This is our story of how we came to love a little girl named Nadieska. We’ve never met her. We’ve never seen her home. She lives a world away in Nicaragua. We’ve never even seen her smile, but the moment I saw her, I fell in love.

A few days ago I was listening to the radio (Way FM) and they were running a campaign to benefit a nonprofit called Compassion International. Jake and I are always on the lookout for worthy nonprofits to give to, and this one sounded pretty legit. It’s an organization that goes to those areas of the world where poverty strikes hardest and picks children who are at risk (easily kidnapped and forced into prostitution, slavery, or child labor, or those whose parents are so poor that they are forced into early marriages) to support with the help of sponsors. Sponsoring a child gives that child opportunities for education, medical care and health training, food (if they need it), a safe place to go while their parents are at work, and most importantly an introduction to Jesus Christ, and if they choose to accept Him, an opportunity for discipleship into adulthood. So when I stopped driving (don’t text and drive!) I texted Jake that he should look into it further and see if we were interested in sponsoring a child. About an hour later he texted me back with the news that he agreed that this is something we wanted to do.

Some of you may know that I have a serious soft spot in my heart for children. Everyone has a soft spot for something (the elderly, the homeless, a certain country, the environment, small businesses, something), and mine is children. This is one of the reasons I felt so drawn to this particular project, but it is also one of the reasons I found it so difficult.

When I got home that day, Jake and I got on the Compassion International website to pick out a child to sponsor. We got through about three pages before I lost it. I started thinking things like “I have to find the one that’s the worst off” and “How do I tell one child he or she is special and leave the others here on this page?” I got so overwhelmed with the sheer number of children who were in desperate need of not only the basics of life but also of a Savior that I did what I always do when faced with the reality that I can not save the world: I collapsed into a miserable ball of paralysis. I could not do everything, so I became unable to do anything. I could not sponsor every single child, and so I found it impossible to choose one to sponsor. I could not say yes to one child and no to another, because they are all deserving. And so, my wonderful husband held me while I sobbed for every wronged child that occupies this planet, and sobbed for the fact that I can not save them all. We ended up walking away from the Compassion International website that night, because I could not keep it together looking at any more pictures and names.

The next morning I had a good talk with God about how it is not my job to save the world. It is not my job to save a single child. It is His job to save, and my job to simply be His hands and feet (and in this case wallet and pen). It is not my job to leap tall buildings with a single bound; it is my job to take steps. He reminded me that there will always be suffering people in this world as long as there is sin in this world, but that there is one thing that will always conquer suffering: love. And you know, the funny thing about love is that it has nothing to do with numbers. It doesn’t matter how many people you love, or how many love you, only that you love. There is only one number that is important in love, and it is two: One person loving one person.

So that night I got back on the website, determined to find the one. I scrolled through pictures, looking for the one that caught my heart, and not my brain (which was still trying to find the one that was the worst off, or the one that needed me to save them the most), and then I saw her. Nadieska. I read her bio, and I read about her community, and I read about her country. I saw her birthday, and her age, and her child ID number. My brain registered all of those things, but my heart only registered one thing: I want to see her smile. In her picture, she is simply standing with her hands at her sides, no real expression on her face, but somehow I know deep down that she has a beautiful smile, and I’d like to see it. I’d like to do something to make her face light up. I want to see her laugh. I want her to have all the hugs and kisses she could ever want, even if I never get the chance to hug her myself. I want to send her letters and I want her to know that someone she’s never met thinks she’s special, and beautiful, and that Jesus and Jake and Becky Garrett love her. I only want to see her smile.

After a whole-hearted approval from Jake and few forms, Nadieska will now have the support of Compassion International. She will go to school, she will have healthcare, she will have a safe place to grow up, and she will know Jesus. And I hope, with all my heart, that when she gets our first letter, her face will break into a smile.

It’s not about statistics. It’s about people. Relationships. Love. It’s about a little girl who surely has a beautiful smile.

Sponsor your own child: http://www.compassion.com/

I love flying at night. Not only do you get to see the stars up close (metaphorically of course), but you get to see cities at night. There is a charm, a magic about cities at night, because all you see is the light. There’s the big flood lamps that illuminate the parking lots and shopping centers. There’s the residential street lamps that twinkle and flicker as we speed overhead, their light beams impeded by the leaves of what are surely large oaks and cottonwoods. There’s the big industrial plants and factories that in daytime are such eyesores, but at night are lit up like Christmas. And then, in very special cities, there’s the downtown skyscrapers. They’re my favorite, especially while landing. Huge spikes of of twinkling lights thrust into the sky as I come down out of it. For me, that is the most powerful thing about a city: It’s not the skyline, or the billboards, or the “visit our city!” ad campaigns, or even their local paper or cultural scene. It’s the simple message they send out to the stars every night. It’s when they flick on their lights at dusk and quietly say to the rest of the universe, “We are here.”

