It isn’t an issue …

Posted on October 1, 2012 | 1 comment

my niece’s Down’s Syndrome, that is; as a matter of fact, until someone brings it up, I forget about it.  I thought about it quite a bit this weekend, though.  It was the annual Buddy Walk, a walk sponsored by the National Down’s Syndrome Society.  There is a chapter of FRIENDS (Friends Reaching and Inspiring Neighbors about Down’s Syndrome) that services Southwest VA and Northeast TN.  It is through them that the Buddy Walk takes place each year.  But, I digress.

I saw many children there, many who were the same age as Grace, some older others younger.  I noticed many disabilities that I never give a second thought to  because I haven’t had to confront them with Gracie.  She does everything her sister does, sometimes even better, giving the impression that there is no disability.  While surrounded by the children and their parents, I had to take a moment and wonder what they go through on a daily basis just to insure that their child can have a routine of sorts.  Our biggest challenge is keeping up with Gracie as she is as fast as lightning and can be gone before you can say “Where’s Gracie?”.  Maybe we should dress her in a red and white striped shirt and make a book about her.

At one point, I took her with me and let her jump in one of the air-filled things.  What she really wanted to do was go down a slide that you had to climb up via little “foot pockets” to get to, kind of like the rock-climbing attractions at some malls.  I made her wait so her daddy could with her.

As it turned out, she didn’t need anybody to go with her.  She climbed up that thing like a monkey and never looked back, except when I was taking her picture because she is, irregardless of everything else, a ham.  I was so proud of her and a bit disappointed in myself for not having enough confidence in her abilities even though I see them nearly every day.

There are many lessons I can learn from Gracie.  I can learn to not know the meaning of can’t.  I can learn that just because something is hard has no bearing on whether I can do it or not and that unless I try, I will never know.  I can learn unconditional love that is blind to looks, color, demeanor, personality, social status, intelligence and the myriad of things that I roll my eyes at.  She doesn’t see with her eyes, but with her heart.  I think we could all use a bit more of that.

I thank God for both of my nieces and would lay down my life for either of them, but I thank Him especially for blessing our Gracie, for healing the hole in her heart, for fixing her kidney and for making her a grand example to all of us.  God Bless you Gracie.  You make me want to be a better person.

Romans 11:33 ~ O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

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Posted in blog, Down's Syndrome, Down's Syndrome, Photography, Encouragement, family, God, Life, love, Photography, Time

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What is it really like …

Posted on September 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

to lose, very suddenly and without warning, someone you love or are very close to?  To put it bluntly, it is like no other feeling in the world.  It supersedes all the other OMG moments as it settles into our bones like the chill of December.  It takes shock and disbelief to a new level.  I found out first hand a few years ago when I came home and found my husband, who was very much alive when I left to go to work, dead.  The shock was profound.  What in the world had happened in the hours I had been gone and totally oblivious to what was happening at home?  The instant feeling of emptiness will always be somewhere in the back of my mind and likely continue to show its ugly face at the most inopportune time.  It has been three years, or will be in a few weeks, since that fateful day, but there are times when I feel like I’m walking in for the first time.  How odd, that sensation, when I feel so vulnerable and so alone and so focused on my own loss and loneliness; how thankful I am that those times are now few and far between.

It’s difficult, in the best of times, to come to terms with the sudden and unexpected loss of someone you care about, be it a family member or dear friend or even someone that you remember fondly from your past.  It doesn’t matter who they are if they meant something to you.  Artists who paint will either paint as if tomorrow is a myth, or stop; photographers will take chances they would have never have taken or they will simply stop photographing for a time, musicians will either write as though their life depended on it or turn from their music completely.    We artists don’t deal with things the way other people do; that is often hard for the “others” to understand.

