in her peaceful ocean of green

Not sure if this is true in your parts of the world, but Spring here always bursts open almost over night. I am always so amazed how one day I will drive by a field and see nothing but dirt and tiny sprouts, and the next day I will notice that spring has rushed in and announced herself with a knee-high ocean of green. It makes for beautiful pictures...

On this evening we were walking back to our car when I suggested to Bean that she go wade into the grass and find a place to make her nest. She was just settling into her little peaceful cocoon when she heard someone mention the possibility of there being some snakes also making nests in the sea of green. The thought of meeting even a small intruder shattered her nesting moment.

(Below: Can you see her wheels spinning? Really? There might be snakes in here too?)

I know I have written about this before (a lot!), but I have been thinking much about "peace" lately. Like how fragile mine is. How with one flicker of a thought about the possibilities of what "may happen" in my near or distant future, I am up and running off in a restless anxiety. Funny how those little voices can set off an alarm of worry that show me just how shallow my roots of peace extend.

I was riding in the car yesterday thinking about this all and I head myself say...
Tracey, how big can those "snakes" really be? Are they even there? Or are they just phantoms of my worry,  looming large in my imagination? 
And have I really made my God that small, that I believe even he cannot deal with those supposed "snakes"?

I am so human it's not even funny. I wonder how many beautiful, plentiful fields of peace have I forfeited for the game of playing about with the imagined worries of my mind?

(long thoughtful pause....)

Or perhaps knowing peace is more than just trying to emotionally shake myself into a place of of being worry-free. Maybe it is about trusting that even if those "snakes" do intrude upon my life in a very real and scary way, I will get through it. I believe God is big enough to give me the strength to do and be what I need to travel through it. (At least this is what I say. I will never really get to practice what I preach unless I go through it, right?)

I think I am finally understanding that, for me, my peace is not dependent upon my circumstances, but rather upon where I place my trust. 

And if I trust he is big enough to take care of me no matter what may come my way, then a beautiful, peaceful smile is the punctuation mark to the end of my heartfelt conclusion. 

I really want to exude this kind of beauty from knowing that kind of peace, even though it might take me a life time of practice. 

But I am workin' on it.
Thanks for letting me process. :)
Happy Monday.
T

the end of a week

This was a small irresistible snap shot I had to take. A bright spot in my crazy week. I always melt when I see those chunky cheeks and baby legs. When and why do we stop admiring the pudgies? Can't they always be cute?

I took copious amounts of this little chick and will share them later. But for now I am signing off with a Friday random list of observations about my week. I'm doing this because I know you care.

• I think I drove several hundred miles in the span of three days this week. I really don't want to visit another gas station for awhile. California gas is up to $4.17. Somewhere, someone (whomever is in charge of these gas prices) needs to be put on a time-out.

• My daughter just went through a major growth spurt and I am now acknowledging that this pre-pre-teen thing is killin' me. I have seen the word "irrational" taken to new heights.

• On the brighter side, I discovered that I can make my own microwave popcorn. Mix 1/2 cup of popcorn with 1/2tsp of oil, put into a paper bag, fold over and tape, and microwave for 2- 3 minutes. Smother with some melted butter and salt. Cheap!

•  I love Chipotle's burrito bowls. And talking with an old friend/cousin for two and a half hours in Chipotle while eating one of the Chipotle burrito bowls. 

• Do not open the front door when your son has strung together bungee cords and attached them to your front door knob and the front yard tree. Make sure you remind him to clean up the squished lemons off of the street, the ones that were catapulted there from the bungee cord sling shot.

• The gluten-free banana muffins I make are better than the normal kind but...

•  ...bananas give me reflux. I never knew this until a few months ago. Every time I think I can surely eat a banana muffin I stand corrected by the miserable sore throat that follows.

•  I am in denial over this reflux discovery. I love bananas and I keep making muffins. Weep with me will you?

•  I knew that if I washed my car that it would rain, but I washed it anyway...and it rained.

•  Calendars are good and useful tools if you look at them. All Monday I thought it was Tuesday. It was not. But wouldn't that have been nice if it had been true?

• Seeing this man's photo work reaffirmed that I want to do what he does. I just need to be single and not have children and be willing to take lots of malaria pills and experience crazy traveling conditions. But maybe some day? (I cried through most of his pictures.)

• My kids are hilarious. The Kid thinks that playing ball-wall in the house is not annoying.  He also laughs when I scold him for putting his feet on my pillow. Bean believes I am torturing her when I ask her to clean her room. Laughing hysterically.

