Still

I am taking on a 31-day challenge.

I received my first camera as a gift from my dear hubs after Monkey the first was born.  Initially it was a hobby to catalogue the many changing days os motherhood.  I soon found the more I learned, the more I loved my camera.  What a gift to record life's precious moments.  Mundane moments, special moments, pivotal moments.  Faces and mannerisms that define who we are and how we were.  All of it echoing the glory of a Creator.  I love that.

I have also found that, in this busy, demanding season of mothering, it is easy to set my camera on a shelf and let it sit...and sit...and sit.

Juggling a 2-year old monkey while cooking and carpooling has equaled camera disaster more times than I would like to recall.  

But...if I wait until my life settles, time is more generous, or the pace slows, I will have missed my life.  It is so easy in this current season to check out and exist in task-mode.  Then I look around and days have passed without recollection.  There are evidences of joy all around us, little love-notes from a kind soul-lover.  But oh many I have missed because my eyes weren't open!

So...this is my attempt, my discipline, to keep my eyes open and to see.  My camera helps me to see.  Encourages me to stop and savor for a moment.  Then record the moment so that I can remember.  And experience joy over and over.  31 days of camera seeing, joy images.  

Day 1:  Self-Portrait

Note:  I generally hate getting in front of the camera.  But I am trying more to do so.  This one was hard initially, but when I committed to it, it was quite therapeutic.  I narrowed it to several, but this one spoke loudest to me, of me.

I think one of the gifts motherhood has offered to me is the end of myself.  It is not an easy gift.  It is not always an enjoyable gift. But it is a precious gift.  

This is where I spend a majority of my day.  And this is me stealing a brief moment of still in the middle of the chaos.