I met this family a week and a half ago after such an incredibly hard week for me. I’m sharing not because this has to do with this family, but more so how this shoot was a part of my healing process through that week. Earlier in the week when some friends came over to our place to head up north to the pumpkin patch, we walked outside and witnessed someone who had taken their life. I’ve seen this so many times on tv, but to see this in real life was devastating. I’m even shaking as I type it. I saw it…him…and just kept looking. And then I even looked again. And now I have the whole scene etched vividly in my mind.
A few days later, I learned I lost a past client in my old job. I was crushed and, even more, so completely saddened for the family he left behind without warning. Such a heavy, heartbreaking week. That Saturday as I was sitting in the funeral trying to wrap my brain around all of the heaviness, it hit me that I had completely forgotten the anniversary of the passing of my mother-in-law 5 years ago. Worse yet, I remembered that on the anniversary date that I had been so caught up in not knowing how to handle my own feelings that I was distant from Derrick on a day that was very hard for him.
I know this is hardly appropriate for for a family photo post, but it was as I was driving up to this shoot that I was able to heal. To reflect. To be reminded of life and the good that it still brings even in death. As I drove, I prayed and I prayed to feel God’s peace. To ask for healing. I prayed for the families that lost loved ones. I prayed that God would release the dark feeling that filled me every time the image of the man that took his life would fill my head. I prayed desperately.
I arrived at Mirabel early to look around and find some spots to shoot. As I was walking around the clubhouse, I found a path along a stream that was full of lush green grasses growing. I saw a roadrunner pass right in front of me. The sun seeped through the leaves of the trees and over the grasses in the valley. As I walked up a hill, I stopped in my tracks and saw a young buck and a smaller doe only 20 yards in front of me. It was in that moment that I felt God’s presence wrap all around me in a feeling of peace and a knowing that this burden of death was not mine to hold on to. I felt it and I believed it. I know it sounds cheesy as I write this down, but sometimes God shows himself in his own creation and I am so blessed to have found it there.
I went on to meet the family that I was shooting and was filled with so much joy as I was able to watch life and love happen. A new mommy and daddy to a precious little one. Aunts and uncles proudly watching as well.
Thank you Erkmann and Nath families for sharing this day with me, although you would have hardly known the gift that you were to me that evening. I am so completely blessed to do what I do, to celebrate life in the form of capturing happiness in a photo. I know your Mom will love these come Christmas!
These photos hardly do a justice to how beautiful it was!
GORGEOUS family! All of them!
New Godparents to that little love bug.
We went to spend a little extra time after everyone else left (our deal was to make the photoshoot as FAST as possible!!!
) to go shoot this little family.
Love.
Thank you!!!
.
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