Sometimes, at the oddest times, the oddest things happen… and sometimes, this collision of oddness creates a clarity that puts everything in perspective… Now, just to be honest, I have never considered myself a fan of Jimmy Buffett and certainly not a Parrothead, a Pirate or a rum-drinking beach bum… But recently, an event happened that jump-started a cataclysmic chain of events… It was Halloween…. or close to it, anyway, when Missy gave me a cd… her favorite jimmy buffett songs… not necessarily, as missy said, his most popular, but the ones she liked best. I took it to the house and when I went to work on Monday, I popped it into the cd player in my car… OMStars!!! I was instantly, irrevocably and irretrievably mesmerized… Everything I knew about Jimmy Buffett was wrapped up in Margaritaville… I had labeled him immediately as “not my thing”… and years passed. Then, a few days ago, while listening to the cd in the car, I heard the lyrics that changed everything… “according to my watch, the time is now… the past is dead and gone… don’t try to shake it, just nod your head… breathe in, breathe out and move on”. Now I’ve had little epiphanies before, little ones that make me say “oooh”… but this was different… I was, of all places in the shower… Those lyrics came to mind and I looked over the past year, in which I have had to learn to live without Jim… an entire year of “wish jim could see…, as jim used to say…., on this day, jim always…” An entire year learning to live day by day without the man I thought I couldn’t live without, but was given no choice but to do what I had deemed undoable…. then the words popped into my head “according to my watch the time is now”… and with them, the answer to the question that I didn’t remember asking… that first year, i did learn to live without jim… it wasn’t easy… as a matter of fact, it was the second most difficult thing i have ever faced… but I learned… and now, “the past is dead and gone”… and there is no changing that… period. “Don’t try to shake it, just nod your head”… how could you shake it even if you wanted to… life, death, happiness, sorrow, joy, pain… it’s all tied together in life… it doesn’t matter who you are, you know it… and this is where the fork in the road appears… two choices…take the low road… wallow in what was, but will never be again… stagnate in a pool of self pity and righteous grief… or the high road where you “breathe in, breathe out and move on”… I choose the high rode. I spent the last year learning to live without him… Now I will live without him, for to do otherwise is to say that the life God gave me to live isn’t worth living if I have to do it alone… I will take with me the little pieces of jim that i loved so much… but at the end of the day, when the quiet settles and the dark gathers, there is no one here but me… So, with memories that I wouldn’t trade for another day of life, strength born of dragging a burden that was nearly too heavy to bear, courage born of renewed faith and a knowledge that God is who He says He is and does what He says He will do…I’m going to live and not take a single moment of this precious life for granted… and if God is willing to send me… I am willing to go… I want to meet His people and look at them through the eyes of the spirit… I want to look at creation… to see it all… I am praying that God will continue to take me down the path of photography until I get where He wants me to be… That I will know what to do when I get there and that every aspect of my life will glorify Jesus… and in the meantime, I will serve Him, I will worship Him and I’ll breathe in, breathe out and move on…
Yes, I am a pirate… 200 years too late…
A Photographer's Heart 