Choose your Focus

At our last Friday Night Kids Club in Charlottesville, I taught a lesson on Focus, but without a doubt it’s not just for kids.  We know the story of Jesus walking on the water; how the already exhausted and frightened disciples in their boat became even more terrified when they thought they were seeing a ghost.  Then Peter, after hearing the voice of the “ghost”, concluded that it must be Jesus and called out, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you.”  Wow!  What a crazy thing to say.  It seems a little rash to me.  But he had faith.  He believed in his Lord.  He got out of the boat and WALKED ON WATER!!!  In the middle of a terrible storm no less!  But it didn’t last long.  His FOCUS went from Jesus to the storm and waves around him.  And as his focus on the Lord waned, so did his faith.

For “my girls” in this class it’s always a good idea to have a tangible object lesson.  In fact, it would be nice to have the whole lesson be tangible if that were possible – their attention span lasts about as long as Peter’s did in that storm. J  I took some short straws to class and told them to hold the straw about ten inches in front of their face.  Now focus on the straw.  Can you see it clearly?  Can you see the person sitting across from you clearly at the same time?  Now shift your focus to that person and keep the straw there.  Can you still see the straw?  It gets fuzzy and is still there, but you can kind of “see through it”. (You can do this with your finger and the computer screen if you would like a tangible object lesson too! J)

We CHOOSE what we focus on.  I’ll say it again.  What we focus on is OUR CHOICE.  We don’t get to decide if we’re going to be in the middle of a storm, we don’t get to decide whether our life is easy or hard.  But we get to decide what we will focus on.  And as soon as Jesus begins to get out of focus and fuzzy, the storm gets a little clearer.  Faith grows a little weaker and fear gets a little stronger.  Focus on the Giver of Life and the Calmer of Storms and faith grows stronger because you are seeing Truth.  He is good!  CHOOSE to believe that.

For it is by faith that we walk and not by sight.

2 Corinthians 5:7.

Walter and Bethany

Last Saturday Bethany and Walter got married.  And they asked me to photograph their day.  I didn’t know either of them well, but they were so comfortable to be around that now I feel like a friend!  I told them in the morning that God’s wedding gift to them was the beautifully overcast April sky instead of the rain we’d had or the harsh sunlight.  It made my job go so smoothly and we were blessed with an amazing place to take photos.  Really it was a wonderful day!  Thank you to my sister-in-law, Bethany (yes, there were some confusing moments since she shared the bride’s name!), for being an awesome assistant and making things go easily.  And thank you to Walter and Bethany for choosing me to be your photographer!

 Details of the back
 of the bride's dress. 
She made these
beautiful roses herself!

Bethany's two little brothers are just adorable (don't tell them I said that!).  And I kept my promise not to post any "kissing the bride" pictures even though I really wanted to!

The reception was held in a barn near the end of a long dirt road through the woods.  This cute sign directed the guests at a fork in the road. 

Blue hydrangeas made a beautiful theme.

 Delectible desserts covered two tables where guests could help themselves.

Loveliness

April’s been a busy month for me and I’ve skipped two weeks posting here.  I’ve enjoyed time with family (I truly do love reunions), time spent scrapbooking memories of my Grandfather, and the beauty all around me outside.  This is the time of the year that I know with certainty that I don't appreciate this place where we live to the fullest. Really!  In the springtime living on this farm is like living in a park with all the beauty growing and blooming here.  I remind myself that I’ve done nothing to deserve to live here where my husband works, and I don’t want to take this blessing for granted! 

Earlier when my girls and I went for a walk, one of the magnolia trees was in full bloom with white petals completely covering the ground under it.  My photography loving heart longed for a bride to stand in their loveliness!  And now the deutzia is blooming in the hedge around our front yard - massive spheres made with white blossoms so small, but so many.

All this white beauty brings thoughts of weddings. I think there is nothing much lovelier and more beautiful than a bride. Brides and weddings are one of my favorite things to photograph. This weekend I get to photograph a wedding, the first one for this year and it produces an abundance of feelings: Excitement, Nervousness, Responsibility, and lots of Anticipation!

I was looking through some of the weddings from the past and decided to share my top ten twelve favorites. :)  

Love this sweet girl!

What fun to wake up to SNOW in Deleware!!!  Beautiful!

Lovely couple in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania.

A windy day of april rainshowers. Love doesn't mind rain.

Daddy's girl.

Such a fun country wedding in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Right out of a storybook!

FOREVER I love you.

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair;
Thine eyes are as doves behind thy veil.

 Song of Solomon 4:1 ASV

I wandered....

   On the hillside behind our house there are daffodils planted in masses in a length of over two hundred feet.  I can’t see them from the house, so I have take a short stroll if I want to enjoy them, and so far I haven’t taken the time to do much daffodil gazing.  But this morning I spent a few minutes there just as the sun was coming up.  The brightest yellow ones have finished blooming and mostly the small white Jonquils are left “dancing in the breeze”. 

