it's so good to be home.
on the eastern shore.
two of my favorite boys in the world picked me up in annapolis today. their hugs have never felt so warm. i got back and everyone smiles with excitement as they see everyone. everyone screams at tan skin and sun-bleached hair. i am just thankful to see the slightest changes in someone's face. new haircuts. new experiences to hear. stories to tell over beers and a few rounds of mario kart. someone brings rockband home. addicted. like clockwork. we all took a break to hit the gym for a while. now we're back at the robotic drum and guitar set. staring at the screen. pretending to be the rockstars we aren't.
this is home. for one more month. this group of friends, family really, who know me better than any other friends on this earth. they have heard my life stories, my hard times, my best times. i've grown to know every meaning behind a grin, every inflection of a laugh, every mannerism. and they know me. and it is all under the banner of love.
one month and this family i live with-my christian "real world"- will end. i must pack up and leave, leaving nothing but footsteps on this property and the hope that perhaps i made a lasting impression on those i have left behind. how will we all part ways? no one tells you how to prepare for that. i suppose it will feel a bit like graduating from jmu. leaving mason street and all that i knew for four years. i've left a place i called home once. i bet i can do it again.
but i left that area that i knew for four years to still stay in the area for another year. i realized i have been here for 5 years, this virginia-maryland region. this part of the country has been my home and the backdrop behind some of my greatest memories, mistakes, dreams, achievements, loves, friendships, and lessons. in one month, i'll pack it all up, in my green saab again, and coast back to chicago. another chapter done. a new one waiting. i'm scared and yet i'm peaceful. uncertain yet hopeful. my family and my best friend are waiting for me in chicago, and my prayer is that so much more is waiting that i cannot even begin to fathom.
got asked to photograph another wedding today. that's four this summer. i'll post the montgomery wedding photos soon...
finished my year long thesis last week and i will be presenting it tomorrow. maybe i'll post some sections from that as well.
happy monday.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
revelations of a single woman.
and this is that familiar feeling. the one that completely overcomes you, filling your stomach with a pit too large to ignore. with tears welling too fast to wipe them away soon enough. so i just let them fall. they flow down my skin, first cheekbone, chin, then neck and i am wondering why this pain creeps up the way it does sometimes. at the most inconvenient times. when i should be thinking about something else. when i should be doing something else far more worthy of my time, attention, and purpose. it comes when i realize that the rest of the world is experiencing things i thought i would have by this point in my life. it comes when i lose sight of all the blessings i receive on a daily basis. it comes when i long for a love of my own. it comes on a champagne high. while their stories are completed, and mine are a long way from done.
pathetic but true. dramatic but true. and i know that my love story is not completed yet because i would fall right now. i would love again so deeply if given the chance. it would be a slower start. but if you show me the love story, i would write it again and again. but the cost would be to give up this path i've begun as an artist, giving it my all and the same passion as i would in writing my own love story. it deserves my all right now and all of my attention.
who knows niggle? tolkien's most unsung character, a product of a writer's block just before he wrote lord of the rings. in the story, niggle tries his hardest to paint a mural of a tree on a wall in his town. in his head, he theorizes about several different possibilities for his mural. niggle sculpts this particular tree in his mind but focuses entirely on his shortcomings as they convince him to begin again. he delays the project for extended periods of time, filling his days with menial activities. one day, he steps up to the wall again. this time, he decides to capture the shape of one leaf with its sheen and glistening dewdrops on its edges, calls it finished, and is considered the town fool, as a result. soon after, niggle dies and finds himself riding on a train to heaven. while glancing at the landscape he sees it. the train stops and he gets off the train to run to a tree at the top of a hill. this was the tree niggle had wanted to paint all along, in it's full glory! he looks more closely and there was the leaf, just as he had painted it, radiant with detail.
i know i am being called to focus on some details right now. i have to focus on the sheen of my life, careful not to miss any glisten or shade of green because when i lose sight of that-my larger purpose in that grand mural- i am overwhelmed with unworthiness. left wondering why it wasn't my turn to play in a game i may not have even known enough about to play in the first place. i thought i knew better but maybe i needed to learn more. i needed to know feel what it meant to lose before i could feel the glory of a win.
