This week my friend Susanna came to visit me. She finally got to experience all she’d heard about my family and my home life from our time together in Lacoste. Everyone loved her; she loved being here. Plenty of evidence. Some of the most ridiculous Balderdash definitions were concocted while she was here. Some of the most beautiful piano playing circulated in our house.

Susanna’s adventurous spirit and how she encountered my town breathed some fresh life into my world. We must have met at least 5 shop owners downtown and talked to them for a good while. Good people. We bought some  batteries for her 35 mm camera and I taught her to use it. Shot a bit with my own. We found a crazy little restaurant hopping with sweet old folks. The Toot-N-Tell.

What a name. I lent Mason my camera and taught him as well. He and Susanna had an awesome mini adventure and scored a free watermelon from some nice folks.

I was thrilled to teach Susanna and Mason what I know about photography. The technical side really isn’t that bad. It’s complicated, sure. But it can be taught. Which is half the battle. Composition and personal aesthetic are important too. But you need to be able to control the camera and use it as a tool in order to produce the outcome you want.

I’ve been photographing for a while now. Since my sophomore year in high school - so that makes five years.

These were taken the summer before I started attending SCAD. (Just developed this week!)

Lately I’ve been pretty honest with myself. Asking some big questions. My conclusions? Well, I don’t have any real answers yet, but I am wondering if photography is it. Sure I can do it pretty well. I’ve latched onto the technical side and made my images my own. I love what I do. But I love so many things. A friend confessed to me recently that she’s never really seen me as a photographer - but as an artist. Others have had similar responses to my honesty. I just don’t know anymore.

And I think that is okay. God knows. And I trust God with all of me, with all I have and am. I’m learning to live with open hands.

My family and I had some pretty intense conversations over lunch. About where I’m going. I’m smack in the middle of my pursuit of a B.F.A. at SCAD in photography. Now would be the most opportune time to explore other majors and make the switch if I’m going to. What would I switch to? I don’t know! I love so many things! I would love to do it all. Really. Right now I have my eyes on Fibers for some reason. Seems to fit with what I value and love to do… only with fabric and all sorts of materials!

Here’s what I do know.

1. I love to make things. Photographs, paintings, stories, books, letters, spontaneous sculptures, gifts, gifts, gifts! I have been making since I was little. I never grew out of it.  And I love to give what I make.

2. I love people. I have found myself again and again uninspired to make anything if it does not involve other people. Someone to impress (a class, a professor, a boss). Someone to give my creations to, made specifically with them in mind. Someone to share my abilities with - to teach what I know and love!

3. I love teaching and helping people. I love teaching my friends how to make books, how to use cameras, how to construct a better sentence, how to color manage photographs in Photoshop, how to solve math problems - anything! People and teaching go hand in hand for me.

4. I prefer to encounter people one-on-one. Groups are not my thing. I’m learning to roll with it, but I much prefer one individual at a time. I do things 100%. All the time. That includes how I relate to people. Small surface area. Really deep.

5. I love stories, and always have. Whether its the personal history laced into a treasure found on the ground or the tales I share with you on my bedroom floor. People and their stories. Strangers and their mystery. Objects and their history. Kids books. Show and tell. I am a show-and-tell kind of person. That’s what the Gospel is! So fitting.

So, yeah. I’m not sure where I’m going. But I’m not afraid, only a bit nervous and antsy at times. God has me. He has my heart completely. He is the ONE. My salvation is secure, and I have my Father to fall in love with for the rest of eternity. He is the Everlasting Father and He is strong - stronger than any of the best relationships I can conjure up (from reality or imagination) here on Earth. He can’t even fit inside my head.

But He can fit inside my heart. Which is nuts. But the Holy Spirit dwells in me, He speaks to me. He is leading me. From inside. How beautiful. All of these elements which I have listed are pieces of who my God made me to be. Who knows what He can do with them as I learn to let the King of the Universe hold all of me - my past, my future, my talents, my weaknesses, my failures, my loves, my pains, my desires, my dreams, my friends, the things I fill my daily life with, my needs, and ME. I do know one thing that will happen there, in His hands. I will never be the same. God likes to make strong trees out of us. Deeply rooted in His love and goodness and knowing who He is and trusting Him to provide for His children. His love! It is marvelous. I am FOUND in Him. The Lord has promised good to me, His Word my hope secures, He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures. I will be like Mary, sitting unashamed at His feet. Basking.

I know I’m weak, I know I’m unworthy

to call upon your name

But because of grace, because of Your mercy

I stand here unashamed.

Here I am, at your feet

In my brokenness complete

Here I am, at your feet

In my brokenness complete!*

When was brokenness ever such a glorious thing? I bring nothing besides it. And my God requires nothing more - He has done it all. Jesus, you are so good. You are making my brokenness into something beautiful.**

* Song is “Unashamed” by Starfield. Love it.

