When I began searching for colleges towards the end of high school, I never really found anywhere I felt peace about. That's normal, I suppose, for a soon-to-be graduate, but nothing my prospects had to offer ever really captured me. Still, I felt as if I should go somewhere because, after all, it's what people do, right?

But nonetheless, I took a year off to gather myself and figure out where God wanted me. When it came time to start applying the next year, I still couldn't do it. My intellect said do it, my logic said I better, or I'd never succeed, people said I should, based on the little looks they'd give me when I told them I still didn't know where I wanted to go.

But you know, I've been blessed with something that many recent and not-so-recent graduates don't have: a vision of what I want to do, who I want to be, and what I'm striving for.

That being said, there are a few places I would give anything to go to. Schools, yes, though not academic.

My heart is for the lost. For the hurting. My heart is for giving people hope. I've always significantly admired Bill Johnson (Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, CA) and have entertained the thought of applying to the school they have there to learn more about/be strengthened in the ways of ministry as it pertains to the supernatural. It's something we'll all be dealing with more and more as the days continue, whether we realize it or not.


I'm a photographer. It's something I've had a passion for for a long time, but in the past few years, I've realized it's part of my calling too. I can't say why I love it so much, except that it was a God-instilled thing, and I'm not sure how He'll use it just yet, but I want to "learn my craft", if you will. What's more, I feel a peace about this place in particular. Earlier this year, I had a chance to become acquainted with the director at RMSP in MT - a great woman, indeed. Though God didn't provide a way for me to go this year, I hope it's in the future. Till then, I'll continue documenting life as it comes anyway :)


Since I was knee high to a grasshopper, I've loved Africa. It's another calling on my life that I just can't - and never want to - ignore. My brothers call me 'a hippie' and say I'm a walking spokesperson for an African flea market (I think - think - that's a bit of overkill :]). If you know me the slightest bit, you know my passion for most of the countries on this continent, though there're a couple in particular that make my heart swell and go into a spiritual frenzy.
Even if you've never heard of The Harvest Missions school, I'm sure you've heard the name "Heidi Baker". I love her. I don't know her, and I love her. I admire her. I fancy the idea of proceeding her. And I can't think of a place - maybe even including the other schools - that I'd rather be, than under her and her staff's missions teaching in Pemba, Mozambique. Two months of hardcore supernatural/love/ministry schooling on all things missions. All things Africa. Her ministry spreads as far as Asia, but the school, and her heart - like mine - is for Africa. I could die happy.


Who knows how many of these I'm meant to attend. God will provide according to the will He has for me. He will also provide according to the desires of my heart that line up with His will.

And one of the (spiritually) great/(physically) not-so=great things about pursuing any of these paths/schools.. I have to trust Him.

I don't have the money for them.

I will be great distances away from family & friends - my support system.

They are things that will significantly challenge me and, thus, alter my life. Am I ready for them? Can I do them?

But He needs people who trust Him.

People, again, look at me like I'm crazy most of the time, but if God has given you a dream, trust that He's got a reason for it. Trust Him to provide for it. Trust that He's with you when you venture out and do it.

Show people how fun it is to have crazy dreams.

Go be unconventional.

Each day you wake up, the devil is looking to wound some part of you. He changes it up to try and take you by surprise. One day, it may be your looks, self esteem, etc., the next, it may be where your life is going, or how you're not good enough. Well today, he decided my talents and creativity was an amiable target. He does this from time to time, trying to tell me I'm not good enough, I don't have the artist's eye, and that I'm faking this gift God has given me (or not given me, rather).

It makes me irritable. Towards everything. People around me, myself, God, the coffee maker, the cat breathing, etc. Irritable at everything/one except him, the one who's causing it. He's a sneaky little leach. But after a little while of giving him too much leeway inside of my head, I get irritable with him.

Then, you have to go to God (who you were irritable with, for no reason) and say 'sorry for letting satan take away the joy of the gifts you've given me', and then you counter the little critter who's lying to you.

