied unless they have it. They spend their day thinking about the next time they get to eat. If they don't get to enjoy the object of their desire, their joy is gone. Either way, it's idolatry.

Just to be sure we are on the same page, idolatry is when you look to something other than Jesus to be your ultimate source of joy, worth, satisfaction, etc. Remember, I said ultimate. It's ok to find joy in a mouth watering piece of turtle cheesecake. It's not ok when food is constantly dictating our emotions. Do you ever snap at people when you are hungry? When you have a hard day, do you ever feel like you "deserve" a treat to make you feel better? For those of you who are strict eaters, how are your emotions after you "mess up" and eat something you feel you shouldn't? If Jesus is enough, why should these minor things effect our emotions so much? Just a few things to think about...

When we began our struggle with infertility, I began doing a little research on how what we eat may have an impact on our ability to get pregnant. This resulted in switching to organic eggs and dairy. A small first step, but a step in the right direction nonetheless. After a few more years, I began to have multiple other small and not so small health problems, including asthma, digestive problems, severe insomnia, chest pain, increasing cycle irregularities, and of course there was still the infertility.

A little over a month ago, when my health seemed to be getting out of control (with no answers from doctors), Jeremy and I decided to try something called the whole30. No grains, no beans, no dairy, and no sugar or sweeteners of any kind for 30 days. 30 DAYS! For a whole month we ate nothing processed... just meat, veggies, fruit, eggs, and nuts. Our food was cooked in coconut oil or olive oil. We only put real food that came from nature into our bodies. On days 3-7, I felt like death because of the sugar withdrawals. By day 14, pretty good. By day 30 I had lost 15 pounds, and felt amazing. Not only does my body seem to be working more as it should, but how freeing to learn how not to be controlled by a desire to eat whatever I want. For a month I said no to foods I usually obsess over. I survived a wedding without eating cake, a wedding shower without eating all the yummy goodies, and multiple parties and get togethers surrounded by people eating things I could not.

Oh, and the pictures in this post? Dinner the other night. Homemade meatballs and marinara (made with fresh tomatoes) served on a bed of spaghetti squash. I got the recipe here. Delish.




¹⁸ For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹ Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.Their mind is set on earthly things. ²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,

Philippians 3:18-20

Adoption

So to kick of my series of the main topics of my blog, I decided to start with adoption. Mostly because we just had our first home study visit the other day and I've spent the last few weeks doing online training videos, so it's definitely fresh on my mind!

I want to start by saying that while yes, we have been struggling with infertility, no, that is not why we are adopting. Please don't assume that this is our "plan b". It isn't. It saddens me to think that many people will look at us and think, "Oh they couldn't get pregnant so they had to adopt". Our dream has always been to have a blend of biological and adopted children. As this is the first post on this, I'll keep it simple and just tell you our story (the abridged version).

My husband and I discussed our feelings about adoption on our second or third date. It was never a question for either of us, we wanted to adopt. So naturally, by the time we were married we nailed down a pretty good plan. Wait 2 years... start trying to get pregnant... have first biological baby by year 3, have the next shortly after... then adopt two children so that we could teach our biological kids about adoption during the process. Dreamy. The only problem was, it didn't happen.

We started out on track, trying to get pregnant after 2 years of marriage. However, having a miscarriage 14 months later was not in the plan. (More about that in a later post). All the professionals assured us that because of hormone levels after a miscarriage, we were likely to get get pregnant again right away. We didn't. A few years later I had a surgery to help with some endometriosis. Again, we were assured that many women get pregnant right after this surgery. And again, we were disappointed.

We've been trying to get pregnant now for almost 5 years. I don't even know how many pregnancy tests I've taken, only to be disappointed time after time. I honestly don't ever want to look at another one. We haven't given up on getting pregnant, but we have finally let go of our narrow little plan and embraced whatever plan God has for us. After a lot of prayer, we finally felt like it was time to start the adoption process, and we are so excited about starting our family this way. Through more prayer, we decided to adopt from Uganda, (can't wait to tell you about why we picked this amazing country!), and chose an agency. They have had us do tons of paperwork, reading, online training, and more paperwork. We are almost done with our home study, and couldn't be more excited. I can't wait to share more with you all about the beauty of adoption, the pain of infertility, and how God uses both for our good and His glory. There is so much more to our story that I'm sure will come out in later posts, and so many rabbit trails I'm dying to go down. For now though, I'll leave you with this:

".... he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."

(Ephesians 1:4-6 ESV)