In my own experience, photography became nothing more than a reminder of what I had lost and it was months before I could come to terms with it and be able to pick up my Pentax and look through it without a blinding fog over my eyes.  There was, I now know, nothing wrong with that.  At the time, I thought I was past weird and well on my way to the funny farm, but looking back, I realize that it was all part of the process.  There is no right way or wrong way to grieve.  There is only the way that feels right at the time.  If you go against what you feel in your heart, then the only recourse is regret.  I try very hard to not do things that I will regret; sometimes I do them anyway, but then, I think I speak for most of us.

Losing someone we care about doesn’t change who we are but it does make us wonder if we could have been more.  That thought, though, should not consume us.  There will always be more that we could have done, could or should have said, could have made happen; dwelling on these things will not change anything.  I choose to dwell on the things that I did and not on the ones that I will never be able to do.  I am happier, and saner, for it.

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Posted in blog, death of a loved one, Encouragement, faith, Life, Photography, Sorrow and loss, Time

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when life takes over my life …

Posted on September 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

Wow.  The last few weeks have been brutal.  I know that many people will be able to relate to what I’m writing about; the unpleasable people we come across from time to time.  I’m in that exact situation now.  I’ve been in it once before, but compared to this, that one should really be stricken from the record.  I have 100% to give and have every intention of giving it, even though it won’t really help.  At least I will know I’ve done my best.  That’s all we can hope for right?  That we’ve done the best we can at whatever we’ve feebly attempted to do.

Sometimes, though, our best isn’t good enough.  Those words take me back to the evenings after my parents learned I made a C in math.  I really was doing my best and the teacher, who tried her darnedest to tutor me, could attest to that.  But my best would never get me an A.  I did make an A in Creative Writing; I was the only one excited about that.

Sometimes our best is good enough, but the one we’re trying so hard to please has a certain mindset of how things will be.  Mind-reading is a rare talent, one I don’t possess, but have wished fervently over the past few weeks that I did.  But there has been one constant, one balm, one measure that soothes my body, soul and spirit.  It is the same one as has always been, but this time, it is more consuming than ever.

Music.  It has literally taken over every moment of my life that isn’t bombarded with my current (though thankfully, temporary) job.  It fills my dreams.  It fills the empty moments, all of them.  I have a hard time describing something so magnanimous, so powerful that it consumes me; that the notes are the last thing I  hear as i drift off to sleep and the first thing I think of on awaking.

Someone played for me.  For a long time, they played and sang, mostly because their ego loved to have an audience and I was fine with that.  I have an ego of my own and I certainly didn’t expect to be mesmerized; now, i’m just overloaded.

These are the times I’m talking about.  The moments when my skin doesn’t feel strong enough to hold my blood in.  When life tells me that I have to break some eggs to make an omelet and as I look around, I realize that all the eggs are already broken.  And they just sit there.    These are the panic moments, the ones that either make or break me; moments that help me become stronger if I’m not too panicked or dense to learn what is being taught.  Once this time is over, I will be smarter, bolder and more able to see that life goes on, that time, once gone is gone and that important things always float to the top.

I am living the life God has for me and it will take me where it takes me whether I want to go or not; I will try to make the best of it.

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me ~ Philippians 4:13

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Posted in blog, dreams, Encouragement, faith, God, Life, music, Photography, piano, Time

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Today I walked in the rain

Posted on September 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

One of the simple pleasures of my childhood was playing in the rain.  As I grew older, I still loved the rain but never seemed to make the time to just enjoy it.  Not run from it; not dread it.  Just embrace it.  So today, as the rain put a damper, so to speak, on my original plans, I decided to just go with it.

I decided to go on a trail I hadn’t been on before but thought I might know where it would lead.  The first hour went quickly and it was then I realized that the trail had been, for the last half mile or so, on an incline.  It wasn’t leading where I thought it would; curiosity pushed me forward.  The incline continued to steepen as I walked up and up, the rain falling softly around me.  The sound it made as it fell onto the leaves, trees and forest floor is one that I don’t have words to describe.  It is its own song; the music of rain, the orchestra of nature.

