"God is true to His purpose, not our expectations."
{Dr. Dick Lincoln}
What a difference 12 months makes. 52 weeks of living. 365 days of life.
Looking back over what I was grateful for this time last year and wow! I was pregnant, working full time at an ad agency while running LMP and we were still living in Virginia! Now we have a beautiful 4-month-old, I'm staying at home with her and we have moved to the South (the real South, that is).
And what things have stayed the same! The friendships we've been blessed to form over the years have continued on long after we moved and became parents.
The first photo, where Dean and I are posing as wedding guests, was for our sweet friends Wei and Elizabeth. We're staying with them this weekend when we head back to Virginia for a wedding :) The adorable couple holding hands in the third photo? They are watching Madison while we shoot Hooman and Priscilla's wedding. And the couple in the bottom right photo? Laura, the sweet bride, will be the coordinator for this weekend's wedding.
If you would have told me five years ago that this would be my life, I wouldn't have thought it to be true. But as our pastor reminded us several weeks ago, "God is true to His purpose, not our expectations." I never would have imagined that I could spend my time photographing couples' love and sharing in their wedding days with them, married to such an incredible man and raising up a cutie patootie little girl whose giggles melt away even the worst of days, living in South Carolina of all places :) (Looking back on my childhood, I always did love the state flag though. Sounds so silly to say that now but whenever we were traveling through SC, I always loved the look of the palmetto and crescent together).
And His timing - goodness, how I so wanted to be married and start having babies when I was graduating from college in 2010. But God had other plans for my life, plans that I couldn't have anticipated, scheduled, coordinated or thought out. Things that I needed to learn, grow through and experience long before any of that could take place. And He is good. The plans He has laid out are for our good, yes, but ultimately for His good, and His glory.
Can I offer a word to any of you out there feeling less than satisfied with your current state of affairs?
Let go of your picture-perfect expectations of how life should be or what it should look like, or what you should have done by this time or your life, or what job you should have by now. Lay them at the foot of the cross and pick up God's yoke, which is easy, and His burden, which is light. Start living the life He has ordained for you and you will find joy, freedom and peace.
