Spring is here.

I have this incredible urge to change clothes like the trees and adorn myself and my space with beauty.

I push the plastic playground down our sloped yard and into the shade.  My daughters pick clover ‘flowers’ and place them in an empty spice jar on the table.  I move all the furniture around in our awkwardly shaped living/dining room, trying to find the arrangement that is most beautiful and most suitable.

My back hurts at the end.  The baby breaks into a puddle of tears and when I lay him on the moved couch, he stays.  It’s so unusual I touch him to find his temperature feeling a little higher than normal. I’ve said a few words in unkind tones trying to prod my daughters out of the way so I could move the next piece.

My real life is filled with beautiful-mess.  Sure my living room is now vacuumed and rearranged… but there are nail polish stains on the carpet, a play kitchen topped with everything we want to keep out of Sedryn’s reach, and hurt feelings that had to be healed as I hustled the littles about in an effort to get this done.

Oh… and a pile of wet laundry still waiting to be hung out on the line.

So much of the time I only want to show you the newly rearranged space.  The pretty manicured side of my life.  I want to hide my sin.  I want to step back from true community and sit smugly with my I’ve-got-it-all-together glance around the room.

But there are always two sides to my life.  There is always the sweat and blood and tears and frustration and sin and dreaming and learning and encouraging words and the very hand of God behind anything “I” accomplish.

To show you the sin, the disappointment, the pain, the sorrow, the struggle, the fear, or the achy-furniture moving back as well as the God-glory moments of beauty, joy, love, sacrifice, and perfectly arranged furniture is to encourage you that your most beautiful moments really are the messy everyday vulnerable stories. Precisely because those moments are less than perfect. Precisely because those moments are yours alone by grace.

So when Holley asks me to share the why behind my dream… I almost what to shake her.  Really?  Why?!  Why not, Holley?  But then I remember, God wired us all differently.

This passion I feel to share with you my own messes and to hopefully be invited to photograph your messy real (and truly beautiful) life is mine.  It’s a calling.  It’s a gift. Holley or you may never fully understand the why, but here’s the most succinct way that I can share with you why.

When I finally reach out to community in my worst sin and tear filled moments, I am most encouraged to keep walking with Jesus the next day when I hear my community whisper these words:

“Oh, sweetie, I’ve been there, too.  It’s so hard.  But God is bigger than this and He’s growing you to be more like Him.  Let’s pray that he will help you see the beauty in that very hard growth.”

I want to write and photograph in such away that the community around me (no matter how small or large) can hear that encouragement through my work.  That is why I’m pursuing my God-sized dream, because I know the power of a voice that speaks grace.

That’s why you should pursue a God-sized dream (more of what God has for you), because only your voice can speak grace in the way He designed.