The other day I was so fortunate to hear the song “At the Foot of the Cross” by Kathryn Scott, and I was struck by one line: “Trade these ashes in for beauty.” I’ve been thinking about beauty a lot since I decided to start this whole photography thing, and this line just whacked me over the head. Over the years (and continually) I’ve struggled with self-esteem issues, and really considering myself good enough for anything. Even now, I must continually remind myself of the beauty I have through Christ, for I traded my ashes in for beauty when I left my sins at the foot of the cross. But it is an ongoing battle, one that I lose on a fairly frequent basis. However, one thing that I have never forgotten, and one thing that I have always had a love affair with, is the beauty of physical imperfection. Now, I am a perfectionist (probably stemming from my self-esteem issues, but this isn’t a psychological analysis of myself), and you won’t see any of my screw ups in any of my photography galleries. It doesn’t make it off my computer screen and onto yours if I don’t love it. With that being said, it’s rare that I enjoy a perfect subject. There just isn’t any romance, any interest, any true beauty in perfectly straight lines, or perfectly symmetrical curves. It’s in the tangle of vines, the missing petal, the bent stem. I suppose that makes me a Romantic (I do love Keats and Wordsworth). The Romantics loved Nature with a capital “N,” and were more interested in living with it and capturing its real beauty out in the wild than the earlier perfectionists, who were more interested in taming and containing Nature, making those perfectly manicured English gardens. In that way, not only am I a Romantic, but so is God. It says in Luke 15:7 that there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that is saved than over ninety nine righteous souls. God created each one of us perfect, but he created us with a life of our own, to do what we will. He finds joy in our triumphs and cries with us in our failures. With us he is more interested in our tangle of vines, our missing petal, our bent stem, because it is through our brokenness, through our imperfection that he uses us. It is how we relate to others who are broken. No one wants to talk to the “perfect” person, the “holier than thou” person, the one who looks down at us because they consider themselves to be perfect. I have to learn to see myself as I see my subjects. They serve to make my shots interesting and beautiful through their imperfection and brokenness. When that broken stem makes it onto my camera, and through my screening process, and onto your wall, it is turning its ashes in for beauty. I need to do the same in God’s eyes. Turn my ashes in for beauty at the foot of the Cross, so that I may serve Him who redeemed me. It is not about being perfect. It is about being perfectly open to be used.

 

Also consider listening to the rest of the soundtrack of this post: “Something Worth Dying For” by Mikeschair, “Beloved” by Tenth Avenue North, “Beautiful Things” by Gungor, “Dare you to Move” by Switchfoot, and “By Your Side” by Tenth Avenue North.

 

I read this last night, and I cried. This is true to me and relevant to this post, and I hope you’ll read it and reflect on it as well. Join me as I attempt to become more real. http://www.danoah.com/2010/09/disease-called-perfection.html

The other day I was bored at work. I didn’t have any clients, and the thought of editing one more photo was making me fantasize about tossing my brand new laptop out the window. What I wouldn’t have given to have a student come in, needing help with his or her paper. So what I decided to do was read some old papers I’d written when I was in college. I started with a paper I’d written for my “Freaks and Geeks” (officially known as “The Abnormal in Contemporary Literature”) English class my senior year on Jeffery Eugenides’ Middlesex and its post-9/11 significance, and I in no way want this to sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but goodness gracious it sounded good. It sounded so smart. I had a little bit of a hard time following along sometimes. And that is when I realized that in the year and half since I graduated, I’d let my brain atrophy a little bit. In the midst of job hunting, getting married, in a sense joining the Navy, planning a wedding, and keeping up with being a housewife, I had lost a piece of myself I treasured. This blog is the first creative writing I’ve done that didn’t have something to do with my wedding. I’ve finished exactly two and a half books the whole time I’ve been in South Carolina, and one of those was a re-read of a fluffy thriller. I am ashamed of myself. I am appalled at the way I have taken one of the things I was most proud of, one of the things I enjoyed most about myself, and let it deteriorate into a life full of Facebook, dirty dishes, and British television.

After my “Freaks and Geeks” paper, I moved on to read papers from another class I took my senior year: Senior Seminar. At the beginning of this class, I was prepared to coast through it, occasionally writing about my feelings and watching movies that didn’t have hyper educational content. But after a few weeks, an intensive sit down with H.D. Thoreau’s Walden (assigned content) and my Bible (not specifically assigned), and talking with a beautiful crabapple tree (don’t judge), I realized quite a few things about myself, my future, and the world I lived in. I was raring and ready for a new start after graduation. And then I got confused, and lost, and somehow I ended up not where I was before Senior Seminar, but even worse.