And sometimes, as an artist (especially if that's the area he's attacking you in), it's fun to counter him. Why? Because...

"If death has touched [the] Kingdom, watch as it bows it’s head in shame."
- Mattie Montgomery

The gifts we've all been given are hidden in God. He gave them and "whatever door God opens, no man can close"

Also...

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”
- Will Rogers

^ very true.

ok one more, just cause I like me some quotes:

"Don't just face your fears, stand up to them!" - Anon

SOOOO what do you do?


You stand up to them.



you get artsy.




you get crazy.


you get... uh, blurry?

sure why not.


Instead of staying busy and doing the 3874230987234 things I have to do, I set up a makeshift shoot in my room.

Okay, so satan telling me I have no talent isn't the biggest lie he's ever thrown at me, but he just aggravates me. And God says He "prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies", sooo why not take the talent God has given you and have a fun little talent-session to stomp on the devil's face?


Feast in front of your enemy. It's okay. God said so.
God hasn't taken you out of view of the enemy, He's just taken you out of reach. So tick him off.

Sorry if I bored anyone with a bunch of pictures of myself. I just had fun and laughed at myself a lot (plus, it was an excuse to play with equipment haha).


Go stand up to your fears.

Proving someone, who's telling you 'you can't', wrong, requires action.

Go do the things they're telling you you're not good enough for.

The things they believe you can't do.



Go be great today.

You can stay where you are or you can risk and start living. Your choice.
- Lara Casey

Greetings, all!

This year, I was not in SC for the annual fireworks on the bay and the beach, but I did get to spend some time with great friends here in MN for the holiday. We kept it low key [my personal favorite] and climbed on the roof and sat and watched all the neighbors and the local high school shoot off their lot. Fun times fun times!

Here is some documentation of the night's lights.

Enjoy!


The neighbors were very cooperative in being my silhouette models :)


I found The Southern Cross in the Northern Hemisphere sky!!!
...Actually it was the aftermath of a firework, but it DID look like The Cross, which I though was pretty cool.


A star? A plane? no, it's!---... a firework as it's bursting :) (that was corny I know)

-- ok I think the rest can explain themselves...

















-- and what would The 4th be without... Watermelon! yum yum yum.



Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!!!

lovelove.

I wrote a blog a few days ago and saved it on my computer so I could mull it over a little before I posted it. I wrote it while I was frustrated and emotional, so I wanted to make sure it was speaking the right things. I’m not gonna post it. I think a lot of it was issues manifesting themselves incorrectly.

But I will use some stuff from it, because what I was talking about was truth, it was just said in the wrong way. So Anyways….

God has been doing so many new things in me and teaching me things I didn’t expect to learn yet. It’s great stuff, but I’m being fought a lot too. Like I said in a previous post, when the devil sees you coming into something that God has for you, he’s going to fight you as hard as he can. I talked to a friend lastnight who was discouraged about the awesome things God is doing in her life, because satan had gotten to her head. And it excited me, because that means the devil is fighting her over something… meaning she’s doing something right! How awesome.

One thing He’s been teaching me is the art of trusting even though there’s lack of knowledge in us.

Your head may not understand, but your heart was MADE to trust God, and, though it’s an extremely conflicting thing – to have your head and you heart warring with emotions – it’s so cool, because, when you experience a peace inside your heart that your mind, reason, logic, etc. don’t understand, it means you’re experiencing God. You’re experience a glimpse of what you were made for. We may not even realize it – it took me a long time to be able to sense it myself – but when we experience things that make our head go ‘tilt’, our spirits rejoice, because, thank God, we’re stepping into a type of communion with God that is so out of this world [no pun intended :)], it’s beyond this natural realm we see!

Anyway again…

He’s been bringing me back to Jeremiah 13 over and over again, when He tells Jeremiah to go buy a belt and wrap it around his waist and don’t let it touch water…

What would it be like if God asked you to buy a pair of shorts, put ‘em on and don’t get ‘em wet…without telling you why? Would you be willing to do it?

