Definitions

 

Who am I and what am I doing here?

It has been a pretty rough week for me spiritually and emotionally.  We are doing the early work to transition to a long-term mission agency so we can stay in Kijabe for the coming years and hopefully decade (Samaritan’s Purse is amazing, but our time with them is limited to two years).  So that meant a meeting to talk with our team-leader-to-be about what we want life to look like in the coming years and what our roles will be with the hospital.  For Arianna, this is fairly straightforward: she is a pediatrician, loves her job, and will be continuing to do exactly what she has been doing.

For me, I am working as International Resource Mobilization Coordinator for the hospital, but I’m not an employee of Samaritan’s Purse – which means, although I do a lot of work for the hospital, I am also free to fly home from time to time to shoot weddings. . .a remnant from our previous life.  We honestly thought the door would close when we came to Kenya, but it hasn’t fully, and we are still trying to process what that means and should look like.

With those logistics hanging in the balance, everyone’s questions echo in my mind.  . .what exactly am i doing here? Why fly back home several times a year to photograph?  Aren’t there enough opportunities to take pictures in Kenya? Does this divide my loyalty between Kenya and home?  Isn’t this distracting from our life here? Why do we feel a pull to continue? And what do those questions even mean?

Thankfully TLTB (team-leader-to-be) brought all this up. We have talked around it all but not through it – we haven’t figured out the answers. I know we need to think about it –  but it is frankly spirit-crushing.

There are tangible benefits of shooting weddings – it means a little bit of extra money coming in, an opportunity to spend face-time with family and friends at home, the chance to tell our story in person – not just over the internet.  The opportunity to stop by Samaritan’s Purse HQ or interview a veteran missionary in person for Kijabe related project. But these are the logical ostensible reasons for photography. The reason people assume we want to continue – but not at all why we started taking pictures – they are not the heart of why we do it.

Faith and providence have been a deep, deep part of photography for the last 10 years.  I firmly believe that God has provided weddings for us, and that success has been His doing and not something we sought. Business wise, we did things all wrong – we didn’t advertise. We didn’t try to sell ourselves. We didn’t pursue people who didn’t come to us. We didn’t network right. But it became something life-giving and beautiful in spite of that.

We have approached photography as much as a ministry as a business –  a ministry of documenting love, of offering support and encouragement during one of the most stressful and emotional days of a young couple’s lives, of  celebrating and highlighting family, faith, and things that we hold most dear as human beings.  I have never been as certain that I was walking directly in God’s will and calling for me as when I was standing with a camera, photographing a bride and groom against a perfect sunset, and reveling in the joy that comes from doing exactly what I was put on earth to do.   I have doubted many things, and struggled often with pride or inadequacy, or whatever else, but in those moments, photography was as pure and full-of-joy as any experience as I have ever had on earth. (and, I think that my brides, grooms, and their families would say the same.)

So when I hear someone say, “you can’t do that”. . .even spoken in love. . .it is really hard.

Hence the questions. . . am I clinging to relics of an old life from which we must leave behind? am I trying to be self-sufficient rather than frogging (fully relying on God)?

Amidst all of this, I need a formal job description for the work I do at the hospital. . . which should be simple.  There are many needs, web-design, creating the 501(c)(3), social media, submitting a grant for lab-equipment, accounting for donations, communicating with purchasing, finishing the hospital history book.  As I wrote it down, I felt that I was building a box that will define me. . .and each task is a nail that is pounded into the lid of the box that will trap me there.

I hate definitions, labels, and yes, structure. . .and I love freedom, flexibility, creativity, and generally shattering boxes.  Arianna looked at the job description and said immediately, “this is not you. . .do you get excited about any of the things on this list?”

Pause. Swallow. Honest answer. “No.”

I am doing many, many things that I can do.  But my gifting and call is to relationships and storytelling. Unless these two things are at the center of all the work, I will not be satisfied or fulfilled in any way.  I have been doing the work, but without significance at the heart. And some how, some way, that needs to change.

Storytelling at the hospital is not easy.  Arianna says she doesn’t think to call me about the stories because they roll into each other – the pain or the miraculous start to seem normal or mundane. The doctors and nurses don’t have time or emotional energy to dwell on the sorrow or the miraculous the same way someone unaccustomed to the hospital might.  The miracle will roll in or walk out the door, and the next complicated story will arrive. The focus goes to the urgent need.  In the moments when it does become too overwhelming  are often when Arianna spills her heart on the blog. . .when it becomes too much to hold inside, when the normal becomes extraordinary.

I saw this firsthand in researching the hospital history.  The alumni missionaries would continually refer to “many miracles,” but rarely have a concrete story to illustrate.  They were drowning in need and struggling to keep afloat. . .and like Arianna describes, they had to keep moving to survive.  Not that many miracles did not happen, they did. . .absolutely every day, then as now. . .but there is only so much most of us can process.

Because of this, I often do not hear the story.  To be present, to connect – to point out the extraordinary in the day to day is difficult. . .finally being back to work and having a functioning body again (after collarbone and sickness) will hopefully help. . .but it will be a long, difficult process to seek out.

So, in the process,  I suppose is that my central role, to be a storyteller, may finally be defined. But it seems formidable, for my job is to celebrate God’s work at Kijabe.

Barriers and attacks seem overwhelming from both the Enemy and from within.  They have seemed very personal and aimed directly at my heart in past weeks.  They always come in different forms, whether illness, fatigue, distraction, busyness, sadness.  I suppose the truth is that if I feel beat-up and battered –  it may not be from being on the wrong path, but the right one.

In 2013, Arianna and I both knew, without question, that  Kijabe was our next home.  The doors that were flung wide open to bring us are a testament to that (last minute applications, disastrous interviews, grace-filled invitation, beautifully overwhelming community and church support).  We are supposed to be here.

But now that we are here, we must listen to His gentle whispers into our heart as best we can. We are certain that amazing things are happening and will happen here.  And we are certain that the box that is “missions” will be exploded by a God who does not live in boxes, or temples, or any other human construct; but who will shake heaven and earth to prove His love to us.

Whether or not I am a wedding photographer or am a resource mobilizer or am any other definition is not the important thing.  I am trying daily to walk in His will, to do what He put us on earth to do. I pray for myself, as we pray for our girls every day, that we are following Him all the days of our lives.

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart;
I know that while in heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me

Behold Him there, the Risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of glory and of grace!

One with Himself I cannot die
My soul is purchased by His blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God

I remember many days riding through Winston-Salem, listening to this version of Before the Throne on a cassette tape Arianna gave me.  Yes it’s slightly cheesy, but so amazing. . .and these words are an anchor for my soul in days such as these.