A little more than 2 weeks ago, I left the hospital with my daughter where she’d nearly died a second time in two months.
Last night we celebrated her 13th birthday with a few of her friends out on Lake Michigan. And I’m in awe, slightly scared, fighting off tears (because that would be “totally embarrassing, mom!”). Continue reading “Restore—Rivers in the Dry Wasteland”
Sometimes what my characters say take me by surprise with how appropriate for where I am in my life. It’s almost like they’re talking to me. A while back I caught my character, Ryan James, talking about shadows and I realized how right he was.
See there is something about shadows—that absence of light—that kids instinctively fear. Adults have a more educated view that thinks the dark patches really can’t hurt us. That there isn’t anything hiding inside trying to get out.
But if I’m honest with myself, there’s still something about the dark.
Perhaps the kids have it right.
But if there are shadows, Continue reading “There’s Something About Shadows”
The other day, I was out for a walk. Despite the bright sunshine, darkness hovered close, stalking the cracks and crevices of my mind. This nebulous shadow is nothing new. And I found myself fighting it, once again.
If you have never tried, doing battle with a substanceless thing is tiring work on a normal day. But I’d also just had surgery, and my daughter had hurt her knee…really hurt it.
So we were living with a mom who was recovering and a girl who’s broken—a gaping black hole on the MRI where her bright white ACL should be.
But as I walked, my crazy dog running circles around my legs, I started noticing the shadows, the sketches of blocked light.
I suddenly started seeing the light playing inside the shadow—the interplay an exquisite balance.
Pink waves roll over the dark sky,
Building, crashing into brilliant light—
Smashing into the night sky,
Shattering the darkness.
Some days I welcome the coming of morning. It’s a fresh new day ready for good things. But other days—perhaps when I’ve been in the darkness, the depths of hurt or confusion just a moment too long—the light blinds and hurts. Continue reading “Waves of Light”
There are times when life gets too big, my vision too full of debris and clutter that threaten to trap me. And I must focus small to get through. The macro shot bringing life down to leaf-sized, manageable pieces. There’s just something about the tight focus.
So I bring you the beauty in the small, tiny veins of a brittle leaf, the light caught in the edges of an evergreen needle, and the rich brown rings on a fungus. May these humble images bring you a moment’s joy for the week.
From the moment my daughter was born, she was most content when not inside. As a baby, the best way to calm her colicky crying was to snuggle her in a bouncy seat under the maple tree or, when it got cold, take her for a ride in a sled.
During her early years, I spent hours in the woods trailing a toddler looking for critters under overturned logs, disguised behind leaves, and lurking in the water. We amazed at how they were created to adapt to their environment and needs.
I started photographing the animals we found and put them into a book for my girl…and those little books became board books published a few years back. (Check out the All About God’s Animal series over here.)
My girl is a tween now and doesn’t need me by her side as she builds tree forts and digs for fishing worms. And so it’s been a long, long time since I hunted the woods, beaches, and waterways for critters and nature to capture on film.
Until now. A few days ago, my girl asked me to go take pictures with her. The little dude was at soccer practice and the field is hemmed in with fields and trees—full of natural beauty, decay, and life all mixed together for us to explore. Continue reading “Worth a Thousand Words”
My boy’s tiny fingers twisted
Through silky dark threads
Knotted, bumpy woven into
Comforting texture.
Enormous flower heads
Delicate as Queen Anne’s lace,
Bobbing approval above narrow cattails
Or dancing radiant under evergreen boughs.
Round, smooth-as-silk berries
Coated intense red,
Tucked safe into thousands of tiny leaves,
And stretched over the rippling water.
Paint trailing under a brush
Light space and dark, starts and stops,
Hiccupping thick layers to mimic reality,
Leaves breathing like velvety buttercream atop
The cricket chirp lays down the ratcheting, rhythm
And a bird’s sharp call jive
Cutting through it all.
It’s time for one of the two Thursdays of every month where I give a nod to the things that make us stop and say, “There’s something about . . .”
This is something I wrote awhile ago and it fits perfectly with one of the characters I’m working on . . . and to be honest with me sometimes.
There is something about shadows —that absence of light— that kids instinctively fear. Adults have a more educated view that thinks the dark patches really can’t hurt us. That there isn’t anything hiding inside trying to get out.
But if I’m honest with myself, there’s still something about the dark.
Perhaps the kids have it right.
But if there are shadows, Continue reading “There’s Something About Thursday–Shadows”
It’s time for one of the two Thursdays of every month where I give a nod to the things that make us stop and say, “There’s something about . . .”
Spring. The warm air breathes life and this weekend, I drank it in. Weeding, prepping beds, setting up our trampoline, photographing all the life.
Every new leaf budding in a green so hot and bright it nearly melts the frosty morning on its own. The colors seem so out of place bursting above Winter’s dead debris. How yellow stamps out the cold snaps that carry Continue reading “There’s Something About Spring Unfurled”
Today is cloudy, some might say dreary . . . okay, most days I would say it was dreary.
But I’ve been trying to look deeper into those things that look ugly, and I realized something–
There’s beauty inside that grey.
The sky is blanketed, in wisps of deep purple, whispering over blue and grey. Somber, cool, quiet.
I struggle to see that beauty sometimes, but I realized the other day that without the clouds, the beauty of sunrise and sunsets are just missing a little something. It takes some darkness, some flaws to paint a really amazing sky… Continue reading “There’s Something About . . . Clouds”