But I’ve been realizing that God created some people to fly, and some people to be the wind that holds the fliers up. I have a lot of those people in my life, the people who have the gift of giving themselves. One of those people is my husband. Another is my friend Jenny Rain, a fellow photographer whose unselfish heart absolutely blows me away.

When Jenny found out that I was coming to NOVA, she invited two of her friends to have a session with me, giving up an idea she’d had for her own portfolio, just to give her friends a chance to meet me and to sit under my camera. I was stunned and humbled, in spite of the fact that I already knew Jenny to be one of my biggest supporters. I still feel about twelve years old behind the camera, twelve years old and scared to death of the big competitive world I’m entering. Encountering another photographer who chose to be a friend without jealousy left me blinking. Really hard.

As I photographed her friends, Jenny played second shooter – a role I’ve never managed with any real success – and I listened to her telling them jokes, drawing them out, inviting me out past my twelve-year-old fears to be confident and bring out confidence in my subjects.

Listening to Jenny, hearing how God has worked in her life as she’s come through a huge weight loss challenge, reading what she wrote about me, I’m just kinda holding my breath. This girl is one-of-a-kind. She’s wind, giving to others in need from a heart that is so real it takes my breath away.

Jenny didn’t just give me a shoot. She didn’t just give me herself as a friend. She gave me hope in this place between worlds, hope that as I enter this new season in my life, as I move away from blogging into a photography career, I won’t be going alone, that there will still be people God will call into my life to be the wind beneath my faltering, tentative, about-to-leave-the-nest wings. Even if they’re not the people I have known, the people who have given me courage before, even if I need to wait a while to meet them, because of Jenny, I’m not so afraid that they won’t be there.

My photos don’t do her justice. It’s not often that I say that. But I can’t give back to Jenny the depth of what she offered my heart. I needed more than ten minutes with her to show you the depth of her heart – but who knows? I’ve got a feeling we’re going to meet up again. And I’ll probably have the camera. Because I want to see this person who lets me see while rejoicing with me. I want to learn to be wind like her, even if I’m made to fly. She’s a hero.

I felt so different at this wedding, as if everything I’d been working for over the last two years had finally culminated. The light was perfect, the venue was perfect, my bride was just as little-girl-like as she could be, and so, sooo happy to be marrying her guy. But don’t let me give it all away here – you have to visit Style Me Pretty to see more – and there’ll be a few more at The Girl in the White Dress.

Give Evan and Anne a lot of love for me today?

For your pinning, sharing, just sayin’ pleasure. The quote is my own, brought on by a series of thinkings, and this little post from Jeff Goins. I love how often – and well – advice for writers translates for creatives. Happy Tuesday!

P.S. Don’t miss this sweet preview of a spectacularly gorgeous session I had in NOVA – a total DREAM shoot!

I used to work in a windowless office, pushing papers around, proofreading legal briefs, organizing files. I enjoyed my job, and deeply respected the two attorneys for whom I worked, but I knew I wouldn’t be doing that work for the rest of my life.

I knew because I exchanged my florescent office lighting for a set of lamps, hung pretty pictures everywhere, changed out my desktop background every few weeks. I bought myself flowers, and stalked the windowed offices in my building, looking for pretty, seeking out the sunlight. I used the stall with a glazed window in the company restroom, dawdled under the warm water when I washed my hands.

When I was growing up, I had a lot of free time to create. I planned to start a craft business on a cute alliteration – Kelly’s Kountry Kollectibles. (The acronym on that one killed the idea in its infancy.)

I wrote two novels when I was 17. I set up an office and made baskets and magnets and dolls, wrote poetry about the apple tree outside my bedroom window, spent hours playing the piano, learning the flute, and walking on our 25 acres. I baked, cleaned, planned church services, made sense out of the displays at our local antique shop, wrote short stories because I hated getting committed to long novels and there weren’t enough good short stories out there.

I was created to create. Working in an office, unable to engage the world outside – it wasn’t where I belonged, any more than niching into any one thing for a creative brand is where I belong now. “Legal Assistant” didn’t define me then; “Photographer” doesn’t define me now.

When we went to Ireland, there wasn’t a person whose first reaction was “oh, I hope you have a wonderful time!” Instead, the first thing I heard from e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. was, “I can’t wait to see the photos!”

But I spent the weeks leading up to our trip racking out the last of the work I had in front of me so that I would have a clean slate when I returned. By the time we left for Ireland, I didn’t even want to touch my camera. I wanted to breathe. To see. To open my heart and just let the world in without editing it.

So I didn’t go to Ireland as a photographer. I went as me, with a camera. And I photographed little, silly things that made me happy. Because when it came down to it, one of the most important things I need to create in my life – no matter where I work or what I am doing – is SPACE IN WHICH I CAN LIVE.

Even as I GO, I have to have a place to come home, a time to rest and remember where I come from and why I am going. In spite of my obligations and the expectations of others that drive me on day after day, I still need to create space for me to just BE. The busier I am, the more guilty I feel about this; the busier I am, the more desperately I need this.

That is why I slow-cleaned my office this morning, why I stopped to catch the morning sun in left-over peonies from yesterday’s engagement shoot, why I’ve had three cups of tea today while deliberately choosing not to process one of the four sessions still waiting for release.

I need these rabbit-trail moments to stay alive; they are my Sabbath. If I can’t be alive and GO, then I will turn that GO around, close my business down, and make art because that is what I love doing. Because that is what I was created to do. Because I don’t work in a windowless office now, and my play is my realest work.

This post is for you who need to breathe today – light and pretties. It’s what I needed when I took these this morning to the sound of a lilting piano melody with sun streaming in after a full day of gray. Thanks for being here, for being with me.

P.S. I know I promised a giveaway from my Ireland photos; I will get it up as soon as I can. ;-)

I’ve spent my whole life moving. The longest I stayed in any one place was 8 years – and I spent that time in seven different homes. Every move came with an exquisite sense of pain mingled with expectation. Every new place gave me room to become more myself than I had been in the last.

But this move I’ve been making from brokenhearted God-rambling to a focused, real-life career has been the hardest move I’ve ever made. Perhaps it’s because the changes are happening inside me this time.

I am more me than I’ve ever been. I no longer need to write me out to justify myself or what I believe. The depth of me in my work now is more than I believed possible. I approach life differently now, engage with people differently. I’m stronger, more confident.

But I’m scareder too. And if I’m gonna be really honest? I’m lonely.

I’m almost embarrassed to be writing this post, but it’s hard to say I’m living real life if all I reveal is the glamour of it.

I am not famous. I’m a very little fish in a Very Big Pond. People aren’t yet beating down the door to have me take their picture, no matter what it LOOKS like here. They aren’t yet regularly pinning my work to Pinterest. Photo posts are the easiest posts to read online, but most of my readers don’t comment. And it’s not that I don’t understand. In a world inundated with visual stimulation, even I don’t take the time to fully appreciate others’ work.

It feels like a waiting, as if I’m a new face in a new town. Relationships come slowly after moves. In a way, leaving my old niche has made me more open to new and deep relationships – the kind where there is a mutuality, an ability to sit and be with someone, understanding that leaves room for challenge that leads to growth. So I invest close to home, close to my heart – in my neighbors, my clients, my family, in others who reach for my heart with their own.

Hebrews says that anyone who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He gives to those who diligently seek Him. It has taken me 30 years to believe that second part, as if God’s goodness was a fluke, as if seeking Him was meant only to bring hope with pain, when He is Love itself, when love desires to bring joy to the loved.

The life I built to survive my pain falling away – and I. Don’t. Know. What. Comes. Next. But that’s what walking out on faith looks like. That is the exhilaration of being alive and opening once-closed arms out to embrace a whole world God wants to give to me.