One day, my husband told me he thought I could sell my photos. He wasn’t the first person to tell me this, and I hope (crossed fingers) he’s not the last. And then one night God called me. I had the verse “Stop and consider God’s wonders” (Job 37:14) on my wall, and the idea, the calling ran from there. God told me to spread word of Him far and wide through my pictures, and I was given a heart just then to joyfully agree. Then, people started suggesting I blog. I told everyone no, because it felt too much like journaling. I hate(d) journaling. It seemed very self important (to me. I bear only love and respect for the journalers out there!), and I didn’t have any interest in it. Then God called me again, and again I answered, and here we are. I thought that God was telling me to use the words I’m pretty good at using to spread news of Him as well, and I think that to a certain extent that is His purpose. But after reading through my Thoreau, and my Bible, and watching Pocahontas, I’m realizing that God is telling me it’s time for another new beginning. I’ve gotten pretty good at the “stop”ping part. I see the wonders that God has created, and I enjoy them, and snap them, and edit, and upload, and you stop and see them too. What I haven’t been doing is “consider”ing. It’s not enough for me to just stop and look at my life. It’s not enough to just coast. I need to live deliberately. I need to think about how I ought to live. Who knew that college would really be the best thing to happen to me outside of the wonderful people I love (most of whom Regis brought to me as well)? This blog will be me not only stopping, but considering God’s wonders. It will be my way forward to the way I want to be. Today starts my new beginning, and that in itself is the greatest of God’s wonders: his continual offering of fresh starts and new beginnings. Thank you, Father God, for this much-more-than-second chance.

Re-reading my thoughts on Walden and Regis and Pocahontas and Life made me ready for life again. The following are some excerpts from some of those Senior Seminar papers, just to give you an idea of where I’m coming from. If anyone is interested in my Middlesex paper, or a rockin’ one I wrote on Feminist and Post-Colonial Literary Theory in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, let me know one way or another and I’ll get it to you!

No matter where you are in life, it is only the beginning. Even if it is your final day on this planet, it is potentially the beginning of a new life.

“This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry.” (Thoreau, 199). This quote is absolutely beautiful, and talks about spring in a completely unconventional manner. Coming from Northwest Colorado, where spring is more commonly known as “mud season,” I know exactly what Thoreau is talking about here. Spring is not so much the end of winter, but it is the preparation and beginning for new life. Spring is a sort of out with the old, in with the new process. The “frost coming out of the ground” is the way we say goodbye to our old, crotchety, winter selves that we accumulate over every day, and begin to usher in the green and flowery. But there must be a beginning, just as mythology, the nitty gritty getting to know oneself and one’s fears and dreams, must precede the poetry, the expressing of oneself in a new and beautiful way.

“You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year’s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord.” (Thoreau, 203). This quote is equally as beautiful, and deals with the moment of conversion that also happens at the beginning of every day. I am a Christian, and I believe in salvation. For everyone. I know that (as Thoreau implies) that it is not just the drunk or the thief that has the “gnarled rind,” but it is everyone, and that there is something about the beauty of God’s creation that renews life, that grants salvation. I love to be outside because I see God’s love, mercy, grace, and power in nature, just as I think Thoreau does. I agree with Thoreau’s idea of salvation through the morning sun in nature, because there is something purifying about just being in nature, whether that looks like the mountains, the ocean, the prairies, the desert, or even an isolated part of the park. Personally, God mostly speaks to me through the awesome beauty of nature, and I think Thoreau probably felt the same way.

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity” (Thoreau 4). We only have so much time here on Earth, and every second we waste is one less second we have to do something we really enjoy, or spend time with people we love, or do something to help this messed-up world we live in. Last year [note from 2011: This was now several years ago, in 2009] one of my brother’s classmates died. He was fifteen, and his heart gave out during class, due to a defect he’d had since birth. The one thing that everyone said about Bobby afterwards is that that kid lived. He was never still for a moment, never missed an opportunity to laugh, cry, play, love, or learn. He was always into something, which got him into a lot of trouble, but looking back on his life we all realized that he always learned from his mistakes, and then moved on to make some more. Bobby didn’t get enough time here to do everything he planned on doing, but his life was proof of the saying that it really isn’t the years in your life, it’s the life in your years. I’ve been lucky, I haven’t lost anyone very close to me, but I know that someday I will, and I won’t know if it’ll be a grandparent or a friend my age or even younger. I want to live like Bobby lived: I don’t want to waste another moment doing something that doesn’t matter. I want to live and love and learn with everything I have, and I want to make a difference in the world. I’m lucky enough to have friends and family who are supportive of this. Ten years from now grades [and dishes and Facebook and British television] won’t matter; it’ll be the memories I have of the things I did and the people I did them with.

