Lavish Memories Photography

I don’t write personal posts often, not because I don’t want to share me with you but often because I forget or don’t find the time to sit down and write a personal post. I don’t really have the time to be sitting here tonight and writing this. I have a preview to get up from tonight’s session, several sessions to edit, a album to design and a couple orders to place….however I needed a couple hours of not doing anything that is required of me but rather something that might help ease my mind. Today was one of those days, we all have them, not one person on earth is exempt from them but it doesn’t make those days easier when they happen to us. This morning as sat in church with such a heavy heart, so heavy I couldn’t hear what the pastor was speaking on even though I really was intrigued with the topic. My mind kept going wondering to a place I haven’t let it go in a long time. Why me?

You see like most of you reading this life hasn’t been easy, my parents were divorced when I was in kindergarten, my mom remarried not real long after to the man whom I call my step-dad although they two have since divorced. My dad re-married when I was in 4th grade to a woman who for some reason hated me. She told me and anyone else who would listen what an unlovable person I was. They finally divorced when I was a freshman in collage. My Dad is remarried again but this time to a woman who loves him and me and my family (I’m so very thankful for this). In my teens and 20′s I was in relationships that weren’t healthy but I knew I just wanted to be “loved.” Those are the simple, brief overview of the surface of part of my life.

When I was 21 my life was forever changed. The guy I had been dating invited me to his church, I went knowing that I had a longing for something more in life but not knowing what that meant. In Jan of 2002 I learned something that no one had ever told me my whole life. I learned and knew that there was a God, I God who LOVED me, valued me and DIED for me. I will never be able to express how this knowledge changed my life. My life is not determined by my circumstances or by what others say about me, my life is in the hands of my creator, my savior.

Today as I was confronted with some really hard and scarey stuff. Things that I have no control over and can only hand over and trust in God to get us all through. I felt so weighted down by the why me? Only the why me I was looking at was not about why is this happening to me but why have I been saved from path in life I could have easily gone down? A path that unfortunately others in my life have chosen? My response to this is just plain gratitude. Here is the thing. Anyone can have what I have, God pursues each one of us, every.single.day. all we have to do is answer. There is no rhyme or song to sing, no message to say or even to hear but the simple truth, knowing that there is a God who loves us so much that he sent his only Son to die for us and that Jesus died for us, rose again so that we might have everlasting life. Wow what a gift.

So today, although it  was a really hard day, a day that “required” me to eat a large amount of cookie dough ice cream and to cry on the shoulder of my husband and a really sweet friend, it’s a day that I am thankful. Thankful that when I ask why me, there is a very simple answer. HE LOVES ME!