After two and a half hours and still no real clue where I was headed, I decided to start back down.  The trail was already becoming slick from the rain and with the overcast skies, darkness would come sooner than usual.  I plan to go back when I have an early start and can get to the trail destination.  It likely leads to the High Knob lookout, which is a mediocre destination without the tower, but I won’t know until I get there.

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Posted in Life, Mountains, Nature Photographer, Photography, Southwest Virginia, VA, wildlife

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There’s something about sisters …

Posted on September 5, 2012 | 1 comment

that makes you want to hug them tightly even as you tear their hair out.  Something about someone who knows which buttons to push to get a certain reaction.  Someone you can call anytime and know that, without hesitation, they will help you hide a body.  Someone who knows your deepest secrets and only uses them against you to win an argument.  Someone who will stand with you even if the two of you are the only ones standing.  Someone who knows the difference between when you need to fight to vent and when you’re really mad.  Someone who forgives you for saying stupid and hurtful things.  Someone who sometimes says stupid and hurtful things.  Someone who seems to have an innate sense of when you need to be, depending, encouraged or discouraged.  Someone who will pray for you without being asked.  Someone who, were they no longer in our life, would leave an illimitable hole in our heart.  Our sister; our friend, enemy and ally.  I am thankful for mine.

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Posted in family, Life, love, Photography, sisters, Time

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Once a dreamer …

Posted on August 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

always a dreamer … Being a nurse for the past twenty-five years has been an experience in and of itself.  It would take a hundred blogs running every day to review the exploits that happen just in my little world.  But this isn’t about nursing, not specifically, anyway, but about a path not taken.  I have enjoyed nursing, for the most part, and would not want to trade the experience and knowledge I’ve gained over the last two and a half decades.  It just wasn’t what I wanted to do.

I had three goals when I was a kid and they were to sing, play the piano and photograph the world.  All three of those things took guts and I didn’t have any.  I had no nerve, little faith and plenty of fear.  So I took the easy road, leaving my dreams to wither and fade into the dust of my past.

It only took a few months to realize that I had made a dire mistake, but I still had no nerve, little faith and plenty of fear; I just let it ride.  As years passed, the dreams I left behind refused to be still.  It became apparent to me that a dream that really did fade into the past, forgotten, wasn’t a dream worth chasing anyway; my dream was banging at my head and my heart.  At every opportunity, I found myself with a camera in my hand.   Nature and created things began to be a central focus in my life and weekends were spent jaunting around looking for “pictures to take”.  I went to work every day and spent the evenings fiddling with the camera, playing with settings, learning, without really realizing, to do what I had always wanted to do; be a photographer.  I never learned to play the piano and I sing only at church, but those are but ripples in the pool.  It is the light and shadow that I love and am thankful that even though I was foolish and fearful once, God saw fit to bless me with what I wanted most.

I find comfort in the images He shows me.  I will continue to work as a nurse but on weekends, I’ll be in the mountains or wherever life might take me, photographing the beauty that is before me.  It brings me inexplicable joy to be immersed in the feel and smell of creation knowing that I serve the one who created it.    I don’t believe in coincidences so I can come only to the conclusion that this path is one that God chose for me and continues to bless every single day of my life;  I may not have had the guts  back then, but I have them now, along with the faith and nerve to do it and do it well.

If just one is encouraged by this post to put fear behind them and follow their dreams, then it has served its purpose.

I had the ability to fly all along, it was courage to spread my wings that I lacked.

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Posted in Beach, believer, blog, dreams, Encouragement, faith, Florida, God, Life, Mountains, Nature Photographer, Photography, story, Time, travel, wildlife, worship

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It’s just a picture

Posted on July 26, 2012 | 1 comment

Just a picture indeed.  Often times … no, let me rephrase that … most of the time, when I’m heading out to shoot some photographs, I go by myself.  It’s not that I always prefer to go alone, but it’s hard to find folks who are willing to get up before the sun and spend the day watching the same thing for hours as the light changes, hardens, softens, highlights and clarifies.  When by chance someone does want to go along “for the adventure of it”, after about an hour, they’re done.  Too many times to count I’ve heard the words “how many pictures do you need?”  There is no harm or malice in those words, simply a lack of understanding of what it means to be a photographer in love with light.  To most people, light is just the opposite of dark, makes it easier to see, comes in the morning and leaves at night; they cannot fathom that it is oh so much more.