God goes through many different steps of telling Jeremiah what to do with the belt, and only telling him ONE step at a time. So after God has already told him 1. buy a belt. 2. don’t let a touch water. 3. go to the river. And 4. bury it in a rock crevice. verse 6 says “many days later, God spoke to him…”

How’d you feel if God told you to do these things that seemed crazy to you, and then was silent ‘…for many days’ before He told you why He had you do these things?

#1 – God didn’t forget about Jeremiah, though He was silent.

Sometimes in life, we have to trust God hasn’t dropped the ball with us, and just wait for instruction.

#2 - the timing of all this was crucial to what happened next…

God told Jeremiah to go get the belt from the rock crevice, so he did. When he found it, it was “ruined and completely useless”.

Sometimes, we have to sit and wait, because, whether God is allowing time for your shorts to get ruined, or something else to fall into place, He needs patience from us.

I’m a go-getter. I don’t like patience.

Or I guess I don’t like situations that require patience.

I don’t like waiting.

I don’t like not knowing.

I’m a mess.

But Romans 8:25 says “If we look forward to something, we must wait patiently AND confidently” … In your patience, be confident that God will come through for you.

So, after all this.. after God told him to buy a belt, then don’t let it touch water, then go bury it, then sit there with no explanation for who knows how long, then go dig it up again…. Verse 8 says “Then the word of God came to me”… and God told him why He asked these things of Jeremiah and what would happen.


Sometimes I complain when things don’t happen on my time table in life. I feel I’m following God, I want what He wants for me, and I’m [theoretically :)] willing to do whatever it is. But it’s the time aspect that always gets me. Thing don’t come fast enough. I always want to be on the frontline of things, but sometimes we have things to learn first. Sometimes, we think we’re ready, but we’re not just yet.
God knows that, if I knew steps 5 and 6, 1-4 would get left in the dust, and I’d get down the road and realize I missed something somewhere. Maybe Jeremiah was like this too, because there ARE stories, like in Jeremiah 29:5-7, when He gives the priests and prophets from the exiles step-by-step instructions for their lives up front.
Do this, do that, be this and go here and you will prosper. Awesome, but I would be dangerous with such things. He knows that. And maybe you wouldn’t be. I just know I would be.

When I had to leave Africa last year, my heart broke, and I couldn’t understand why God wouldn’t give me a peace about just STAYING there, though I had been invited to do so. I was angry when God told me I wasn’t meant to go to school just yet… Hearing the weight of the world’s words on you that ‘you have to get an education, it’s the only thing that will sustain you in the long run…’ and then having God say ‘not yet’…it’s hard, not to mention such things as financial provision for the future. How is ‘not yet’ supposed to pay the bills, right?

But God knows. He knows what you need. He knows what’s coming and He CARES about it.

After all, the reason for my anger and my nervousness concerning provision was because there’s something about God’s character that I’m not trusting. Something about His goodness that I’m not believing. I don’t feel like He knows what is best, and when He speaks to me and says go buy a pair of shorts and bury them and doesn’t tell me why first, I look at Him and keep walking because I don’t trust that He will bring something out of it.


I never mean to preach at anyone. It’s not my aim at all. I’m just sharing life… sharing the things I’ve learned in hopes that they’ll help someone else.

So if there’s anyone else dealing with similar things, know you’re not alone.

And if you’re dealing with the opposite – if you feel like you’ve been handed too much and you don’t know if you can take it – God will never give you something you can’t handle. You hear the phrase “I know He’ll never give me something I can’t handle, I just wish He didn’t trust me so much”… that’s true, I suppose, and kinda funny, but in reality, if He’s giving you something you don’t feel like you can handle, it’s because He wants you to take it to Him and ask for help. He says ‘in OUR weakness, HE is strong”.

Let Him help you.

Have hope today.