  When I see all these daffodils in multitudes a poem comes to mind.  I have a thing for poetry.  I think it came from my mamma reading the Childcraft Book of Poetry to us when I was young.  I’ve always loved classic poetry - pictures made with words set to a cadence with rhyme.  It seems miraculous to me that a person can create things like this. 

  I find old books of poetry to be irresistible.  When I was in my teens I started collecting old volumes and spent hours reading.  If I went on a trip there was usually a poem book tucked in my suitcase somewhere, and when I would go for weeks at a time to Bible schools, I had a whole stack to take along. 

  Now there’s not so much time for poetry reading.  But there are bits and pieces tucked away in my mind that come back at random times.  Like when I see the daffodils…

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

by William Wordsworth  1804

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

 What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Let all that I am praise the LORD; may I never forget the good things he does for me.

Psalm 103:2 NLTI Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Memories

  I’m starting.  I can hardly bring myself to do it.  All these photos.  All these memories.  And I am so inadequate to do it - compiling old photos and memories into scrapbook pages.  I didn’t even know my Grandfather very well. Mostly he was out at the barn with the menfolk when I was around.  He sat on his “deacon’s bench” at the head of the dining room table every Easter and Christmas and his voice was quiet and calm as he said grace.  That’s how I remember him.  Quiet and calm.  Even as my Grandmother, Aunt, and I sat once in a Cracker Barrel restaurant in the midst of a ridiculous laughing fit he didn’t crack a smile.  But I imagine his eyes were twinkling even though I couldn’t see for sure in the dim light.  Every now and then he’d make a quiet comment that would only add fuel to our fire so I know he was enjoying himself. 

  I (me, little old me) have the old suitcase with the travel sticker from Denver Colorado and the United Airlines Tag still dangling from the handle.  That was my Grandfather’s.  It was found out in a shed on his farm last year with a collection of his personal things 15 years after he passed.  It has hundreds of old pictures from his travels and life in his single years.  My Grandfather was a bachelor until the age of 40.

Some of the random things in the suitcase.

I just love this picture!  It just makes me smile.  My Grandfather was a farmboy.  Isn't he a good looking young fellow?!  I wish I could have known him back then!

These are photos my Grandfather took while in Europe right after WWII.  Gutted buildings, demoished planes and old bombs. He served with the CPS (Civilian Public Service).

This CPS Reserve Corps that my Granfather Hiram served in, helped deliver cattle and horses to war-torn countries. During 1946, three hundred and sixty-six CPS men served on ships that sailed from Newport News or Norfolk, Virginia to Europe.  My Grandfather also served doing various other things in Ohio, Pensylvania, Maine and Colorado .

I spent a morning last summer with my great aunt Nancy, my grandfather's youngest sister, to get her insights on some of these old snapshots.  It was such fun to hear her stories and see her memories come alive when she'd see a photo.  I took notes on what she described.   We both found it humorous how many pictures there were of young ladies!

Aunt Nancy said the family would often gather at the homeplace for Sunday Dinner.  This is one of those occaisions.

A group of friends and brothers. My Grandfather is the one with his hat cocked back on the far right.

   Somehow a year ago as the family sorted through some of these old things I ended up with this suitcase, his old camera, different odds and ends of papers, a coin purse and lots and lots of wonderful old photos.  Most of them are small with the fancy ragged edge that was popular at the time.  I was afraid to even hope that I might have even some of these photos.  But as people at the family gathering were looking through them, they seemed to want me to take them.  So I am the one who came home with them and I’m honored to be the one to keep these treasures alive.  These memories that my Grandfather rarely spoke of.

  But as I sat in the front seat of the maroon GMC pickup that day with my daddy in the driver’s seat and the suitcase of memories in the back, I fought back tears. Emotions.  Something inside me was rising up and fighting.  Why? How?  Why must it be that these memories which once were important to my Grandfather are fading out of the picture? Why does no one hold on to them and keep them alive?  But he’s just one in a vast number. One.  One measly little human being.  In five of these years that are shown in the pictures, estimates say 50 million to 70 million human beings lost their lives in a war that affected the globe.  And I’m battling tears for the sake of the memories of one?  It’s not my personal sadness of his absence that makes the tears come.  It’s that he as a person is being lost in time.  Because he matters.  Because every soul ever formed matters.  Life is sacred.  Each life is sacred.  And it seems like no one cares.  There is nothing we can do against the roll of time and loss and indifference. 

  That is why I want to do these pages.  Why it even matters.  He’s only one person in the multitudes. But he is one!  If I can preserve some of what mattered to him, then I can make my own personal statement for myself and say, “His memories matter because he matters”, “because EVERY LIFE EVER LIVED matters.”  And even if I can do nothing about the lives of the masses, there are some things I CAN do in my allotted time on this earth.  There are certain people that I can touch, that I can make a difference to.  I can do my part at this time, in this place.  I am part of history.  I may not make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but to a few I can be the difference. This is how I want to live my life.

"And on some have compassion, making a difference."
Jude 1:22