I’m also leaving my stable community life in order to follow the whims of whoever decides military base assignments, for love of God, country, and some guy who’s crazy enough to want to live on a submarine. But there’s the key word: love. Throughout this class the major thing I’ve learned is that as long as I love, I’ll be ok. Love of family and friends will ensure that even when I’m by myself far away from those I love, I will never really be alone. Love of my sailor will keep me warm on nights even when he’s away, and love of country will help me let him go. And most importantly, even if all else fails, the love of my God will keep me together: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13)

I am one of those people who just enjoy life. I enjoy feeling the air in my lungs and the sun on my face and the ground under my feet. I’m curious about everything (except maybe math, I could do without that headache), and I love both learning in school and learning on my own. I love adventures and exploring and I even sometimes love the thrill of not knowing what’s coming. My favorite movie as a kid was Pocahontas (the animated Disney one) because the main character ran around barefoot and took the path less traveled and found something extraordinary, though unexpected, on the other side. Plus she had a pet hummingbird and a talking tree (awesome!), but that is neither here nor there. I wanted to be Pocahontas, and in a way I still do. I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m not going to be 5’9”, tan, or have shining black hair to my waist (or a talking tree, which is really the most disappointing part), but she had convictions and she acted on them, even though she was afraid and no matter what the personal cost, she was undoubtedly an adventurer, and she trusted in the restorative qualities of nature.

I agree with Thoreau that there is salvation in nature: “You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year’s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord” (Thoreau 203). I love to be outside because I see God’s love, mercy, grace, and power in nature, just as I think Thoreau does. I agree with Thoreau’s idea of salvation through the morning sun in nature, because there is something purifying about just being in nature, whether that looks like the mountains, the ocean, the prairies, the desert, or even an isolated part of the park. Personally, God mostly speaks to me through the awesome beauty of nature, and I think Thoreau probably felt the same way. However, God Himself said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). Something Thoreau never really gets is that people, relationships are important to the overall well-being of people. Love (in all its various forms) truly is worth fighting for, and that’s one thing that Disney has over the Transcendentalists. Chris McCandless, in Into the Wild said that a human need is “not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong,” but he didn’t understand that the things that make us feel strong even when we’re not is the support of other people. I said before that I could rebuild my castle in the air’s foundation if it were shattered, but that’s because I know I have so many people behind me. On the other hand, however, I can see where Thoreau and McCandless originally come from: there is a point where you have to do it on your own. The last person to see McCandless alive said something that stuck with me: “This is about as far as I can get you.” Even though Chris had to go the rest by himself, he never would have gotten as far as he did without the help of people who fell in love with him on the way. In the same way, Thoreau would not have survived his Walden Pond experiment with his mind intact if he had not sojourned out into town every so often for some human contact.

So the question is, how ought I to live? High school guidance counselors always say to look at what you wanted to be when you were little, and choose your path based on that. Well, I wanted to be Pocahontas, and I think that still applies. I want to love, I want to adventure, and I want to let go of superfluous things and hang on tight to the things that matter. McCandless says, “You’re wrong if you think the joy of life comes principally from human relationships. God’s placed it all around us, it’s in everything, anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at those things,” and I couldn’t agree more with the words, but my reasons are different from his. He says let go of people and the things that are bringing you down, but I take it to mean that I need to change the way I look at failure and its relationship with success, I need to change the way I look at material things, and I need to remember to not rely solely on one thing that gives me joy, but let everything come together to let me have the life I want. I ought to live in my castle in the air, not just look at it, and I ought to take off my shoes and run through the forest every so often, just to feel the air in my lungs, the sun on my face, and the dirt under my feet.

Thoreau says, “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them” (Thoreau 3), and I think that I fall into this trap more willingly than most. I let myself get bogged down with my “superfluously course labors” that I ascribe an undeserved worth onto so that I don’t have to think about my castle in the air, don’t have to work to build its foundation, because I’m under the impression that one word from someone else could send it all crashing to the ground. And possibly the worst part of this fear is the knowledge that I am strong enough to withstand that one word, and a tirade of words after that, and I could rebuild my foundation under my castle, but just build it better.

Works Cited for these papers:

Into the Wild. Dir. Sean Penn. Paramount Vantage: 2007, Film.

Pocahontas. Dir. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg. Walt Disney Pictures: 1995, Film.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or, Life in the woods. New York NY: Dover Publications, 1995. Print.