"The heart is capable of responding to things the mind can't yet perceive." - Bill Johnson.

I'm missing my coast today. Missing the beach and it's helpful beauty. So just thought of sharing some of my favorite shots. I've posted some of these photos before - forgive the repetition. enjoy :)


dawn patrol is one of my favorite times


I think this was post-Haley's Commit meteor shower last year. one of the better sunrises I've had the pleasure of shooting.


post meteor shower #2


winter - beginning of '10.


I love the worn look of piers. such a great subject


this little guy was my company one morning...wanted my scone. it was so funny.


4th of July '09 - nothing like fireworks on the beach. love it.


surfer watching - a favorite type of people watching of mine.


I've had this photo for about 5 years, but it never gets old. I love the gulls.


a rainy evening earlier this year. taken with my phone and the quality is horrible, but it's one of my favorite shots. I love the serenity it carries. plus, I just happened to have this nifty little black and white umbrella with me and I put enough effort into trying to take a picture around it blowing away every second!!!
haha it was fun. I laughed with myself a lot that afternoon.

I liked sifting through all these and re-finding different ones - they brought a smile to my face.

hope they make you smile as well. Go visit a beach somewhere for me!!!


lovelove.

Two things God is continually pressing on my heart lately are: the art of intimacy with Him and the importance of endurance in the spirit.

I'm surely coming to love the former.

I'm, thus far, not loving the latter.

God has been testing my discernment in the spiritual realm. In dreams, by waking me up in the middle of the night and speaking to me, by giving me tasks that i do NOT love to do. A relentless learning process.
The other day, I was complaining to God about how I'm tired spiritually; how I don't know just how much I can take. He didn't bring a verse to mind about how in our weakness, He is strong, or how I should cast my burdens on Him, He just said 'you're spiritually fat'. To this, Jessie replied "say WHAT!?", to which He explained how I need to build my spiritual endurance. He didn't mean it harshly, it's just the truth. I'm beginning to see that, when it comes to the things that, in the end, are the only things that matter, I'm spiritually shallow. Yes, this is something that you can learn to do more and nurture, but it's also something that's in you already. You start off with a spirit, but it does not start of strong. It's something you have to build. I hope I'm the latter.

This, of course, doesn't mean that He won't help you, or that you can't go to Him with problems. He, after all, is the Teacher you're learning from. In fact, learning new things will require you to 'cast your burdens' on Him. But to do so, you have to trust Him (don't know about you, but I don't like confiding in people I don't know and trust), and in order to trust Him you have to know Him.
In the verse that says "be still and know that I am God"...the Hebrew word here for "know" means "to experience". "'be still and experience Me'" is what He's saying.

Maybe I'm confusing everybody, but what I'm saying is, in order to persevere in gaining spiritual endurance,

> you WILL have to cast your burdens on Him

> meaning, you have to trust Him

> you have to know [experience] Him

> and to experience the true character of someone, you have to have some level of intimacy with them.

I don't mean to babble. And maybe I'm not dead on with all this. It's just what's in my heart...

The whole experience of learning intimacy with God has been a great adventure. It's been awkward and tiring and weird and fascinating and beautiful. I've been amazed thus far though at how strange it's been to experience intimacy with God, when really, it's what we were made for. To look at someone on the street and follow them with your eyes and, in turn, your emotions and desires, is quite normal to most. Your flesh is not weirded out by lust. And I'm at the front of that line. But the moment the One who created Love - who is Love itself - steps in and begins to show you what true longing feels like, it's awkward.
How so very wrong.

ANYWAY...

In the midst of all this learning and 'alone time' with God, my heart has begun to sense just how important my purpose, and for that matter, each and every person's purpose under the heavens, really is. I feel as if the course of my life is going to be ridiculously not normal, if we can define such a thing.

