A beginning... an awakening?

 Some days I pick up a camera and it's a hammer.
 The lens is my ink, for cameras have sensor eyes, and pixels record. ~


 ~and find another way to chronicle, to force the lids open; another way to receive the moment with thanks reverential. 


I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks~


~Quoted from "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voscamp


 My camera... Of course, my dear precious camera. As near and dear as a friend. How had I forgotten?!

 I began my list... In tears I began my list. I was SO afraid words can't even be put to the emotions at the first strokes of the pen.  A stepping away from something old and moving on to something new.  It was strained at first.  A feeble attempt at something to truly thank God for. I wanted it to be certain, with purpose. Not just "some" old thing or even a broad thing. One small purposed thing that I took the time to stop and praise for. To be thankful for.

 One by one they came easier. I found myself looking, watching trying to find something to add to the list.

 I began to feel a swelling within my heart, the beginning of a lightness in my heart.

 Then, my camera.  There the statement stands on my professional website : "Photography for Praise"

  I thought back and remembered my beginnings, it didn't have anything to do with a business or even a skill. I began photography with a passion to capture moments of God's beauty, whether in the face of a child, their tiny toes or the beginnings of buds on a branch, a sunset, a bug. No matter the subject my desire was to bring Glory to God by capturing for that one moment the beauty of His creation.

 A wave of realization sweeps across my heart. I am like the church in revelation, the one who forgot her first love.  Both grief and joy come crashing down on me in one foul swoop.

 But yet delight, there is still time. There is time in this day, this moment to make my list. To re-learn thankfulness... Time to relearn eucharisteo!

 Easy? NO, worth it, YES!