• I love Friday's. I love a weekend that is wide open. I love being done with a crazy week and feeling like I accomplished stuff. 

• I love baby pudgies, but not my own. I will never take a picture of mine and blog about them. You are very welcome. Have a happy weekend.

reflection

As her mother I want her to know what it means to be your own best friend, to be comfortable in your skin, to love yourself with a sober judgement that knows your infinite value and endless worth. 

I want her to know now all these truths that I am only just discovering for myself.

But as parent I am painfully aware, as I watch my children grow, that in some ways they are just mini reflections of myself. A mirror reflecting back to me all the beauty and the flaws of my own emotional landscape. What a discovery to see myself reflected back to me in their words and emotions. Foolishly I think that I am so adept at covering up my shortcomings but the truth is that I cannot give what I do not have. 

So I am personally working on that which I want for her: to be a friend to myself, to be comfortable in my own skin, to emotionally connect with the truth of my infinite value in a God who loves me.

I am doing this because when she sees herself in a reflection, I want her to see herself smiling back.

It has been a crazy week of commitments and catching up and letting go. My Picture Inspiration prompt this week was to capture a reflection. (Fun for me since I'm a bit geeky about reflections like I am about leading lines.) Bean and I hunted for one this afternoon and we found it in our backdoor window. Just please ignore the dirt. :) I thought about reflecting on the meaning of the smudged reflections but then realized that I was too tired to do so and then it would all be rambling. Like I said, it's been a long week but I wanted to get my weekly assignment up. Off to bed!

arrival

Friends. Meet Spring. She finally arrived here in the form of blazing sun, 80 degree weather, and allergies. I just noticed last night my poor son sniffling and trying to breathe while waiting for his shower to warm up.

It's Friday and I am beat. This probably has something to do with the fact that after two weeks of not being able to go on my walks because of the rain, I have walked four miles every day this week, and then some. Seriously that is kind of pathetic that I am so beat by walking. There was a phase in my life where I used to run, until I dropped a seven pound frozen ice-cream maker bucket on my toes one summer. Up until then I could boast that I had never broken a bone in my body, and that I was a "runner",  but after that incident I was totally humbled and I never got back on my running feet.

Anyway, I digress.

So spring came, I have over-walked myself, and now I am whining. I am taking a few days off from blogging to recover (because, uh... doing all that walking really puts a cramp in one's blogging muscles) and get some stuff done that is hanging over my head. (Interpret: I'm overwhelmed with too much stuff right now that something has to give.)

Enjoy your weekend. Tell me about your plans, your Spring dreams, your allergy remedies for my son (preferably natural remedies).

Or just tell me that you can sympathize with my Friday slump. I don't want to feel like the loner that I already feel I am.

leading line

Yesterday afternoon I was at a county park/farm with a friend, my hubby, and Bean. I had three photo "jobs" to attend to in the space of two hours, two of which were for two different websites (can share more later), and one was to get my mindful Picture Inspiration photo assignment completed.

Although I wasn't really in a mindful mood because I was completely distracted by a perfect moment of beautiful light, perfect background, and my precious Bean standing in the middle of it.

These were my three favorite pictures from the two hours we were there. She was in another world. I was a whisper away. I look at these photographs and lament at how fast she is maturing, yet in awe of how she grows more beautiful each day.

We walked a little further from our spot and my P.I. pic found me. The assignment this week was a further exploration of the rhythm and motif, this time incorporating repetition, a diagonal, and a shallow depth of field to carry the viewer's eye through the picture. It is called a leading line. Photographer's jargon, blah blah blah.

But when you see it you intuitively know and like it because it is pleasing to your eye. Whether you know it or not, your eye likes to enter a picture, move about it comfortably, and then exit it smoothly. It likes a turbulent-free ride. Well at least mine does. But then, I have always been one to get extremely motion sick so there you go.

So here is the picture that found me.

Ok class...please take note of the repetitive pattern on the fence, your eye traveling diagonally across the photo following the fence line, taking a brief rest stop at the just out of focus Bean in that shallow depth of field (I put her there because I really like a human element to photos), and then continuing on out to the old barn and exiting off the photo. You entered one side of the photo and exited off the other, left to right, like you read. (Unless you read Anime/Manga novels then you read right to left, back to front, but whatever, that's beside the point class.) This is not a rule for every photo you take but it is one I employ often, because I like lines and diagonals and sometimes I am kind of a geek about them. Kids, if you own a camera, this is safe to try at home.

