Our Trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains

I don’t think I realized how much we needed this trip.

We hit the ground running when we moved to PCB last September. While our time between then and now has been sweet and filled with nothing but good things, it has been a very full season for our family. The first few months included adjusting to a new location, settling into a new home, countless meetings for Ethan, and getting to know our new church family. We also jumped into homeschooling, and Ethan made the final stretch to complete his doctoral degree. We’ve also had a number of family members and friends either stay with us or visit. And while much of that list was simply for that season, this year has been filled with various speaking engagements and ministry opportunities outside of our area. Homeschooling gave us the flexibility to travel alongside Ethan, but these trips weren’t always restful.

A few months ago, we debated whether or not we should travel to Liberty University so Ethan could walk the aisle in cap and gown—this being more my desire for him than his, lol. Still, after evaluating the cost and time to get there, we decided a better investment would be a trip focused on our family recharging together. We found an affordable Airbnb in the mountains of Georgia, and this highly anticipated trip turned out to be everything we hoped and dreamed of! We had spotty cell phone service, which made for the perfect excuse to unplug from our phones and simply enjoy God and one another in His beautiful creation.

The week before the trip, we read weather reports that said it would rain all week. We decided we would make the best of it and packed our rain gear, but in God’s kindness, the weather shifted, and even while it was raining in the surrounding towns around us, our area remained untouched.

We hiked, made s’mores, played in the creek, picked wildflowers, read, painted, hung out in the hot tub, made delicious meals, went antiquing, and lost track of time.

My favorite parts were when Ethan taught us all various survival skills like how to chop wood, start a fire, make a shelter, and forage edible plants. For so many years, we haven’t taken advantage of his background and experience in survival, but our kids are finally at an age where they are excited to learn and grow in this knowledge. Watching Ethan teach our kids and seeing their excitement as they put their knowledge into practice made me fall more in love with him than before. It’s one thing to be gifted in the myriad of ways that he is, but it’s another to have the strength, character, and faith that he does.

While we were sad to say goodbye to the mountains, we arrived back home with some incredible memories and deeper bonds than before. Praise be to God!

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A few have asked where we stayed. This is the Airbnb. Christian and Jen were incredible hosts who truly thought of everything and showed incredible hospitality. Please note: We don’t recommend this trip for smaller kids (as the creek is freezing and the rocks are slippery.) Also, there is no cell phone service driving through the mountains so you need to download your own maps and be ready for steep and windy roads. :)

DECEMBER ‘19 FILM ROLL NO. 1

A few years ago, I went to a Pennsylvania flea market with a variety of produce stands and odds-and-ends-type stores. One shop, in particular, caught my eye because of the “50% off entire store” sign. It was a cluttered, dusty place. There were shelves of expired, boxed hair dye, 90’s-looking 3-ring binders, random figurines, and the like, but tucked into the very back was a box filled with unused rolls of film. One man’s junk is another woman’s treasure and to me, it was pure gold! The sticker price read a little over a dollar and at 50% off it was a bargain I couldn’t pass up. I had no idea if the various rolls were expired but I grabbed the remaining color rolls and a hand full of black and white in the hopes that these might turn out.

When I got home, I put the film in a drawer. Life got busy and I forgot. And sadly, apart from bringing a roll on our Germany trip (something else I have yet to post!), I’ve only shot three—two of them this past December, haha. Thankfully, they’ve all turned out! These film scans are a reminder that I need to dust the rest of the rolls off and keep on practicing. Here are my favorite shots from a roll of Kodak Black and White:

Fort Pickens

a boat ride with friends

“

To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

Honeymoon Island

with family

Camera: Canon EOS3 (35mm)
Film: Kodak Black and White 400 CN
Lab: The Find Lab

2019 in Review

I don’t like to choose a word for the year (the primary reason being I don’t want to read my every experience of the upcoming year through the filter of that word; I would rather the Word of God remain my filter.) However, at the end of every calendar year, I do reflect on the main themes or big lessons God wove into the past 12 months.

One of my 2019 resolutions was to blog more but that simply didn’t happen because I poured all my energy into my book. Thankfully, Instagram became a micro-blog of sorts. A lot of the major lessons I struggled through, learned, and re-learned are summarized within those posts. This is more for my remembrance than anything else, but here are just a few captions that encapsulate the heart lessons from 2019:

• Spiritual warfare is real. (1/12/19):

  “Satan is the great deceiver and sets out to replace God’s truths in our minds with his lies. John MacArthur says that our minds are a battlefield for spiritual conquest and I believe this to be true. I do not want Satan to claim any territory in my mind or heart . . . the end goal of his lies is to bring us to a point of rebellious disobedience, but thanks be to Jesus that we are no longer slaves to sin! Sanctification commends this work-in-progress to labor towards perfect, loving obedience.”