Real life is pain, with joy. People change and grow apart. Life moves on. But if we don’t shut down to survive the passage of time, if we keep our hearts open, we encounter eternity, even here.

As I prepared to photograph Allie, the daughter of one of earliest wedding couples, I mentally groaned, realizing that the location I’d chosen for the shoot left me with little choice but to embrace the green. Her little white dress stood out in perfect contrast to the lush green of the cemetery where we did the session, so I focused on her, figuring I could deliver in black-and-white if I needed to. Well. It turned out, I didn’t need to. And now I am pretty much in love with green.

P.S. I’m just sharing a little behind-the-lens info here, but if you want to see more of Allie’s UH-DOOR-UH-BILITY, you’ll have to head over to The Girl in the White Dress. Oh, come on. You had to know I was going to say that…

It was a little bit of a dream shoot – hat, hair, bicycle, wind, water… *happy sigh* My favorite thing in the world is showing other people the beautiful I see in them, and Emily – who had never worked with a professional photographer before – told me that she’d never felt so pretty as she did under my lens. She stepped into gorgeous she didn’t know she had.

I finally got to meet Danielle – and her family – in person last Thursday afternoon, and I loved her every bit as much as I already did online. During our 90-minute session, we covered photography, writing, family, future, and general friendship stuff – all between shots and laughter that made this one of the funnest shoots I’d done in a while! We’re already planning to Skype soon so that we can cover what got left out.

Danielle, a fellow photographer (who already blogged about our meeting!!!) and writer for Ungrind Webzine, was hoping for headshots that she could use for her website – here’s hoping that she can use these – my new camera loved all the vibrant colors that “golden hour” gave us!

As my online world continues to intersect with my real life, I can’t help hoping that all the people I meet are as wonderful as Danielle and her family – Josh, Duncan, Owen, and Sophia. The only thing missing from this session was my family falling in love with them as much as I was.

I’ve asked permission all my life just to be me, but “Go” doesn’t give you time to explore the boundaries. It propels you up and out and through and over and crazy real into the world, talking too much, learning how to be kind and care for others along the way, making mistakes and asking forgiveness, breathing in and breathing out.

When I was in Virginia last weekend, I drove nearly every stretch of road I’d traversed with my broken heart. I visited my old school and my old office, sat down in the classroom where I fell in love in September 2001. With every mile, every step I took, I realized how far I had come since I left. For the first time since I’d entered the hospital in June 2004, I knew exactly who I was, who God was to me, and how I fit into a world that saw my life shatter apart, leaving only piecemeal dreams for me to hold.

As I drove familiar roads and talked with brand new people, I realized that I am braver than I used to be. Living my life on grace is the wildest thing I’ve ever done, trusting that my righteousness comes by way of Jesus, believing that God made me the way He did to carry around His glory in my mess. I feel about twelve years old, and I still kick myself for inside words that pop right on out, but – for better or for worse – I am no longer afraid when I walk out into the world.

I handed my business card to a girl in the airport security line who had so much life in her, I couldn’t resist giving her my name in case she ever wanted a shoot. I talked to businessmen there too, met some Russian exchange students whose flight home had been cancelled the previous day. I smiled. I made eye contact.

We’re expanding the business to handle destination photography, setting prices, making new goals. A “no” that came last week cemented the decision I made in Ireland to shoot what makes me happy, regardless of the trends.

God is giving me my life back, and I don’t know why. I don’t think I expected to find life after the death of so much of me. I waited and waited – like a seed in the womb of the ground – and asked Him to be Him and to let me be me and show me how He loved me. Last week, my heart surprised me, leaping at the thought of Him, welling up with joy that He is God of this moment, holding the future I wouldn’t walk into if I could see the next step.

I didn’t see that step in 2001 when I told Him I’d go anywhere and do anything He asked. If I’d seen it, I’d never have moved, and now I wouldn’t be alive and living the dream He gave to me, knowing that He is for me, whatever happens.