life with luke

we weren’t sure that this boy
would ever make it out of my womb alive.
and here we are, celebrating his 16th birthday!
he is the very best birthday gift
that i have ever received.

as a photographer,
i am always searching for the light.

i know that photography has helped me
process the grief i have experienced in different seasons of my life.
i recently experienced another wave of heartache
and decided that i would lean into it
and photograph what the dim feelings felt like.
and here are the results of taking those photos.

this is my son, luke.
and his name means bringer of light.
and that he does.

the irony is that i was trying to photograph the dimness inside of me,
but all i could capture was the light.

On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.
And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,
while our presentable parts need no special treatment.
But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it,
so that there should be no division in the body,
but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
If one part suffers, every part suffers with it;
if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
1 Corinthians 12:22-26

i stumbled upon a draft of a blog post from 2014
that i never remember creating.

these pictures were from a normal day.
nothing special.
but now as i look back,
i see that
this moment in time was everything.
this is what life is all about.
these little in-between moments.

as we embark upon sending our second born away to college,
i am desiring to go back to the good old days
where i had little kids crawling all over me
and requiring every ounce of me.

i have heard from wise women
that this new season only gets sweeter,
but i feel as though i am in transition in labor,
where what is ahead is unknown and,
frankly, terrifying.

i long for those days from the past,
where i was able to immerse myself in motherhood.
and yet, i see that with my sweet Luke,
i still get to be there.
right smack in demanding stages of motherhood
(in the best of ways)
as he will always prefer
to be velcroed to my side.

this moment eleven years ago
was certainly the good old days.
but then i remember that
today is also
the good old days.

my job is basically to make luke laugh
all day long
and what a great job that is.

Everything if given to God
can become your gateway to joy.
Elisabeth Elliot

i thought that things were already hard.
because when i compare my life to others’,
i tend to find myself in a horrible place
(no surprise there).
but then this new dark cloud swept in
and threatened to loom overhead forever.
to never ever leave.
so what i thought was already difficult,
became something nearly impossible for my mind to wrap around.

and i’ve been there before,
imagining myself being parked under that stormy rain cloud,
without a break in the weather.
without a little dot of sunshine bravely peeking through
the deep dark clouds that hang in the sky.

i was there after the original neuro said things that she never should have said.
i was there on that one valentine’s day
when the official epilepsy diagnosis was delivered
instead of flowers.
i was there for six straight weeks
when the end of the day proudly displayed dusk
and as the seizures threatened to come and
disrupt his and our sleep
and threatened to come and
disrupt his and our life.

i’ve been in that dark place,
where i let my mind wander to where that dim path leads,
many many times before.

and just a few weeks ago, i was there again,
while a whole new stormy cloud threatened to spoil our lives.

but then, the wildest thing happened.
and i was reminded yet again that God is the writer of this story.
not me.
He is the writer of luke’s story.
of my story.

and He showed me
(yet again)
that i never ever can
know or
anticipate or
prepare
for the future.
and that that is a really really good thing.

the future rests in what our good and sweet and
“withholding no good thing God” will allow.
the dark cloud, that was full of harsh relentless rain,
that i was sure would never leave,
just up and left.

and now, what i had believed was a normally tough situation,
is actually bright and shiny and sunny again.

i see His beautiful rays of light
pouring out of every single broken crack
and into every single shattered space.
into every missing part of a brain that God chose to not create
while luke was in my womb.
i am basking in the warm and holy and beautiful sunshine
of our normal and intense and beautiful life.

i get stuck when i picture what life might become
under a permanent rain cloud
instead of trusting that there will
always, always
be rain clouds
but that there will also
always, always
be sunshine.

For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.
Psalm 84:11

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise;
God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—
and the things that are not—
to nullify the things that are,
so that no one may boast before him.
1 Corinthians 1:27-29