Enjoy People | Personal Thank You + Catch-Up

i'll be eighty-seven; you'll be eighty-nine

i'll still look at you like the stars that shine

taylor swift - mary's song  

My friends.  Thank you.  The six posts of "our story" come with the most supportive as well as scathing words from those reading along.  These Oh My My My posts are easily my most read and viewed posts this year (side from our phenomenal engagement story.)  Turns out y'all like Caleb too! Thank you for reading, thank you for saying something when you read, thank you for encouraging me on in writing.

It might seem silly, but this story is by far the hardest thing I've ever blogged.  It's hard because I couldn't possibly put in words what is in my heart.  It's hard because this is my life - I can feel vulnerable.  It's fairly easy to repeat to you a story I heard about someone else at an engagement shoot, but putting my life "out there" is an entirely different animal.  It's hard because it's Caleb's life.  It's hard because I regret decisions I made during this story.  It's hard because I can't even tell the whole story.  It's hard because you, the readers, will never understand how much God did in us and with us.  Though I am quite looking forward to telling you about our happiest and hardest and then happiest days together, you'll never know exactly what happened.  It's hard because some readers will only think of us as a cutesy-coo little couple and nothing deeper, while others will continue to make assumptions and despise us.  It's hard because I've been somewhat-secretly dreaming of writing a book someday.  Telling this story is a little bit of a trial run to see if my writing is as welcomed as my photography.  It's hard because I make lots of typos.  And each post takes me hours to write.  It's hard because when I push "publish" and let my heart and self out to be seen and scrutinized, I might be misunderstood.  It's hard because I am critical of my writing abilities. It's hard because, as Charlie Brown says,  "You not only can't explain love, actually, you can't even talk about it." I love him so.  I really do.

And truthfully, if the first few posts had had a "blah" response - maybe no one hated the story, but maybe it was "eh, whatever" - I don't think I would have kept blogging it. (I'd like to think I would have kept on writing just for myself and my man, though!) Please know, more than any other time in my entire career, your support and kindness (and occasional mean-ness!) has kept this writing going.  

I was looking for a reaction - good or bad! I don't think our story is boring, but if you all did?  Well, no body likes a boring story!  So thank you: please keep telling me what you think... and you really can be honest.  You don't have to like it!  But if you do, feel free steal or pin that above picture and link back to the Oh My My My series.  I absolutely love when I come across new love stories online - and if any of you are inspired to right yours out, please tell me!  The Enjoy Project is really a desire deep in me to share and connect with people. I want you to know the real me.  I want to know the real you's.  And the real you's have blessed and encouraged me tremendously.  Thank you!

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In other news!  Life has been rich.  If you follow along on instagram, twitter or Facebook, you saw that I was able to be a little bridesmaiden last week!  I'm in awe of how different it is to be in a wedding rather than to shoot a wedding.  Congratulations Stephen and Abbie!

The wedding was near the Philadelphia area and Caleb had a job starting Monday in New York.  The plan was for me to drive back to Maryland on Sunday, and he'd depart at the same time for Syracuse.  But when the time came, I just couldn't leave him.  So I went with him!  The work was going to take at least 10 days and the little corn-cob was awfully sick.  I only had one pair of pajama's and a few skirts (rehearsal dinner options, of course) and a bridesmaids dress!  But it was pure bliss to scrape wallpaper and just be near my favorite person.  And be called "shmoopy" (from Seinfeld? Anyone?) by the rest of the crew ;)

I couldn't stay long though.  I left Wednesday morning to make it home in time for a bachelorette weekend starting Thursday!  The second wedding I'll be in this year is for my little Julie and her smart yet daffy James. The bridesmaids whisked Jules away for a weekend of eating, dressing-up, the boardwalk, dancing, movies, sleeping-in and mockery.  It was the best.

Now I'm home.  Mr. McMuffin gets home from New York today.  We might go to a baseball game.  We might die from happiness.  We might do both.  Oh my my my.

;)

Enjoy Writing |

"we are a world of lottery winners. 
for everyone of us here right now, in every begetting,
there were at least 7,999,999 losers.
they don't even know how almost they were."
notes from a tilt-a-whirl | nd wilson

 "You have been given your body. You have been given your ancestors, your natural strengths and your natural weaknesses.  The backstory is all in place.  You have been drawn, described and placed on a stage unlike any other - the Globe.  And you have been given your freedom to act.  Your story has already begun.  It began when that lucky, eager sperm stood on the winner's platform and listened to its national anthem.  One tail flick slower and you would be someone else.  You would be named Theresa now and you wouldn't be you." (quote from ND Wilson)

Not one part of our anatomy is a mistake.  Not one piece of our growing flesh puzzle came as a surprise to the Creator.  Not your brain and how it functions, not your waist and how long it is, not your toes and how fat they are, not your elbow and how it's "double-jointed."  We, down to the molecular, cellular level have been planned by God, and after making His plan for us, He specifically tailored us, knitting our body together in another persons body.  Synonyms for womb include abyss, emptiness, hollowness, nothingness.  From nothingness, He created life.  During an abyss, He planned something. "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." (Jeremiah 1:5) "In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:16)

Amy Carmichael is an historic hero for her heart, courage, love for and service to the people of India. "Every night before she went to bed, little Amy Carmichael prayed ardently and enthusiastically for God to turn her brown eyes blue as she slept. Like many brown-eyed Irish girls in the 19th century, she adored the typical image of feminine Irish beauty that included blue eyes and white skin. So, she prayed fervently--prayed with a hope that it seems only children can muster--for God to change the part of her that seemed to be designed wrong. She desperately hoped for God's intervention--but it never came. Amy had brown eyes from the day she was born to the day she died."  As this famous story goes, it becomes beautifully clear that Amy's brown eyes were intentional.  As she grew older and was living out God's plan for her, He opened her spiritual eyes to His purpose of her dark human eyes.  "The missionaries she worked with did everything they could to fit into the culture of which they were becoming a part. Amy reflected once that she now understood why she had brown eyes--a blue-eyed missionary would have been an oddity that never could have truly fit in with the people--and she was thankful that God had persisted in God's intricate and elegant design instead of catering to the wishes of a girl who had not yet met her calling."  (quote by Joshua Hearne)

Not every brown-eyed girl is called by God to be a missionary in India, but every pair of brown eyes was made because they were precisely what God wanted, what He planned.  Surely many brown-eyed girls have wished for blue eyes, and surely most of them never saw a "reason" for their brown eyes like Amy did.  But that's okay.  Every part of our miraculous, beautiful human machines has a purpose.  Short legs, scrawny legs, stiff legs, moles, wrinkles, marks, dimples, plump cheeks, wizened skin, cleft palettes, full lips, hands with two fingers, nail beds, finger prints, cuticles, hand wrinkles, knuckles that crack, curly hair, fast-growing leg hair, hairy backs, crooked teeth, pearly teeth, broad shoulders, slumpy shoulders, hearts with holes, spines with bends, brains with fluid, muscles that are too hard, frames that are big, frames that are small, skin that is dark, voices that are raspy, eyes that never see, ears that hear perfectly, feet that never walk, the milky body of a 20-week old life, the decomposing body of an 102-year old life.  Your body is not an accident, your body has not gone by unnoticed.  Your body is your costume for this stage, The Globe, and God himself sewed it together.  He created it for you.  It was not a mistake.  You are not a mistake, though you may have been quite the surprise to your parents, God "made [you] in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth."  He cares for you.  I'm full convinced that this changes everything.