Light has many moods, influenced by many things, but there are a couple times of day that I can count on finding amazingness .  These are the golden hours or, as they are sometimes called, the magic hours.  These are the first and last hour of sunlight in a day (though they are more in tune with the golden 30 minutes) and they are pivotal times for a photographer.  The light is low and soft and depending on the weather, can manifest in a variety of ways that couldn’t be captured in a lifetime.  That is the reason another question always comes up.  “Why do you have to get up so early?” or “why would you want to be there so late?”  I have a simple answer; because I am a photographer.  I chase the light, gauge it, study it and try to gain intimate knowledge so that I can, in my weak, mortal way, capture it before it changes.

I don’t go to a place to take a picture or a snapshot, I go to shoot it.  Maybe the first photograph will nail it or it may take hours or even days, going to the same place, watching the same thing, knowing that if I keep up the vigil, I will be rewarded.  These are the kinds of things that my friends and family balk about and why I usually ending up going alone.  But it’s not their fault.  They don’t eat, live, breath, sleep and dream photography.  They don’t look around them and see a hundred things that draw their attention.  They don’t feel the Spirit of God instilling in them the need and desire to photograph that which He has made. Nothing wrong with that.  That is one of the things that sets me apart from them.  It makes me different or as they like to refer to it, weird, geeky or odd; probably some other stuff, too, but all along the same vein.

Understanding the language of light is to a photographer like understanding the concept of music is to a pianist.  Without understanding, there can only be frustration.  I have spent years studying the art of photography.  Maybe I could have made it easier on myself by taking classes, but I wanted to learn it for myself; to see what worked for me and, as the years pass, start to see a style of my own emerge.  And that is why I get up so early and stay so late and why i will continue to do so because the language of light is one of the beautiful ones that I know.

Psalms 19:1 ~ To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

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Posted in believer, blog, dreams, faith, God, Holy Spirit, Life, Photography, Time

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Thine, not mine …

Posted on July 21, 2012 | 1 comment

Sometimes it seems that life is at a standstill
That everything I want the most  is within my reach
But in my soul I know that if I touch it too soon, before it is time,
Then like sand, it will slip through my fingers and I will be forced into waiting again.  There are things I’ve yet to do before I will be ready for my destiny.  I await it, though, with bated breath.

So many people  cross my path every day in one capacity or another
Some familiar faces and others strangers, but the contact is there, even if only for one moment.  A word of encouragement or a nod and smile is so simple and yet …  Did I do it, I’m not sure, but still, I am  accountable for what I have or haven’t done because that is what moves inside me.

An opportunity for all I hope for presents out of nowhere, as if from the air
And words escape me as my mind races forward, struggling
Trying to grasp the answer that I know is there before me and then He moves
They are His words, not mine, that I want to convey for mine are empty and weak on their own and this, after all, is what He had planned for me.

What I do, be it helpful or hurtful will continue to move forward
Touching others who had no idea one person could bring such joy or sorrow
I underestimate God’s reach because I underestimate my own, which has nothing to do with anything and everything to do with where I want to go which is where He wants me to go.  It’s a choice, it always has been and always will be.

He knows what He’s doing although I often question Him
I suppose the humanness of myself cannot simply take a gift as a gift but must question it and examine it to see if it can be trusted, not having faith enough to just take it for what it is. But at the end of the day when I give thanks for my blessings I remember to thank Him for the day, irregardless of what it brought, because it was for His glory, after all.

