home is wherever I'm with you. | Family Portraits

My Sister is getting married! | Engagement

"...Later that evening Rebekah and I were able to talk for a couple hours. We both found the conversation very enjoyable. 

Interestingly, at the time, God had us both in the middle of challenging and stretching things that were taking us outside our comfort zones, and looking back, it’s really neat to us how we were able to encourage each other to trust in God and focus on Him through those things. 

However, all we did was meet and talk that evening and then went back to our separate lives – 

just as they had been for 20 years before...

I don’t remember the exact day that it happened (I think it was a growing surety) but one day I realized that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt 

that Rebekah was the woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with."

The Music of Life | Personal

"...the music of life lies not in your circumstances or external things 

but in your own soul." 

Excerpt from Sept. 28,Streams in the Desert

the Brown Three before deployment | Portraits

recent favorites | Senior Portraits

Luke & Melissa | Wedding

This post is one of a young bride, the vow she wrote and the people that were there to hear it - a post that should have been posted a long, long ways back closer to the time...

Bringing our Best | Personal

Surely one should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God's world?

For what are they, both of them, the one just as much as the other, but listening to 'what the people will say', to opinion, to the 'voices from without?'  

And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful 

by listening to the voices from without.

And now, you think these things trifles, or at least exaggerated.  

But what you 'think' or what I 'think' matters little.  

Let us see what God thinks of them.  God always justifies His ways.

Oh, go your way straight to God's work, 

in simplicity and singleness of heart.

(Florence Nightingale, Notes on the Field of Nursing)

Christmastime Thoughts | Personal

"Someone tell me I am only dreaming / 

Somehow help me see with Heaven’s eyes

And before my head agrees, my heart is on its knees

Holy is He. Blessed am I.

Did You wrap yourself inside the unexpected / 

So we might know that Love would go that far?

I am not brave, I’ll never be

The only thing my heart can offer is  a vacancy

But I am willing. I am Yours.

I’ll hold you in the beginning, you will hold me in the end...

Every moment in the middle, make my heart your Bethlehem

Be born in me."

-Mary
(Fransesca Battistelli)

Preview: K Family | Portraits

Culling through this family's images and remembering why I love October so much... oh, the light!

Reflections on Business, Worship, and How They Fit Together | Personal

I'm coming back to the heart of worship

And it's all about You,

It's all about You, Jesus

I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it

When it's all about You,

It's all about You, Jesus

(The Heart of Worship)

You know those songs that you heard so many times growing up  (Hillsong's Songs 4 Worship CD's, anyone?), and how there's just no way that they can't be forever ingrained into your childhood memory?  This song is one of them, and this morning I again found myself humming out the chorus as I was getting around for the day.  When I actually got to thinking about the simple, well-known words I had going through my head, I was reminded of why I'm here. WHO I'm living for.  

It's all about you, Jesus.

Why is it that losing sight of that is so easy??

I want my personal life and the interactions I have with others to reflect Someone who's worth reflecting.  But I want all corners of my life to do the same... more than anything I want my home world, business, and everything else life entails to shout Jesus' name.  I want my days as a whole to sing a song of worship to the Lord, whether I'm at the grocery store, doing my studies at home, picking up my camera, or writing an email.  To declare God and His glory because every little thing I do flows from a heart that can't help but worship Him.

Every minute thing we do needs not be anything we "just do".  What if it might become our unique and personal avenues of enjoying and worshiping the Creator of beauty, art, light, our very souls... a way of expressing our adoration for this One.  So even if we're just washing the dishes or running an errand - let it be transformed, by just a change of outlook, into an act of worship remembering the moment by moment presence of One we long to delight!

Well, that's the end of my rant tonight.  Kudos to those of you who read all the way through!!  Try taking a break from the computer and go pull out one of those inspirational "kiddie" songs or stories you used to enjoy... just maybe, you'll find a small gem that will bring you a renewed, more child-like perspective!