i move away from here, my maryland home for the past nine months, in may. back to chicago for a while and then who knows. hopefully i will be able to claim the west coast as my new home by christmas. i know i have to hold true to what i've learned this year. he has revealed a passion in me-this art therapy thing-and i gotta do it. i don't know where. i dont know how. but it means that until i do, you will have to wait, oh love to call my own. i realize that this is my story, far from completed but i am still living it, day after day, outside of past expectations of what my life would look like by the time i turned 23. while i believed them so hard only a few years ago, those ideas are gone. but this is better.
when i was a little girl i would say to my parents as the tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, "goodnight, sleep tight, cause tomorrow will be a surprise!" every night i said that to my daddy as i flung my arms around his neck and i know i truly believed it as i lay me down to sleep. so why not now? where is that excitement? i have just as much love, if not more, in my life now as as i did then.
you don't have a love yet, jo. so go live like you don't, with abandon and an appreciation for the unexpected. go chase what God has inspired within you. you can't go back to that garden, to the way things were at the beginning, so you might as well leap into new promises. cause Lord knows, if you give them a chance, the floodgates will be opened and more blessing will be poured out than you know what to do with. just wait for the surprise.
pathetic but true. dramatic but true. and i know that my love story is not completed yet because i would fall right now. i would love again so deeply if given the chance. it would be a slower start. but if you show me the love story, i would write it again and again. but the cost would be to give up this path i've begun as an artist, giving it my all and the same passion as i would in writing my own love story. it deserves my all right now and all of my attention.
who knows niggle? tolkien's most unsung character, a product of a writer's block just before he wrote lord of the rings. in the story, niggle tries his hardest to paint a mural of a tree on a wall in his town. in his head, he theorizes about several different possibilities for his mural. niggle sculpts this particular tree in his mind but focuses entirely on his shortcomings as they convince him to begin again. he delays the project for extended periods of time, filling his days with menial activities. one day, he steps up to the wall again. this time, he decides to capture the shape of one leaf with its sheen and glistening dewdrops on its edges, calls it finished, and is considered the town fool, as a result. soon after, niggle dies and finds himself riding on a train to heaven. while glancing at the landscape he sees it. the train stops and he gets off the train to run to a tree at the top of a hill. this was the tree niggle had wanted to paint all along, in it's full glory! he looks more closely and there was the leaf, just as he had painted it, radiant with detail.
i know i am being called to focus on some details right now. i have to focus on the sheen of my life, careful not to miss any glisten or shade of green because when i lose sight of that-my larger purpose in that grand mural- i am overwhelmed with unworthiness. left wondering why it wasn't my turn to play in a game i may not have even known enough about to play in the first place. i thought i knew better but maybe i needed to learn more. i needed to know feel what it meant to lose before i could feel the glory of a win.
i move away from here, my maryland home for the past nine months, in may. back to chicago for a while and then who knows. hopefully i will be able to claim the west coast as my new home by christmas. i know i have to hold true to what i've learned this year. he has revealed a passion in me-this art therapy thing-and i gotta do it. i don't know where. i dont know how. but it means that until i do, you will have to wait, oh love to call my own. i realize that this is my story, far from completed but i am still living it, day after day, outside of past expectations of what my life would look like by the time i turned 23. while i believed them so hard only a few years ago, those ideas are gone. but this is better.
when i was a little girl i would say to my parents as the tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, "goodnight, sleep tight, cause tomorrow will be a surprise!" every night i said that to my daddy as i flung my arms around his neck and i know i truly believed it as i lay me down to sleep. so why not now? where is that excitement? i have just as much love, if not more, in my life now as as i did then.
you don't have a love yet, jo. so go live like you don't, with abandon and an appreciation for the unexpected. go chase what God has inspired within you. you can't go back to that garden, to the way things were at the beginning, so you might as well leap into new promises. cause Lord knows, if you give them a chance, the floodgates will be opened and more blessing will be poured out than you know what to do with. just wait for the surprise.
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