And so here ends my rambling. I think. You know, sometimes I think I am good at photographic leading lines but not so good at using them in writing...like now. How do I exit this post smoothly? I led you in, carried you through, and now am at a loss as to how to land the plane and let you off easily.

Maybe I should just end it here.

Or here.

The end.

(See you tomorrow.)

my little umbrella adventure

Last week I shared this photo...

Today I will share some others that I snapped while on my creative weekend escape I took with my art group. It was a stormy weekend so I had to take advantage of the lulls in the rain when I could. I dressed my camera in a plastic bag, borrowed a rain coat, and went out with my friend to exercise my creativity.

(Photo note: I also got to exercise my creativity when it came to editing. I usually love a good clean photo, but some of them were just too fun not to play with.)

God bless my sweet friend: she had left her boots out by the back door overnight so when she went to go put them on the second day they were full of water! She wore them anyway, for me. She was a true model.

And there she is smiling at me on her way back up the stairs to the beach house. I thanked her that weekend, but I want everyone to know how thankful I am that she was willing to walk up and down the beach for me, leap through the waves a million times, sacrifice her dry feet for me. 

Look at her...I hope she knows how beautiful she is both in body and soul. I wish you all knew her so you could agree. :)

capturing a birthday moment

Over the weekend we had a family gathering to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday. I am sure she would like everyone to know that she turned twenty-one. I can vouch for her. ;)

Because I know that I rarely get a picture with my children, I insisted on dragging her and her daughter outside to capture them in her birthday moment. I wanted her to have this moment.

I love the feeling of giving something to someone that I know is needed to restore, encourage, remind them of what they have. (And believe me, my sis-in-law needs some encouragement in this present chapter of her life.) I would want to have the same for myself...a beautiful photo of me and my children on my special day. The joy in the giving is worth more than any dollar amount I could earn in photographing people through my lens. I guess this is what it feels like to have your gift become a gift. And this the place where my joy finds root. 

I do not ever want to lose this feeling.

my little inspiration

This kid rocks. He's really does dance to the beat of his own drum. 

He is soft spoken, full of cool break dance moves, and has his own ideas about style.

Love him.

While he was watching the big kids shake their groove thing to the Dance Off game and I just tried to be stealth with my camera. He sensed my presence and then gave me a few smiles, and socks.

Love him.

(This last picture makes me smile.)

On this Monday morning, I am reminded that the best thing I can do for my creative self is to be me. Like listen to the beat of my own drum, rather than trying to follow others. Be not afraid to show people my striped-socked feet to bring about a little laughter. Be content to just watch from the outside of the circle and join in when I feel comfortable...

....or even remain in the background to do my own dance moves.

Happy Monday.
xoxo

willing:

Willing:    to be wrong

              to go last

              to listen

              to not nag

              to sacrifice my time

              to be renewed

              to give my best

              to submit my thoughts to the truth

              to kneel in humility

              to go without

              to be grateful

              to stop what I am doing to be present

              to be used for a greater purpose

              to sing praises when my heart is sad

              to trust

              to be silent

              to believe despite what I cannot see

              to go one more day

              to open my hands and let go

              to follow

              to sacrifice

              to grow

              to choose love

And when my heart fails...

Willing: to pray for the heart to choose to be willing. 

              

Just a few things I am praying for these days. 

Deep thoughts on a Friday, I know. 

Have a blessed weekend.

xoxo

T

stacked

After the storm I wandered the beach and decided to capture what the ocean had coughed up during the wind and rain. Everything was photographed just as I found it except for (ahem) one picture. It's kind of a "which one is not like the other" game. Can you guess "which of these things is not like the other"? (Remember that Sesame Street song?)

You are so smart blogger friend. I am assuming you guessed correctly, otherwise you may need to review a few Sesame Streets to get your game back on.

This week, my mindful photo assignment from Picture Inspiration was to capture something "stacked". 

We were give the encouragement to arrange our own stacked items if we so wished. So as I was combing the shoreline I kept noticing these little caps and scooping them up into my pocket. I believe they are some seed pod caps (not acorn, there are no oaks nearby) that blew down from the trees on the bluffs that overlook the shore. The wind carried them to rest on the sand and I marveled at their various colors and shapes. 

They reminded me of that children's story I used to read to the kids, Caps for Sale.

I delicately stacked them one on top of each other, all the while singing in my head...

"Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!"

Do you know the story? I read it a million times to both of my kids. If you have read it, now you too can have that little line ringing in your head all day.

You're welcome.