life...

So...from time to time, my mom likes to send me packages in the mail. It's really awesome. Apparently she saved all of the pictures we drew, crafts we made, and notes my brother and I wrote when we were little. For the past couple of years, she will include one of these creations in with a package that she sends to me. The one that I got yesterday made Corey and I both laugh out loud. From the print, I am guessing I was about 6 or 7 at the time of composure. All that it said was this (in all caps and purple crayon):

"No one cares about me. Just my dumb brother."

This confirms two things for me, both strangely comforting. One, I love my brother. There is nothing like the connection, friendship, and laughter we share. Two, I tend to be a bit on the dramatic side. I guess that I always have been. I like to make extreme statements; sometimes this is because I really believe them. At times--okay, a lot of the time--this makes me feel like a crazy person. My emotions tend to take over the rational part of me and it's often hard to reel that back in. Sometimes though, I feel like it helps me to just really experience life. To soak it in and feel it really deeply.

There seems to be a lot of emotion to feel these days. Our life feels really full right now. Really joyful and new. Laughter feels deeper and connections to other people feel more authentic than before. I also feel stretched in new ways and some of those make me feel really tired and also very scared. It also feels like there are a lot of really hard things happening around us right now, too. A lot of things that don't seem to make any sense, that seem to be in direct contradiction to what seems so true in our own lives right now. I have been able to photograph some families lately who have been vulnerable with me in ways that have made me connect anew to what I want to do and be as a photographer. For these things, I am very grateful.

My shoot with the Edwards family was one of my favorites that I've shot in awhile. I was able to just let them be themselves and then work to capture that. For many families that I photograph, I think that this is harder than showing up for what they consider to be a typical photo shoot geared up to smile and pose. And yet it is truly my heart as a photographer. I long for families to see the beauty in their children, in their families, in their story together.

Also on that note, we had the chance to watch Steven Curtis Chapman and his family on CNN tonight talking about the dark days their family has walked through this summer. There are really no words but I can promise you that it is worth watching.