The journey I am on changes daily
As I surrender all I am to my King
But the journey doesn’t end when I close my eyes to sleep
The difference that I’ve made in His name, be it good or bad, encouraging, discouraging or indifferent keeps rolling on …

Romans 12:1  (my favorite chapter) … I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

~ read this verse, search your heart and soul … if you are satisfied, then carry on … if you are left wanting, seek Him … He’ll light the darkness… I read it often and each time, i’m either closer or further from Him … we are not perfect and Jesus, irrelevant of His perfectness,  understands that.  God bless and keep you all … not everyone believes, but there is no harm in praying … no harm at all …

Lightning over Big Moccasin

Oh Lord Jesus, I pray that someone, somewhere for reasons that only You know has been uplifted by You through me this day … Though there is much I would like to have,  there is nothing I can ask for that would bless me more abundantly. Amen.

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Posted in believer, blog, christian, Encouragement, faith, God, Jesus, Life, Photography, spiritual healing, Time, worship

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this sounds like a Suzuki ad .. but truth is truth

Posted on May 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

Everything I know about Suziki, I have learned from this little red ATV.  I’ve always been a bit skittish with ATV’s because they can be, in direct link with the experience of the operator, unpredictable.  It can be said that it was with trepidation that I first drove this unpredictable vehicle.  I was pleasantly surprised that it went where I told it to go, didn’t spin, didn’t get stuck and didn’t make me feel like I was going to fall off.  The only thing I like better is the Ranger, but that is only for the windshield … I feel in control and feeling in control when I’m in a vehicle of any kind is important to me.  It makes me less afraid and that is priceless.   I’d still rather hike, but that isn’t always possible.  As a photographer, nature being a big part of the canvas,  this little number has been a handy tool when time was of the essence.  Thanks, Suzuki, for a sweet ride, for peace of mind and for letting me be in control.  As I said … Priceless.

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Posted in ATV, Hiking, Mountains, Nature Photographer, Photography, Scott County, Southwest Virginia, Suzuki, Time, travel

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His grace in my moment of weakness (a poem)

Posted on May 26, 2012 | 2 comments

At times like these, I truly know

That there are ones, whe’er friend or foe

who’ll say a prayer that I’ll be whole

In my time of weakness.

Without my saying a single word

The warriors of Prayer were instantaneously spurred

And their heartfelt prayers, my Father heard

In my time of weakness.

His encouragement began in my mother’s home

Where by grace she knew what was already known

And her love covered me like a blanket of blooms

In my time of weakness.

It then continued at my sister’s pool

Where love for my precious family did fuel

Dulling the  confusion of my inward duel

In my time of weakness.

Then there is a moment,  as every now and then

A priceless bit of time with my dearest friend

The one I know, for certain, will be there ’til the end

In my time of weakness.

The reminiscing of days gone by

Some with laughter, some with sigh

Some with tears brimming in our eyes

In my time of weakness.

Knowing that what was once can be

No longer a part of real life for me

Knowing I see what i want to see

In my time of weakness.

In my heart, I realize the pain they’d feel

If but a glimpse of my sadness was revealed

Knowing inside I had lost the zeal

In my time of weakness.

Getting down on bended knee

I pray that from these chains I’m freed

That no more would life be consumed by grief

In my time of weakness.

Driving home with my thoughts I felt so close to despair

Then creation rumbled as it cried out its prayer

That your gentle loving spirit would sooth my every care

In my time of weakness.

© gina minton kearns

Daisies in June

Jim is gone.  He is with Jesus. Even if it were in my power to do so, I would not bring him back to this  life with it’s twists, turns, trials and sorrows.  So this day, this night, this moment, I set him free.  Happy Birthday my precious one … I loved him in life and will love him, even if by God’s will, there is another, until my last breath, for he was a gift of my Father and he helped me see what I needed to see to fulfill the destiny God has for me.  I had words to say, but was unable to  find the way to say them  … and then they were given to me by the Sweet Holy Spirit … It always seems that, at my weakest moment, He gives to me what I need to hear … this time, He gave it to me in words … My God.  My Savior.  My Jesus.

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Posted in believer, Birthday, blog, death of a loved one, Encouragement, faith, family, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Life, Photography, poem, spiritual healing, Time