I remember my first camera.  It was 3rd grade and I had a broken arm.  I took pictures of my sister taking pictures of me.  The rest of that roll of film contains creative images of tissue paper flowers that my parents bought us in Carowinds.

A few years later, I received a Kodak Advantix camera.  I remember taking black and white pictures of an opossum caught in our trash can and a street flooded to the bottom of a mailbox after a hurricane.

I couldn’t stop pressing down the shutter.

Around my Sophomore year in high school, I received the best present yet: a fully manual film camera. I was giddy with excitement!  I took tons of photos and checked out every book in the library on cameras.

Winter of my junior year, the camera was stolen from my driveway.  I can still see images recorded on that lost roll of film: Seth Thomas at 14 months playing with the stuffed football and Olivia, Sam, and Hannah bouncing on a trampoline.  I was devastated.  More for the lost film than the camera. My sweet sweet sister replaced my camera for my 17th birthday.  I could have cried with joy.

That spring I blundered into the darkroom at my high school.  I spilled chemicals everywhere, but I learned to process film.  I even managed to learn oil hand-coloring of my images.  Senior year I spent an entire 90 minutes every day alone in the darkroom listening to Jars of Clay.  It was a small piece of heaven.  I looked at two schools for photography: one in Atlanta and one in Chicago.  I wanted to capture images for the rest of my life.

But God intervened.

A full scholarship to a school in state prompted me to stay.    I knew God was calling me to attend North Greenville, but they only had two courses in Photography.  Photo I and Photo II.   I gave up the dream in obedience.  I entered NGU as an Early Education Major; I left with a Degree in Outdoor Leadership and a sweet husband named Derek.

Four years of marriage and twin babies later, I had almost forgotten the dream.

But God had not.

To be continued…