Where Children Play

“And those who know your name put their trust in you,

 for you, O Lord,

 have not forsaken those who seek you.”

Psalm 9:10

Waldron Family Photos

Meet the Waldron family.

My dear friend, Rachel, is the oldest daughter with nine siblings coming after her.

She asked if I would consider doing family photos.

They wanted to give their mother, Cari, a special gift for mother’s day.

Cari has been battling a very serious cancer.

I knew I wanted to do the photos for them.

So we spent an evening in June photographing

the whole family, in their back pasture.

It was beautiful.

There were tears… and lots of laughter.

So many personalities – some subtle

and some shining through for all to see!

A photo with the grandparents and grandchildren

including the one on the way.

There was a little surprise in the bag. 

A sure way to get some expression in the photos!

  I will admit that I cried while editing these precious pictures. 

God is good and Cari is feeling well for now.

 Just look at that little one on the end…

SO much personality going on!

God bless each one of you, friends!

Roadside Weeds

It was last summer that I realized it. 

How I was drawn to the summer weeds,

the flowers, along the roadsides. 

I truly soaked in their beauty. 

But it was more than their beauty I was moved by.

 I contemplated this new emotion. 

(“New” because I always would have said I loved

 the soft and delicate flowers of spring most.)

 

Why would these wild and gangly weeds

unexpectedly be so much more beautiful to me? 

I pondered. 

It was my second summer with Lyme Disease

and its complications. 

I was eternally tired.

 I was in pain.

 I felt was surviving.

 But only surviving.

I absorbed the wild weed’s beauty.

These are flowers whose roots go deep. 

The kind whose stems bend tenaciously and

refuse to break when you attempt to pick them.

Over the summer I observed 

as they grew in the summer heat

along the dirt roads, along the interstate,

and everywhere in-between.

 They persisted in soil that was dry and rocky. 

They survived the worst of the summer thunderstorms. 

Their beauty was not fleeting.

I considered the roadside weeds

and I considered my own life.

And I knew why I felt a connection.

Because...

 these weeds are survivors.

And while they are surviving,

they bloom. 

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you,

for my power is made perfect in weakness.’

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,

so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses,

 in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

 For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

2 Corinthians 12:9,10