My blog flows out of my real life, and I never know what I'm going to write about from week to week. For someone who is performance oriented, that is a little scary. Some days I sit down at my computer and say, "I've got nothing." Then other weeks (like last week), I have more material than I can process. Having such a public forum for my "performance" strikes at my identity of "I am what I do". It turns my blog into a huge faith project.
Every day I ask God, "What am I supposed to write on my blog today." Sometimes it's nothing. Other times, I feel like he moves mountains in order to get me great photos - like sending me to New York. My husband's trip with college friends just "happened" to get canceled long enough for us to decide I had time to visit my friend Elizabeth in New York. Elizabeth and I just "happened" to settle on the weekend of September 9, and it just "happened" to be the beginning of Fashion Week. Then, Greg's trip was back on thus causing extra pressure on his work schedule. My mom and dad just "happened" to volunteer to babysit my children on Friday. And a friend just "happened" to mention 3 times at church that she likes to babysit, so she came on Thursday afternoon.
After all of this "mountain moving" and the best photos of my life, I received mainly unenthusiastic responses. Not what I expected. I like your honesty, because it keeps me balanced. But all of this did bring up the question in my mind - "How much of what I do is for applause and how much is to honor God?" I'm still pondering that thought. I want my blog to be helpful and inspiring to others, and I have to balance that with the expression of my personality.
I am always inspired by people who persevered in what they felt they were created do in spite of years of obstacles. Maud Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables series, was one of those people. Here are excerpts from her autobiography The Alpine Path (written "to encourage some other toiler who is struggling along in the weary pathway I once followed to success") -
"Well, my book was finally written. The next thing was to find a publisher...they all sent it back...That finished me. I put Anne in an old hat-box in the clothes room...The manuscript lay in the hatbox until I came across it one winter day while rummaging...It didn't seem so bad. 'I'll try once more,' I thought. The result was that a couple of months later...my book had been accepted. I wrote [in my journal]: 'The book may or may not succeed. I wrote it for love, not money, but very often such books are the most successful, just as everything in the world that is born of true love has life in it, as nothing constructed for mercenary ends can ever have."
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| Civil War memorial |
* All photos were taken in Riverside Park in New York City on 9/11/11.
2 comments:
how peaceful it seems so many years later...
These are some beautiful photographs. You truly have that special "eye" for special shots. The bird with the full choice to be free is still clinging to the iron bars. A photograph that says more than its simple scene is a work of art in itself.
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