** Lots of music references today. “Beautiful Things” by Gungor. You need this one. Go check it out.

I miss absolutely everything about Lacoste. This is my fourth week of being home, and things aren’t exactly peachy perfect. My brother returned from Thailand two days before I flew home from France, and the two of us have been slightly funkified as of late. We miss where God took us over the past several months. Both the adventures we had and the experience of learning to trust God in another country, another culture - another context for life. But the amazing thing is that we have each other in this time of confusion. Coming back we are both asking questions like: Should I be going to college? Where are we going, God? Why am I studying this? Why have you made me this way? Where can I GO for you, God? - I’ll go anywhere! And in not knowing the answers to these questions, I find myself longing for the simple life in Lacoste.

I find myself missing the feel of tall weeds brushing my knees in the morning in the valley, dew drenched feet making the trek up for breakfast. I miss what it feels like to wake up to light gently streaming through orange curtains, coating my walls. My suitcase as my bedside table for alarm clock, watch, unused envelopes, and glasses. I find it easy to look back to time spent with my friends - on the terrace watching the climbing clouds change colors above the valley, in our Murrier room telling stories while piled onto one bed, staying up late weeping together over heartache. I miss living in community with them. I miss the quiet mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I had the room to myself to spend with God. I miss the glory of the view - sitting on the rock ledge outside the Mac Lab to watch the afternoon shadows on the fields or late at night watching the stars reveal themselves across the enormous sky. Marveling at God everywhere. In all that I saw. In how I saw Him in my new friends.

At home I find myself in a very different season - one of rest and also of challenge. God is showing me ways that I don’t trust Him. Ways He wants me to trust Him. I want every scrap of my life to be surrendered fully to Christ. Holding back nothing for myself and for my own control - because He is showing me how He loves me and how strong He is. My God is relentless, and He wants all of me. He didn’t just make a way for me (that part is sweet!) - He wanted to make a way for me to be with Him again. Now my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me! He wanted me! Not only did He declare me guiltless through the penalty Jesus paid for me on the cross, He wrote His NAME over mine. I am His! My questions are still valid. I don’t know the answers to them. But God does. So in this summer at home, I will content myself with simply being with my Father who loves me. And doing whatever it takes to fall more in love with Him. Wherever I am.

I am leaving this place on Tuesday morning. The four of us only have today together - Susanna is leaving tomorrow. I honestly cannot believe my time here is over. It feels like I just arrived here yesterday, and it also feels like I’ve been here a year.

This week has been filled with last-minute moments - staking my claim on this landscape, this village, this culture, these people. Trying to grasp what it will be like to go back to life without them. Such a task is neither easy nor pleasant.

But being here has changed me. My three awesome friends have shown me things about myself I didn’t fully realize affected other people - or that they noticed. My stubborn conformity to my plans. My love of deep conversation. They say the way I dress puts them at ease. They tell me my eyes are huge and beautiful. We keep assuring each other of our beauty. I think girls need that, and I’ve never had such a wonderful support group before. I think we are starting to believe each other. I think we are starting to peel away the lies and begin to see how we really are for the first time.

I love these girls and I love the time we have spent here in Lacoste. We’ve changed each other, and it’s crazy to think that this doesn’t have to end - that we all go to the same college back in the States, that I will see them in the fall, and we will have to find new ways to be together when we aren’t living in such close proximity. (Susanna and Marissa are moving their beds in with me and Carolyn tonight! We’re going to have a sleepover before we part ways.) It’s crazy to think that I want these girls at my wedding (if I marry). They have to be there. It’s so strange to see this new part of my life unfold.

During my time here, I think I have become more independent and also more dependent. My time spent without the luxury of efficient and easily accessible communication technologies (and limited time when I do have access) has allowed me to truly have my own adventures - away from home, from everything I’ve ever known, and my family. In that sense this time has been my own, and I feel truly independent for the first time. However, I could not have done so without my girls. I am realizing how much I need other people. And how much I want to live in community with friends - people who love me and care about me. I’m so used to doing everything by myself - working, eating, studying, walking to and from class. Always alone! While I certainly have not been transformed into any sort of extrovert, I think I definitely have changed. God has used my time here to show me so much. And He has given me some of the best friends I could make in life to share these crazy France adventures with me. And it’s not just for here. I’ll take them to go.

I sit here in the top floor of the library (the side with the Internet) listening to the bell tower chime late for 2:30. I can hear a man softly strumming his guitar and singing in the distance. It is hot here today. All the books have been reshelved in the library and people are starting to stuff their suitcases. I need to figure out how to pack the books I’ve made so they won’t be damaged. We’ll be off to explore the quarry this afternoon. There are so many things yet to discover in Lacoste, France, and I am leaving in two days! At least I take my people with me. I take Lacoste with me, in a way. It’s a part of me now, a part of my history and my identity. From the grand Luberon mountains we hiked to the miscellaneous punctuation stickers I found on the side of a house in Paris; from our afternoons spent listening to the tales of Finn (the gardener) to our late nights lying on the rock wall outside the Mac Lab, staring at all the stars and marveling at the enormity of our God and the blessing of being brought to a place like Lacoste to study, to live, and to grow; all of it goes with me. It is mine. Forever.