A new beginning....

Do you ever wake up, look at your life and realize that you don't fit? I don't mean in a big sense, as in the universe, but just in general in your life. We go day to day thinking the path we're on is it. Our permanent chosen course. Then life throws us a completely unexpected curve ball. Change. It shatters this sense of security we had and we become unhinged trying to find our way back. But going back isn't always the right choice. Sometimes in order to move forward we have to abandon our reality, and take a different path, and sometimes that path takes us back where we started.

This is what has happened to me. The path I chose, my moving forward and on with my life path, turned out to be the wrong one. I never imagined that I would move my entire life somewhere only to come right back four months later. But strangely, I am completely ok with this decision. Although it was one I struggled with for the entirety of my stay there. There was a constant battle raging in my mind and my heart. This constant feeling of unsettledness plagued me each day. I always felt like I didn't belong. I always lacked peace which is so important to me! So each day I searched for it. I looked for it in friends, in church and work. I wasn't finding it. I don't think I have ever spent so much time in prayer on a day to day basis. Crying out to God to show me where I was supposed to be.

In this time I had to learn to be patient. Waiting through every day for my answer to come, afraid that if I blinked I would miss it. Then early one morning I got in my car and drove back home. Rays of sun barely escaping through the clouds, the rush of traffic behind me, just open road and an open heart. Open to possibility and an awakening I had been waiting for, for so long. The sun surrounded my car, tears falling down my cheeks because I had my answer. At last the peace that I had been yearning for was upon me. A smile stretched across my face and I breathed deeply as I took in the moment. This moment, where everything changed.

I am still pursuing my love and passion for photography, now more so than ever. I discovered through all of this that I didn't need to be in Vancouver to be a photographer; I just needed to be there to realize it. If it took moving my entire life there just to come to this conclusion than thank goodness I did it. I have always known that photography had to be a part of my life, I just didn't know that it was meant to be here all along.

I guess that's the way life keeps you guessing and keeps things interesting. We can never know what's going to happen or what to expect. But, we can expect to be surprised. I hope that I am constantly surprised by life, because it's surprises have gotten me to this point. I love that I can look back on this time, even though it was painful and smile because the outcome was far greater than I could have ever imagined. So as I close this chapter of my life I realize now more than ever that there are no endings, only new beginnings.