In essence, I'm coming to realize even more how important intimacy with God is for the sake of our spiritual endurance in these walks that we're meant to walk.
Everyone in America isn't meant to move to a village in Africa or see demons and such, but I believe that no matter what you're meant for, if satan sees you accomplishing the work you were attended by God to do - or even if he sees you begin to discover that purpose in the least - he'll fight you just as hard as he fights the international missionary, the worldwide pastor, etc.

You have a physical job to do, yes. And God has instilled desires for it in your heart somewhere, just like He's instilled a dire love for photography in mine, but these jobs are not our spirits' objective. I'm not meant to simply take a bunch of pictures I can't take to our next life with me. I'm meant to spiritually fight in the ways He's meant for me to. Being a photographer is a delicious icing.

Let's find intimacy and let's use it to find endurance. Satan isn't going to like it.


love to all.

Soooo I'm staying in MN for about a month with some grand friends of mine, just outside of The Twin Cities. I've been to the Mall of America once before, but Sarah and I took ALL day yesterday to scour the mall top to bottom. I didn't have my camera with me, but my handy dandy iPhone was present, as is the usual, so I decided to document pieces of the day and share. Enjoy!




our first order of business: fuel up. I ended up having 4 of these delicious iced coffees throughout the course of the day. It's not my fault they're only 54 cents per refill and flavor is free.


We got there just as the mall was opening, so there weren't many people. The theme park was certainly a ghost town early on - kind of cool.


Yes, we are at the largest mall in the US, yes this is the first store we graced, and yes, reading material was indeed purchased :) (though People Mag was not, as was intended, b/c they didn't feel the need to carry the latest issue, which had a great photography article in it I was looking forward to - just sayin')


documentation of my high disapproval of Sarah's purchasing a Sparks novel. Dear John, no doubt. Forgive me, he's not a favorite, by any means.


We did not go here today, but to all my fellow southerners, if you've never been to a Caribou Coffee, get on a plane and find one. They're kickbutt!


I was entirely excited about the mall yes, but a leading motive of mine, apart from spending time with my dear Sarah, was to enter the doors of this gallery once more. I may've peed my pants a little when I saw it. Photographers, if you're not familiar with Rodney Lough Jr.'s work, check him out. Amazing stuff, to say the least. http://www.rodneyloughjr.com/


Apple Stores aren't in high quantity in SC, so to find one was fun. I got to try my hand at an iPad. Nifty little thing!!


such a trip wouldn't be complete without a quick duck into a Disney store.
One of my favorite Toy Story characters. We share a name. We share many traits. this chick knows what's going on.


Cue kid-in-candy-store exclamation from Jessie...which embarrassed friend, Sarah, I'm sure.


colors colors colors!!


One thing I'd never had the pleasure of experiencing before my first MofA trip was...dun dun dun - Ragstock. fell in love, as was expected. My brothers call me a hippie. I don't entirely agree, but I did find a crazy great dress for $6 on this rack and then saw the sign up top. made me laugh.


in the course of the day, we stopped in to see a movie (in the mall theater, which, incidentally has it's own floor, yes. [maybe this is not very fascinating to anyone but me]). Killers. GREAT movie. you should see it!


I personally didn't think this looked anything like Marilyn.

Random.


what kind of day would it be without at least one bathroom pose, hmmm?


what kind of day would it be without at least one odd Magiquest mirror pose, hmmm?


I kind of thought this looked like Dora was trying to take down the ferris wheel, which made me laugh (again, maybe this is just me).


I got a bit loud when I found this shirt. Would've gotten it, but miss thing didn't know where the proceeds would go. eh.


People-watching definitely took place - what better place to do it!? It's my favorite.



There you have it, a random, odd, slightly pointless post of my massive mall day. The mall itself was grand. fun. etc. But the smaller things were better.

Like my laughing hysterically at the mall cop on the little stand-up roll-y scooter thing, and Sarah looking around like she didn't know me while I attempted to stealthily run after him to get a picture (I failed).

And then Sarah's little episode in the theater..... alls I can say is "AHHH! it tastes like poison!!!!" great laughs were had.



love to all.