• God’s power is made perfect in weakness. (2/9/19):
  “I’ve been telling my friends that I feel like a bowl and God is scraping out all the junk. Just when I think I’m completely empty, there’s residual that He continues to scrape away. I keep coming back to the fact that I am weak. It’s my natural tendency to try to do things in my own strength but every aspect of my entrepreneurial journey—photography, magazine-making, writing, and so forth—provides the ongoing lesson that apart from Him I can do nothing. This, of course, conflicts with the self-sufficient part of me that wants to get things done on my timeline but I’m glad it’s this way so that my boast remains in Him alone.”

• Motherhood Matters (2/28/19):
  “The most important following a mother has is not found in her Instagram stats, it’s in her home. I have three followers in my home that are 3, 5, and 8 and the way I ‘share’ my life with them matters so much more than what I 'share’ on social media. It’s easy to fall into the trap that our online lives matter more than our home lives, but this is a lie from down below. The online world is muddied with self-promotion, comparison, envy, one-upping, discontent, online cliques, and more. There are many aware of the curated facade and in reaction to it, transparency has become trendy. But even the one who shares the bed head and sinkful of dirty dishes may value screen time above who is immediately before her.
  
  How do we moms guard our hearts from all of these distractions? By filling our minds with the truth found in Scripture, we exchange worldliness for wisdom. We trade the temporal for the eternal. It is then that Instagram is revealed for what it is: unfulfilling kingdoms that will soon pass away. But the souls we’ve been entrusted with? Those will live forever in one of two destinations and it’s our responsibility as moms to do all that we can to point them heavenward.”

• God helps us in our anxiety. (7/12/19):
  “He is the One who calms the storms brewing within our hearts and minds. He is the one who confidently tells us to be anxious for nothing! He offers us His written word to store in our hearts for these very moments when we draw from it in the midst of uncertainty. Of course, I haven’t rid myself of anxious feelings entirely (at least not until heaven). The panic may still arise in unexpected ways and times, but I’ve tasted and seen that He is good and know that His word is true. We truly can be anxious for nothing because we can make our requests known to God through prayer. What a gift! If you’re wrestling with anxiety, know that you are not alone. Praying once may not give always give an instant result, especially if anxiety has been a pattern of thinking for so long but His Word is living and active and as your love for and knowledge of Him grows, so will your pattern of thinking conform to His, and with that, the power to trade anxiety for lasting peace.”

• This world is not our home. (7/20/19):
  “After living in a variety of apartments, townhouses, and homes, and moving into our actual dream house, I can confidently say that a house is nothing more than a temporary shell entrusted to us for God’s glory. (Sorry, HGTV but you’re overrated.) Yes, we care for it and keep it. We express our creativity in the form of painted walls and gardens and strung lights. We show hospitality and offer comfort to all who enter its doors. The home becomes a refuge for both the loved one and the stranger. Within its walls the Gospel is proclaimed, the Lord is remembered and praised. It is in this space where everyday ministry occurs. But our ability to extend hospitality and love our neighbor isn’t hindered by our square footage. The Gospel proclaimed to houseguests doesn’t hinge on whether or not our space looks like a Chip and Joanna makeover. Whether a big house, small house, short house, or tall house, the building, camper-van, hut or farmhouse that we may call home can all become worthy spaces for honorable use . . . Our next place will not have white walls and wooden floors. It will have fewer bedrooms, less square footage/acreage and because it’s a rental it is not a space we can call ‘our own’. But we have moved along with us more than just boxes of stuff. We carry the knowledge that any space is worthy of glorifying God in. May it be so in our next home.”

• The Christian depends on God alone. (10/10/19)
  “Each day I become increasingly aware of my inability to live as God calls me to in my own strength. I cannot do all things through Dianne alone. I desperately need God every single second and even though I am saved and know these truths, I find myself dancing between wholly trusting in the Lord and trusting in my abilities. I always seem to fall somewhere in between knowledge and understanding. And so these last few weeks have felt like a lot of wrestling...of me thinking I have my junk together and God showing me that I am not the all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-wise One. I recognize my weakness but want to fix it and fast forward through my sanctification process. Once again, He’s emptying me of myself, and although it’s painful, His power is truly made perfect in my weakness. I am reminded that in order to be filled with Him, we must first be emptied of ourselves and this is not a once and done kind of thing, it is a daily, all the days of our life kind of thing.”

Of course, all these themes carry into this year and the next. Praise God, He continues to sanctify me. If I had to sum it all up, however, it would be in this quote by Augustus Toplady (penned in his personal journal in the 1700’s). A friend posted this quote on New Year’s Eve and I thought it also described my 2019 year: