Is God Laughing?

I am sure that over the last year God has been laughing at me. Ok maybe not at me, but definitely laughing. Why is it that we as humans have this extreme desire to search out what our purpose is in life? What changes we are going to make in the world? What heavy impact we are going to have? We are searching so hard for what we are supposed to be doing in this life that we stomp all over what we are actually supposed to be doing. We either work too hard and too much so our children are neglected; or we continue in school searching for just the right career to fullfill ourselves; or we spend all our time trying to find ballance in our lives and come to the end realizing that we spent our entire life searching for the impossible.

I have come to the realization that I will never be fully ballanced and I am accepting that. I will never at all times be able to please all people and will sometimes even have to ignore some to help one. In all this though I have realized that I also do not need to search out what my higher purpose is in life because I am living my purpose. That is why God is laughing. He is laughing because I think I can find my purpose, as if I don't think God has things in control. I can see him chuckling and saying, "Oh, you are going to figure it out yourself? ok, let me know how that works for you." Well God, it wasn't working very well. I was finding myself depressed because I thought I was failing at life, making the wrong decisions, not living up to what I was supposed to, not doing the right career.

Then I stepped into the other room and looked at my two beautiful children and my wonderful husband and realized how happy I should be; what a wonderful family I have; how blessed I really am. I need to stop searching for what I am supposed to be doing, for the impact I am supposed to be having and realize the impact I am having right now. How I interact with my husband and my children will impact them the rest of their lives. If I busy my life so much that I miss out on what they have going on right now, I cannot get that back.

Realizing this has made me happier but I still felt like something was missing. What then am I doing to better myself? I have been searching out further education thinking that was the answer but I am seeing that it is not. Not that education isn't good. I am a huge encourager of higher education. I think everyone needs it and should continue to education themselves. However, I also know that I am not looking for education that is going to give me a new career, but rather education that is going to give me some personal fullfillment. Something I enjoy doing that I can share with my family and friends. As I started to ask myself these questions I again had an epiphany and saw that I already had the answer. Photography. I LOVE taking pictures. It is a huge passion of mine to capture life on photograph. What better way to capture memories than on film [or card :)]? Why had I ever stopped? So I have decided to redevote my "me time" to taking pictures and learning about taking pictures. This gives me the creative outlet I need, the education I thrive for and allows me to have a passion that is all me. I feel God has given me the gift of seeing things that not everyone sees and I want to share that with as many people as possible. I enojoyed it so much years ago and as life got complicated I let this passion start to slip out from under me. I am not going to let it slip all the way. I have grabed hold and I am pulling it back in. My girls give me the perfect outlet to practice and with all the work we have to do on our property, what better medium to shoot?

I thank God for all that he has given me and the opportunities he has given me to shape lives, especially the lives of our two beautiful daughters.